A Different Kind of Laborer: Jane Lewis and Betty Simmons

Much like the unsung African American laborers who worked on the early State House, women’s contributions to the running of the State House went largely unrecorded. While we may know more about women of the upper-classes, like Molly Ridout, many working-class women have been long been lost to time. However, research into the Old Senate Chamber frequently comes up with rather unexpected results - and records of two women’s contributions to the running of the State House are among them. There is a lot we don’t know about these women, but what is known is interesting enough to hint at a possibility of many different stories.

Reproduction of the John Shaw flag by CRW Flags, 2009. Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 1545-3348.

Followers of the blog may have seen the name Jane Lewis before, perhaps connected with Annapolis cabinetmaker, John Shaw. On May 13, 1778, the Orphans’ Court proceedings recorded, “The Court binds Jane Lewis, the Daughter of Ann George, an Infant of 9 years of age, as an apprentice to John Shaw of the City of Annapolis, as a Seamstress, the Said John Shaw obliging himself to cause her to be taught to read and write, and to pay her the sum of six pounds currency at the expiration of 16yrs her time of Servitude, in lieu of freedom dues.” Where Jane Lewis came from, who her mother Ann George was, and what happened to Jane after this record remains a mystery for now. However, what we do know from this rather peculiar record provides a considerable amount of information.

A Flag for the State House

In autumn of 1783, men like Jubb Fowler and John Shaw were hurriedly preparing for the arrival of Congress to the Maryland State House on November 26, 1783. Actually a cabinetmaker by trade, the State House hired John Shaw for a variety of tasks. Among Shaw’s various projects in late 1783, perhaps the most famous is what is now known as the “John Shaw flag.”

This watercolor painted by Charles Cotton Millbourne c.1794 is the best known image of a depiction of the original "John Shaw flag." View of Annapolis, courtesy of the Hammond Harwood House Association. You may also view their blog here.

On November 12, 1783, the state paid Messrs C. and R. Johnson of Baltimore for purchasing “2 pieces of red bunting, 2 ditto white bunting, 19½ yards blue ditto. The above, to make a pair of colours for the State at the request of the Gov & Council and Ordered of the purchaser in Balto.”[1] Shaw was paid for providing two matching flags - both were nine by twenty-three feet and were of an unusual design. Descriptions of the eighteenth-century Shaw flag have always been vague, but it was certainly built according to the 1777 resolution by Congress that the nation’s flag must have “13 stripes alternating red and white” and “13 stars white on a field of blue representing a constellation.”[2]

John Shaw and the State House, 1783

John Shaw (1745-1829) is widely considered to be the premier cabinetmaker of Annapolis during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He owned the largest furniture-making shop in Annapolis which produced furniture for private and public patrons, including many commissions for work at the State House. Much of Shaw’s furniture, including objects made for the State House, was stylistically distinctive and frequently identified by labels. Between the 1770s and 1819, Shaw, more than any other Annapolis artisan, played the most extensive role in shaping the appearance of the State House, its furnishings, and in particular, the Old Senate Chamber. 

Shaw and Chisholm Label, c. 1783-4; found on MSA SC 1545-0814