Sally Seymour (?-1824)

August 25, 2020 
/ Contributed By: Kelly Sharp

South Carolina counties

South Carolina counties

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Sally Seymour of Charleston, South Carolina built a business empire out of her pastry shop by providing haute cuisine for the cityโ€™s most prestigious citizens. She also profited by training and then selling enslaved cooks. Born into slavery, Seymour was the cook and sexual partner of planter Thomas Martin. During her time in bondage, Martin had Seymour trained in French cooking by Adam Prior, one of Charlestonโ€™s two pastry cooks. Under Priorโ€™s tutelage, Seymour learned how to prepare delicate sauces, braise meats, bake a range of savory breads, and prepare delicate puff pastry.

After Martin manumitted Seymour and their children in 1795, she opened a pastry shop on Tradd Street in the heart of Charlestonโ€™s business district. Two of Seymourโ€™s children worked alongside her baking pies, cakes, trifles, and other pastries as they built up not only a reputation but also capital needed to invest in their own enslaved workforce. In 1804, Seymour purchased a young woman named Chloe to work in the pastry shop and eventually had six enslaved pastry cooks (Chloe, Felix, Peter, Betsey, Liddy, and Laura) assisting at her establishment. By the time of her death in 1824, Seymour left an estate worth in excess of $1,600. While her son, William, ran a tavern outside Charleston, her daughter Eliza took over the pastry shop. Seymour not only left a financial legacy for her children but also greatly influenced the standards of fine cuisine in Charleston.

In addition to selling pastries, Seymour purchased enslaved people and then trained them in the art of pastry baking before reselling them. Enslaved cooks trained by Seymour were in such demand they were marketed by private auction rather than public sale. Wealthy Charlestonians also apprenticed their enslaved cooks into Seymourโ€™s service, likely paying her in exchange for their training.

While the total number of enslaved people Seymour trained is unknown, between 1823 and 1853, twelve slave sale advertisements for enslaved cooks include reference to training under her tutelage have been discovered. Descriptors indicating training under Seymour include โ€œserved time with Sally Seymour,โ€ โ€œserved a full apprenticeship to Sally Seymour,โ€ and, even three decades after her death, an advertisement appeared in the Charleston paper for a โ€œfirst rate Meat and Pastry cook brought up by Sally Seymour.โ€ Such a sustained prominence in the culinary memory of the cityโ€™s elite speaks to the notoriety of Sally Seymourโ€™s skill as well as the lasting culinary influence of enslaved women trained under her tutelage. Seymour also trained many of Charlestonโ€™s free black cooks and caterers during this era as well, generating an enduring impact on culinary culture not only the region but the US South at large.

Sally Seymour died in Charleston on April 3rd, 1824.

About the Author

Author Profile

Dr. Kelly Sharpโ€™s research centers on African American labor, material studies, and culture in the antebellum American South. Her book is titled Provisioning Charleston: How Race Shaped Food and Eating in the Antebellum South and will be published as part of Cambridgeโ€™s Studies on the American South series in April 2021. Her previous work has been recognized by diverse audiences from the Preservation Society of Charleston, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, the Oxford Food Symposium, and the Coordinating Council of Women Historians. She is a professor of African American history at Furman University and in her spare time loves to try out historic recipes and lecture her family on the history of various ingredients.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Sharp, K. (2020, August 25). Sally Seymour (?-1824). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/sally-seymour-1824/

Source of the Author's Information:

Larry Koger, Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1995); Cynthia M. Kennedy, Braided Relations, Entwined Lives: The Women of Charleston’s Urban Slave Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005); David S. Shields, โ€œCharlestonโ€™s First Top Chefs,โ€ Charleston Magazine, December 2013, https://charlestonmag.com/features/charlestons_first_top_chefs.

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