Rosanna McKenney worked as a launderer for TJ from at least March 1805 into July 1807. The census of 1820 listed her as the head of a household of four. She was then 45 years of age or older. In 1822, the city of Washington’s first directory listed her as Rosanna M’Kenna, a widow living a few blocks from the President’s House. Her receipts to TJ were written in a variety of hands, as was her signature, and the spelling of the signature varied (Judah Delano, The Washington Directory: Showing the Name, Occupation, and Residence, of Each Head of a Family and Person in Business [Washington, D.C., 1822], 58; U.S. Census Schedules, DNA: RG 29; receipts, 13 July 1805, 8 Jan., ca. 5 May, ca. 20 July, 31 Dec. 1806, 4 Apr., 30 July 1807, in MHi).

clothes washed: TJ noted McKenney’s payment in his financial record of 11 Mch. as “pd. extra washing 10. D.” (MB description begins James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826, Princeton, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1148). The addition of washing as a separate presidential expense in TJ’s memoranda occurred no more than four times a year between 1801 and 1807. Often he listed only the cost of the service, but he occasionally named McKenney and, before her, Sally Houseman in 1803 and Biddy Boyle in 1804 and early 1805. Beginning in October 1807, the cost of washing done for the president was most commonly incorporated in his memoranda as a category in Étienne Lemaire’s monthly table of household accounts (MB description begins James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826, Princeton, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1100, 1118, 1137, 1152, 1212).