Like most eighteenth-century plantations in the Chesapeake region, Pemberton Hall Plantation depended on slave labor. Between 1700 and 1740, some 54,000 slaves were brought to the Chesapeake region. When Isaac Handy died in 1762, records show that he owned 16 slaves. Their quarter, or place where they gathered, socialized, and ate, was a sawn log building measuring 14x16 feet, to the east of Pemberton Hall. Laborers on the plantation would have used simple tools, likely made on the premises. A hollow log mortar and pestle was used to grind dried corn for hominy.