Hey there, it's Nate. I'm going to have an old favorite episode for you this week because I am, that's on you here, as I'm getting on the LA subway, to go to my jury service.

I'm out of case, and I will see you on the other end of that. The new episode in a couple weeks.

Bye.

This is the Memory Palace.

I'm Nate DeMaio.

Hercules was a real-life man.

There are a number of reasons we know for sure.

His name, just the one name, just Hercules, shows up in tax records.

He's there among a list of taxable property. In the census of

slaves conducted in 1787, he is listed as a cook. He is mentioned in a handful of diaries and letters.

There is a portrait that people think is him, a black man in a white chef's coat, his dark

hair barely contained in his tight white chef's hat. It is probably

him, but it could be someone else entirely. But Hercules was a real man. We have the evidence.

And we have that evidence, those records, the diaries, the probable portrait, because George

Washington owned him. And when you are George Washington, people save your stuff. They keep your writing, they keep the diaries and letters that your friends and your family wrote, just in case you, first president, founding father, hero of the revolution, show up in those diaries, just in case you answered their letters, so that historians and biographers in the Mount Vernon Ladies Association can tell your story,

can give a full accounting of your life, can catalog its moments and chronicle its days.

Hercules was one of George Washington's slaves, and so we know he existed, though we don't know

much beyond that.

Hercules was born sometime around 1754. He was married, though he don't know when, to another

slave named Alice. They had three kids, Richmond and Evie and Delia. George Washington bought

Hercules from the guy who lived next door to Mount Vernon, then put him to work running a ferry

across one of the rivers that ran through the estate.

...