Сэмюэл Франсес: Ресторатор, слуга президента Вашингтона и загадка его происхождения.

American restaurateur

Samuel Fraunces (1722/23 prior to the household's move to the Alexander Macomb House, at 39 41 Broadway. Under the July 1790 Residence Act, Congress designated Philadelphia the temporary national capital for a 10 year period, while the permanent national capital was under construction in the District of Columbia. Congress convened in Philadelphia on December 6, 1790. The household staff at the Philadelphia President's House was slightly larger, about 24 servants, initially including 8 enslaved Africans from Mount Vernon. Washington grew dissatisfied with his steward in Philadelphia, and persuaded Fraunces to come out of retirement again. Fraunces at first expressed skepticism about cooking alongside Washington's enslaved cook from Mount Vernon, Hercules, but they appear to have worked smoothly together. Andrew G. Fraunces worked in the U. S. Treasury Department until 1793, and published a pamphlet denouncing Alexander Hamilton for his financial dealings. Some of the other children ran hotels or boardinghouses. Fraunces died in Philadelphia the year after retiring from the presidential household. His obituary appeared in the October 13, 1795, Gazette of the United States: "DIED On Saturday Evening last, MR. SAMUEL FRAUNCES, aged 73 years. By his death, Society has sustained the loss of an honest man, and the Poor a valuable friend." He was buried in an unmarked grave at St. Peter's Church, Philadelphia. and was listed as an "Inn keeper" at 59 South Water Street in the 1795 Philadelphia Directory.

Fraunces employed servants, including indentured servants, and held enslaved Africans in bondage. The 1790 United States Census for New York listed him as a free white male, with four free white women, and one slave in his household.

Sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois—co founder of the NAACP and first editor of its magazine, The Crisis—tried to resolve the issue of Fraunces's racial identity. He strongly suspected that Fraunces had been of African descent, but could find no conclusive evidence. Mrs. John Fraunces McCurley, a Virginia newspaper editor, assembled a large cache of historical documents and Fraunces references, and concluded that he had been white. Biographer Kym S. Rice found no 18th century references to Fraunces having been black: she noted his history as a slaveholder, his inclusion on the voter rolls (limited to white men of property), and his memberships in groups (such as the Masons) that at the time were restricted only to whites. In 1838, Samuel Cooper, a supposed witness to Washington's 1783 New York farewell to his officers, called Fraunces "a negro man." She concluded: "The issue of Samuel Fraunces' racial identity is still a passionate topic of discussion to this very day. As debate rallies on for conclusive evidence, the actual truth is that we may never know for sure." Purchased at auction for the Sons of the Revolution, it was unveiled at their December 4, 1913 annual meeting. The painting came from the collection of Anna E. Macy of Riveredge, New Jersey, and was auctioned at Merwin Sales Company, November 17, 1913.

The legend tells that the life of General George Washington was saved during the Revolutionary War by a daughter of Samuel Fraunces named Phoebe. Thomas Hickey, one of Washington's guards, became romantically involved with Phoebe and enlisted her in a plot to poison the general's food. Phoebe reported Hickey (to Washington or her father), and pretended to play along with the plot. Hickey was caught red handed poisoning the general's food, and was court martialed and hanged. Following Custis's death, Lossing edited his writings for publication as Recollections and Private Memoirs of George Washington (1860). He repeated the story a decade later in his Washington and the American Republic (1870):Washington was very fond of green peas, and it was agreed that when a dish of them was ready for the general's table, Hickey should put the poison in it. Meanwhile the housekeeper disclosed the plot to the general. The peas were poisoned. Washington made some excuse for sending the dish away, and Hickey was soon afterward arrested. The peas were given to some hens, in his presence, when they immediately sickened and died. [*]Hickey and his associates of the guard, were arrested immediately after dinner, on the twenty third; and, according to a letter written at New York the next day, "the general's housekeeper was taken up," on suspicion of being an accomplice. She was the daughter of Samuel Fraunces, a noted innkeeper at that time It was chiefly on the testimony of this woman that Hickey was arrested, tried, and condemned. [*]These facts were related to a friend of the writer (Mr. W. J. Davis), by the late Peter Embury, of New York, who resided in the city at the time, was well acquainted with the general's housekeeper, and was present at the execution of Hickey. In the patriotic build up to the 1876 Centennial Celebration, Lossing's story was retold in Scribner's Monthly Magazine, but with Samuel Fraunces's anonymous daughter identified as "Phoebe":A daughter of "Black Sam," Phoebe Fraunces, was Washington's housekeeper when he had his headquarters in New York in the spring of 1776, and was the means of defeating a conspiracy against his life. One part of the plan was the poisoning of the American commander. Its immediate agent was to be Thomas Hickey, a deserter from the British army, who had become a member of Washington's body guard. Fortunately the conspirator fell desperately in love with Phoebe Fraunces, and made her his confidant. She revealed the plot to her father, and at an opportune moment the dénouement came. Hickey was arrested and tried by court martial. A few days afterward he was hanged

The legend was repeated in the 1932 bicentennial celebration of George Washington's birth, although the location of events was switched from Richmond Hill to Fraunces Tavern.

Fraunces biographer Kym S. Rice presented new evidence discrediting the Phoebe Fraunces legend in the 1980s. Washington's headquarters in Manhattan, from April 17 to August 27, 1776, was at Richmond Hill. Initially, his housekeeper there was a widow named Mary Smith. Washington apparently dined at the Queen's Head Tavern at least twice, on April 13, with his aides: "Dinner at Sam's [£]5.3.6", and (probably) on June 6, with Martha Washington: "Saml Frances, Alias Black Sam for Dinner [£]3.14.0". On June 15, one of his guards, Thomas Hickey, was arrested on charges of "attempt[ing] to pass counterfeit Bills of Credit." Washington approved mass arrests of suspected Loyalists for the night of June 23–24, and among those arrested was his housekeeper, Mary Smith. Samuel Fraunces also was arrested that night, but eventually released for lack of evidence.|group=note He was sentenced to death, and hanged on June 28. Smith later fled to England, where she received a £20 Loyalist pension from the British government. In a 1785 petition to Congress, Fraunces swore that he had thwarted an assassination plot against Washington. Rice suggests that confusion created by Thompson's name may have led Lossing, writing 84 years after the events, to misidentify Fraunces's daughter as Washington's housekeeper: But thirteen years later she married Atcheson Thompson, and became, coincidentally, another Elizabeth Thompson.

Lossing's Phoebe Fraunces legend was largely forgotten, until it was re introduced in Judith Berry Griffin's 1977 children's book, Phoebe and the General (later renamed Phoebe the Spy). The fictional 13 year old Phoebe character is Samuel Fraunces's daughter, and he tells her that he's overheard something about an assassination plot against Washington. Phoebe sees Thomas Hickey sprinkle something on the general's food, and throws a plate of poisoned peas out the window, where chickens eat them and fall down dead. Hickey is immediately arrested, and Fraunces and Phoebe are commended by General Washington. Another children's book based on the legend is the 2016 title by C. R. Cole, Ainsley Battles, and Breanna Dubbs: Phebe and the Peas. In this re telling "Phebe" is identified by the authors (who all claim to be descendants of Samuel Fraunces) as the young Elizabeth Fraunces. The story of the poisoned peas is given as a true family story passed down through the generations.