Cordenia S. Thaxton

Cordenia Sarah Thaxton (nee Wilson) was born on May 22, 1924 in Charlottesville, Virginia.¹ By 1940, she was living in Washington, D.C., with her family; her father worked as a clerk for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a government agency created to boost the economy during the Great Depression, and her mother was a maid at a private school.²

In January 1962, during John F. Kennedy’s presidency, Thaxton began working at the White House as a maid. She was initially hired to clean the first family’s private quarters in the White House, but the Kennedys soon gave Thaxton the additional responsibility of babysitting their two young children, Caroline and John Jr., on Wednesdays when their nanny Maud Shaw was off of work. In an interview conducted a few years later, Thaxton explained: “It frightened me in the beginning because I don’t have children and I hadn’t been around children too terribly much.” But she grew fond of the Kennedy family. Twice Thaxton accompanied the Kennedys to their home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, during the summers to care for the children when Shaw was on vacation. Thaxton even babysat the Kennedy children twice in the months after they moved out of the White House following the president’s assassination in November 1963.³

Thaxton remained employed as a maid at the White House at least through 1965, but little else is known about her life beyond that point.⁴ Thaxton passed away on September 25, 2001.⁵