Sally Hemings

She was born into the estate that would swallow her. Sally Hemings came into the world around 1773 at the Forest, John Wayles's plantation in Charles City County, Virginia — the daughter of Wayles and of Elizabeth Hemings, the woman he held as property. That made her the half-sister of Wayles's legitimate daughter Martha, who had married Thomas Jefferson the year before. Wayles died the year Sally was born, and Jefferson and Martha inherited 11 members of the Hemings family along with 124 other enslaved people and 11,000 acres. She grew up at Monticello doing chamber work, waiting on the Jefferson daughters and sewing. In 1787, at 14, she was put on a ship as escort to Jefferson's eight-year-old daughter Maria.

France is where the record shows her acting. Slavery had no legal standing there, and a petition to the Paris courts would very likely have freed her — her brother James, in the same household, knew it. Jefferson's account books show her drawing wages: 24 livres in January 1788, a 12-livre New Year's tip, then occasional monthly payments at roughly what a French chambermaid earned. She was 16. When Jefferson prepared to sail home in 1789 she refused to go. According to her son Madison, who gave his account to an Ohio newspaper in 1873, she returned only after Jefferson promised her extraordinary privileges and pledged that her children would be freed at 21. By Madison's telling she was already pregnant. Every one of her children who reached that age left Monticello free.

What she could not do is the point. Hemings was 16 and owned by a man of 46 who was also the executor of her father's estate and the owner of her mother, her brothers and her sisters. She could not refuse, leave, testify or hold property, and Virginia law did not recognize a marriage between enslaved people because it did not permit one — so the words normally used for what happened between them do not fit, and historians of the Chesapeake describe it as sexual exploitation for that reason. She bore six children and four lived. Beverly and Harriet walked away from Monticello in 1822 unpursued, the overseer handing Harriet 50 dollars and a seat on a northbound coach. Jefferson's will freed Madison and Eston. It did not mention their mother.

James Callender printed the story in 1802. For most of the next two centuries American historians treated it as slander, and Jefferson's grandson offered a nephew, Peter Carr, as the alternative father. A 1998 Y-chromosome study matched the Jefferson male line to a descendant of Eston Hemings and excluded the Carrs. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation concluded in 2000 that Jefferson fathered Eston and most likely all six children, a finding the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society still disputes. In 2017 archaeologists identified the room where she most likely lived, under the south terrace beside Jefferson's own quarters, and Monticello opened it to visitors the following year. There is no authenticated portrait of her and not one line in her hand.

Sally Hemings's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Paris bargain other
  She refused to leave France until Jefferson pledged freedom for her children at 21 1789
• The departure of Beverly and Harriet Hemings other
  Both left Monticello unpursued, at 24 and 21 1822
• The manumission of Madison and Eston Hemings other
  Named in Jefferson's will and freed after his death 1826

• c. 1773 aged ~0 Born at the Forest in Charles City County, Virginia Daughter of the planter John Wayles and of Elizabeth Hemings, whom he owned.
• 1773 aged ~0 John Wayles dies and the Hemings family passes to Thomas Jefferson Eleven Hemingses among 135 enslaved people and 11,000 acres inherited by Jefferson and his wife Martha, Sally's half-sister.
• July 1787 aged 13 Arrives in Paris at 14 as maid to Jefferson's daughter Maria Abigail Adams received the two girls in London on the way.
• 1789 aged ~16 Refuses to leave France, where slavery has no legal standing She returned, her son Madison later wrote, on a pledge that her children would go free at 21.
• September 1, 1802 aged 29 James Callender prints the story in the Richmond Recorder Jefferson never publicly denied it. Historians dismissed it for 150 years.
• 1822 aged ~49 Beverly and Harriet Hemings leave Monticello and are not pursued The overseer gave Harriet 50 dollars and put her on a coach north. Both later lived as white.
• July 4, 1826 aged 52 Jefferson dies and his will frees Madison and Eston It says nothing about their mother.
• 1833 aged ~60 Recorded in Charlottesville as a free person of color She lived in a house owned by her two youngest sons.
• 1835 aged ~62 Dies in Charlottesville at about 62 No burial place has ever been identified.

• Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826
  Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President who oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. enslaved by
• Abigail Adams 1744–1818
  Correspondent and presidential spouse whose letters urged legal consideration for women in the new republic. received her in London, 1787