Sally Hemings - Return To The US

Return To The US

In 1789, Sally and James Hemings returned to the United States with Jefferson. He was still only 46 years old and seven years a widower. As evidenced by Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles, wealthy Virginia widowers frequently took enslaved women as concubines. That Jefferson also would do so was not unusual for the time.

According to Madison Hemings, Sally Hemings' first child died soon after her return from Paris. Those Jefferson records that have survived mutilation and purge note that Hemings had six children after her return to the US:

• Harriet Hemings (I) (October 5, 1795 - December 7, 1797)
• Beverley Hemings (possibly named William Beverley Hemings) (April 1, 1798 - after 1873)
• unnamed daughter (possibly named Thenia after Hemings's sister Thenia) (born in 1799 and died in infancy)
• Harriet Hemings (II) (May 22, 1801 - after 1863)
• Madison Hemings (possibly named James Madison Hemings) (January 19, 1805 – 1877)
• Eston Hemings (possibly named Thomas Eston Hemings) (May 21, 1808 – 1856)

Jefferson recorded slave births in his Farm Book; unlike his practice in recording births of other slaves, he did not note the father of Hemings's children.

Sally Hemings' documented duties at Monticello included being a nursemaid-companion, lady's maid, chambermaid, and seamstress. It is not known whether she was literate, and she left no known writings. She was described as very fair, with "straight hair down her back." Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, described her as "light colored and decidedly good looking." As an adult she may have lived in a room in Monticello's "South Dependencies," a wing of the mansion which was accessible to the main house through a covered passageway.

Hemings never married. As a slave, she could not have a marriage recognized under Virginia law, but many slaves at Monticello are known to have taken partners in common-law marriages (but no such marriage for Hemings is noted in the records). While Sally Hemings worked at Monticello, she had her children nearby. According to her son Madison, while young, the children "were permitted to stay about the 'great house', and only required to do such light work as going on errands." At the age of 14, each of the children began their training: the brothers with the plantation's master in carpentry, and Harriet as a spinner and weaver. The three boys all learned to play the fiddle (Jefferson played the violin).

In 1822 at the age of 24, Beverly "ran away" from Monticello and was not pursued. His sister Harriet Hemings, 21, followed in the same year. The overseer Edmund Bacon said that he gave her $50 and put her on a stagecoach to the North, presumably to join her brother. In his memoir, Bacon said Harriet was "near white and very beautiful," and that people said Jefferson freed her because she was his daughter. Madison Hemings said that Beverley and Harriet each entered white society in Washington, DC, according to their appearance, and each married well.

Of the hundreds of slaves he owned, Jefferson formally freed only two slaves in his lifetime: Hemings's older brothers Robert, who had to buy his freedom, and James Hemings (who was required to train his brother Peter to get his freedom). He freed five slaves in his will - all males from the extended Hemings family, including Madison and Eston Hemings, his two "natural" children. Harriet was the only female slave he allowed to go free. In addition to manumission for the Hemings men in his will, he petitioned the legislature to allow them to stay in the state. No documentation has been found for Sally Hemings' emancipation.

Jefferson's married daughter Martha Randolph, who was Hemings' niece, withheld her from the auction and freed her by giving her "time" after Jefferson's death. This informal freedom allowed Hemings to live in Virginia, and she remained with her two youngest sons in nearby Charlottesville for the next nine years. In the Albemarle County 1833 census, all three were recorded as free white persons. Hemings lived to see a grandchild born in a house that her sons owned.