Sally Hemings - Grandchildren and Other Descendants

Grandchildren and Other Descendants

Madison's sons fought on the Union side in the Civil War. Thomas Eston Hemings enlisted in the United States Colored Troops (USCT); captured, he spent time at the Andersonville POW camp and died in a POW camp in Meridian, Mississippi. According to a Hemings descendant, his brother James attempted to cross Union lines and "pass" as a white man to enlist in the Confederate army to rescue him. Later, James Hemings was rumored to have moved to Colorado and perhaps passed into white society. Like some others in the family, he disappeared from the record and the rest of his biography remains unknown. A third son, William Hemings, enlisted in the regular Union Army as a white man. Madison's last known male-line descendant, William never married and was not known to have had children. He died in 1910 in a veterans' hospital.

Some of Madison Hemings's children and grandchildren who remained in Ohio suffered from the limited opportunities for blacks at that time, working as laborers, servants or small farmers. They tended to marry within the mixed-race community in the region.

Madison's daughter Ellen Wayles Hemings married Alexander Jackson Roberts, a graduate of Oberlin College. When their first son was young, they moved to Los Angeles, California, where the family and its descendants became leaders in the twentieth century. Their first son Frederick Madison Roberts (1879–1952) - Sally Hemings' and Jefferson's great-grandson - was the first person of known African-American ancestry elected to public office on the West Coast: he served in the California State Assembly from 1919 to 1934. Their second son William Giles Roberts was also a leader. Their descendants have had a strong tradition of college education and public service.

Eston's sons also enlisted in the Union Army, both as white men, as that was the community they had been living in. His first son, John Wayles Jefferson, had red hair and gray eyes like his grandfather Jefferson; the photo to the right shows his resemblance to the president. By the 1850s, John Jefferson in his 20s was proprietor of the American Hotel in Madison. At one time he operated it with his younger brother Beverley. He was commissioned as a Union officer during the Civil War, during which he was promoted to the rank of Colonel and served at the Battle of Vicksburg. He wrote letters to the newspaper about the war. After the war, John Jefferson returned to Wisconsin, where he wrote frequently for newspapers and published accounts about his war experiences. He later moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he became a successful and wealthy cotton broker. He never married or had known children, and left a sizeable estate.

Eston's second son Beverley Jefferson also served in the regular Union Army. After operating the American Hotel with his brother John, he later separately operated the Capital Hotel. He also built a successful horse-drawn "omnibus" business. He and his wife Anna M. Smith had five sons, two of whom reached the professional class as a physician and an attorney. According to his 1908 obituary, Beverly Jefferson was "a likeable character at the Wisconsin capital, and a familiar of statesmen for half a century". His friend Augustus J. Munson wrote, "Beverly Jefferson death deserves more than a passing notice, as he was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson... was one of God's noblemen - gentle, kind, courteous, charitable." Beverley and Anna's great-grandson John Weeks Jefferson was the Eston Hemings descendant whose DNA was tested in 1998; it matched the Y-chromosome of the Thomas Jefferson male line.

As of 2007, there are known male-line descendants of Eston Hemings/Jefferson, and known female-line descendants of Madison Hemings' three daughters: Sarah, Harriet, and Ellen.