Sarah L. Bassitt
cook · active 1900
Appears in the 1900 census of Ocean City, aged 59, as a cook — one of the Black women whose domestic work the resort ran on, and whose names survive because a census taker wrote them down.
In the record (1)
1930
The census returns name the Black women who cooked and kept house for the resort: Sarah L. Bassitt, Alice Pitts, Mary Dennis.
Domestic work was one of the few trades open to Black women in Ocean City, and the census is where their names survive. Sarah L. Bassitt, 59, was recorded as a cook in 1900; Alice Pitts, 35, in 1910; Mary Dennis, 27, in 1930, cooking for a hotel. Clara Showell and her daughter Julia were washerwomen and Clara's daughter Sarah a cook. Others were live-in servants for private families — Roxy P. Ayres in Thomas J. Cropper's household in 1930, Roketta Scott and Chancil Whittington in John B. Lynch's in 1940, Edward Purnell a hired hand a few doors along. George Mills, listed as both a servant and a hotel worker, boarded with Lizzie R. Hearne, who is recorded in the same 1930 census as the owner and manager of a hotel. At the Monticello, George Henry Booth lived in and kept house; his 1942 draft card notes a withered leg.
The hotels are named all over this timeline. These are the people who made the beds and the breakfasts in them, and a census line is the only place most of their names got written down.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Alice PittsMary DennisGeorge MillsLizzie R. HearneThomas J. Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-11