09/08/2026
When we think about Martin Van Buren’s home, it’s easy to picture the President, his family, and the many famous guests who passed through the doors.
But keeping a 36-room home and a 220-acre farm running required many hands. Domestic servants cooked meals, cleaned the house, did laundry, served guests, and helped keep the household running. Van Buren hired almost exclusively Irish women for this work, a pattern that reflected the larger community of Kinderhook, where Irish immigrant women made up much of the domestic workforce.
The farm relied on a diverse workforce of its own. Historical records show farm laborers at Lindenwald came from France, Ireland, Germany, and the Netherlands, along with many men from across New York State. Black men were also part of the agricultural workforce at Lindenwald. Their presence was part of a much longer history of Black agricultural labor in the Hudson Valley. New York’s Black communities had deep roots in the region, shaped in part by generations of people who had been enslaved in New York before the state’s gradual abolition of slavery was completed in 1827.
Every part of the estate depended on their work. Their labor helped provide the home and setting that allowed former president Van Buren to remain socially and politically relevant well into his retirement.
Image: Artist's depiction of the Van Buren era Lindenwald landscape, showing the north orchard in the bottom right.
Original by S.N. Patricia (1996), updated in 2016 by Eric D. Whiting (NPS / Martin Van Buren National Historic Site Collection)
