Jefferson & Hemmings

Did you know that the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was surrounded in the mist of a scandal with one of his slaves? Her name was Sally Hemmings and she bore six of the former president's children or so the story goes. Included below are some of the details of the story.

Sally Hemings was born in 1772, the illegitimate half-sister of Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha, the offspring of a relationship between Martha's father, John Wayles and his slave, Elizabeth Hemings.

Sally became Thomas Jefferson's property as part of his inheritance from the Wayles estate in 1774 and came with her mother to Monticello in 1776.

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson who was a widower and the U.S. ambassador to France, summoned his daughter Martha to live with him in Paris. Martha was accompanied by her young attendant, Sally, who was then about 13.

In 1789, Sally Hemings returned with the Jefferson family to Virginia. By then, Sally was 16 years old & pregnant with her first child, Thomas was born soon after her return.

The affair between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings has recently been supported by DNA evidence.

While there are noticeable gaps in the historical record, many aspects of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings are generally accepted. Among these are:

• Sally Hemings (1773-1835) was a slave at Monticello; she lived in Paris with Jefferson and two of his daughters from 1787 to 1789; and she had at least six children.
• Thomas Jefferson was at Monticello at the likely conception times of Sally Hemings' six known children. There are no records suggesting that she was elsewhere at these times, or records of any births at times that would exclude Jefferson paternity.
• There are no accounts indicating that Sally Hemings' children had different fathers.
• Sally Hemings' children were light-skinned, and three of them (daughter Harriet and sons Beverly and Eston) lived as members of white society as adults.
• Some of Sally Hemings' children strongly resembled Thomas Jefferson.
• Thomas Jefferson freed Sally Hemings' children: Beverly and Harriet were allowed to leave Monticello in 1822; Madison and Eston were released in Jefferson's 1826 will. Jefferson gave freedom to no other nuclear slave family.
• Several people close to Thomas Jefferson or the Monticello community believed that he was the father of Sally Hemings' children.
• Eston Hemings changed his name to Eston Hemings Jefferson in 1852.
• Madison Hemings stated in 1873 that he and his siblings Beverly, Harriet, and Eston were Thomas Jefferson's children.
• The descendants of Madison Hemings who have lived as African-Americans have passed a family history of descent from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings down through the generations.
• Eston Hemings' descendants, who have lived as whites, have passed a family history of being related to Thomas Jefferson, through one of his relatives, down through the generations.

Shortly after the DNA test results were released in November 1998, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation formed a research committee consisting of nine members of the foundation staff, including four with Ph.D.s.

In January 2000, the committee reported its finding that the weight of evidence - from the DNA study, original documents, written and oral historical accounts, and statistical data - indicated a high probability that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings, and that he was most likely the father of all six of Sally Hemings' children listed in Monticello records.

Those children are: Harriet (born 1795; died in infancy); Beverly (born 1798); an unnamed daughter (born 1799; died in infancy); Harriet (born 1801); Madison (born 1805); and Eston (born 1808).

According to Jefferson's records, Sally Hemings had four surviving children.

• Beverly (b. 1798), a carpenter and fiddler, was allowed to leave the plantation in late 1821 or early 1822 and, according to his brother, passed into white society in Washington, D.C.
• Harriet (b. 1801), a spinner in Jefferson's textile shop, also left Monticello in 1821 or 1822, probably with her brother, and passed for white.
• Madison Hemings (1805-1878), a carpenter and joiner, was given his freedom in Jefferson's will; he resettled in southern Ohio in 1836, where he worked at his trade and had a farm.
• Eston Hemings (1808-c1853), also a carpenter, moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, in the 1830s; there he was a well-known professional musician before moving about 1852 to Wisconsin, changing his name and his racial identity. Both Madison and Eston Hemings made known their belief that they were sons of Thomas Jefferson.

The descendants of Thomas C. Woodson (1790-1879) carry the strong family tradition that he was the firstborn child of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Woodson, who does not appear in Jefferson's records, left Greenbrier County, Virginia, for southern Ohio in the early 1820s. He was a successful farmer in Jackson Country.

Records indicate that this was a love affair that spaned 38 years. There are those who refer to Sally Hemings as Thomas Jefferson's common law wife. Thomas Jefferson denied the affair before Congress during his presidency when he was confronted about it. What do you think? If you would like to know more about this, I would suggest seeing the movie, Sally Hemings: An American Scandal.