Tunis campbell biography of williams death

Tunis Gulic Campbell was one of ten children born to John Campbell, a blacksmith, and his wife name unknown in Middlebrook, New Jersey. In , when Campbell was five, a white friend of the free black family helped place Campbell in an all-white Episcopal school in Babylon, New York on Long Island. Though he trained to be a missionary to Liberia under the auspices of the American Colonization Society, he grew to oppose the ACS, and at age eighteen became an anti-colonization and abolitionist lecturer.

He converted to Methodism and began shuttling between New Jersey and New York preaching against slavery, colonization, alcohol, and prostitution. By his own account, the young moral reformer was often physically threatened, but he was unfazed, and, in time, joined Frederick Douglass on speaking tours. During this period, from until, Campbell earned a living as a hotel steward in New York City, the last three years as the principal waiter at the Howard Hotel.

It was here that Campbell perfected his drill for waiters: a method by which the staff in a large hotel dining room could perform its duties most efficiently and elegantly. In , Campbell published his method and other hotel management tips in Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers' Guide, the first book of its kind published in America.

Tunis campbell biography of williams death: Tunis Campbell was the

His talent for organization is quite evident in the guide. He devised a system of signals to be used throughout the dinner meal to tell the waiters when to clear, when to bring the next course, when to line-up behind the diners' chairs, when to raise the covers on the dishes, how to march out of the room together, etc.

Each server should be responsible for a designated number of diners, ".