Eston Hemings - Early Life

Early Life

What is known of Eston's life is derived from his brother Madison's 1873 memoir, a few entries in Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book, a handful of contemporary newspaper accounts, various census and land/tax records, and the family history of his descendants.

Eston was born into slavery as the youngest son of the slave Sally Hemings. As she was one of the six mixed-race children of Betty Hemings and John Wayles (Jefferson's father-in-law), she and her siblings were half-siblings to Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles. The historians Philip D. Morgan and Joshua D. Rothman have written about the numerous interracial relationships in the Wayles-Hemings-Jefferson families and the region, often with multiple generations repeating the pattern. The large Hemings family was at the top of the slave hierarchy at Monticello, with its members working as domestic servants, chefs, craftsmen and artisans. Sally Hemings had light duties, and as children, Eston and his siblings "were permitted to stay about the 'great house', and only required to do such light work as going on errands." Like their older brother Beverley, at age 14 Madison and Eston each began training in carpentry, under tutelage of their uncle John Hemmings, the master woodworker at Monticello. All three brothers learned to play the violin (Jefferson also is known to have regularly played.)

Madison and Eston were freed in 1826, in accordance with President Jefferson’s will. (Madison was 21; Eston was "given his time" and freed before he reached 21.) Additionally, Jefferson's will petitioned the legislature to allow the Hemingses to stay in Virginia after being freed, unlike most freed slaves. In his 1873 memoir, Madison said the Hemings children were freed as a result of a promise Jefferson made to Sally Hemings prior to their return to the United States from France in 1789.

After Jefferson's death, Sally Hemings was "given her time" by his daughter (who was also her niece), and lived freely with her two sons in Charlottesville. In the 1830 census, the census taker in Charlottesville classified all three Hemings as white, showing how others perceived them by appearance because of their overwhelming European ancestry. Sally was of three-quarters white ancestry. Her children were seven-eighths white and legally white under the Virginia law of the time. It was not until 1924 that Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, which classified anyone as black who had any known African ancestry under the "one drop rule".