Sally Hemings - Descendants

Descendants

In 2008 Gordon Reed published The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which explored the extended family, including James and Sally's lives in France, Monticello and Philadelphia during Thomas Jefferson's lifetime. She was not able to find much new information about Beverly or Harriet Hemings, who left Monticello as young adults and entered the white community, likely changing their names. More is discussed of the lives of the younger sons Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings, and of their descendants, who figure in Madison's memoir, a variety of historical records, and newspaper accounts.

Eventually three of Hemings's four surviving children chose to identify as white adults in the North; they were seven-eighths European in ancestry and this was consistent with their appearances. In his memoir, Madison Hemings said both Beverley and Harriet married well in the white community in Washington, DC. Harriet was described by Edmund Bacon, the longtime Monticello overseer, as "nearly as white as anybody, and very beautiful". For some time Madison wrote to both his siblings, and learned that they had married in the white community. He knew that Harriet had children and was living in Maryland, but she and Beverly stopped responding to his letters and they lost touch.

Both Madison and Eston Hemings married mixed-race women. After their mother's death in 1835, they and their families moved to Chillicothe in the free state of Ohio where, according to census records, they were classified as "mulatto", at that time meaning mixed race. The census enumerator, generally a local person, classified individuals in part according to who their neighbors were and what was known of them.

After passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which put even free blacks at risk of slavecatchers, Eston Hemings and his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin to be further north, although they were legally free people of color. There he changed his name to "Eston H. Jefferson", and all the family adopted the surname. From then on the Jeffersons lived in the white community.

Madison Hemings' family were the only Hemings descendants who continued to identify with the black community; some of their descendants are known later to have passed into the white community, while many others have stayed within the African-American community.

Both Eston and Madison achieved some success in life, were well respected by their contemporaries, and had children who repeated and built on their successes. They worked as carpenters, and Madison also had a small farm. Eston became a professional musician and bandleader, "a master of the violin, and an accomplished 'caller' of dances", who "always officiated at the 'swell' entertainments of Chillicothe." He was in demand all across southern Ohio. A neighbor described him as, "Quiet, unobtrusive, polite and decidedly intelligent, he was soon very well and favorably known to all classes of our citizens, for his personal appearance and gentlemanly manners attracted everybody's attention to him."