The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (100 page)

13.
"Memorandums on a tour from Paris to Amsterdam, Strasburg and back to Paris," March 3–April 22, 1788,
Papers
, 13:27–28.

14.
TJ to William Drayton, July 30, 1787,
Papers
, 11:647–48.

15.
G. Ugo Nwokeji, "African Conceptions of Gender and the Slave Traffic,"
WMQ
, 3d ser., 58 (2001): 47–68.

16.
See, e.g., TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, Dec. 13, 1792,
Papers
, 24:740–41; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 106.

17.
"Critta Hemings," Monticello Research Department.

18.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 254; Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 288. While denying that his grandfather had fathered children by Sally Hemings, and asserting that Peter Carr had fathered
all
her children (a claim destroyed by DNA testing of Hemings and Carr descendants in 1998), Thomas Jefferson Randolph named his uncle Samuel Carr as the father of "Betsy" Hemings’s children, meaning Betty Brown, who in addition to her older children had three relatively late in life children, Edwin, Robert, and Maria.

19.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 106–7.

20.
Ibid., 119.

21.
MB
, 371, "Recd. From the Forest 4 Doz. 10 bott. Of Jamaica rum (Note I shall keep a tally of these as we use them by making a mark in the margin in order to try the fidelity of Martin."

22.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 35–51; Monticello Research Department; Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 566–67. On the question of family names, it has become apparent that many of the enslaved families at Monticello had last names that Jefferson and his family either did not know, simply never used, or were not in the habit of using—Gillette, Granger, Hern, and Evans, for example. Jefferson was not alone in this. As Herbert G. Gutman showed, throughout slavery slave owners were very often totally unaware (or, again, acted as if they were) that their slaves had surnames. See
The Black Family
in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925
(New York, 1976), chap. 6, "Somebody Knew My Name." Laws’ failure to recognize slaves surnames no more means that they did not have them than that the law’s treatment of them as real estate actually turned enslaved people into land. Slaves kept these names alive in their own families and consciousness and handed them down. Why would it have been otherwise, given the nature of their surrounding society? One could understand why a peasant during feudal times might be content to call himself "John of Surrey," when last names were not the convention in the surrounding community. It would make no sense in the context of the world that Jefferson’s slaves lived in, particularly since some slaves were called by their last names—the Hemingses and the Hubbards, for example. By the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth, first and last names were a matter of course throughout the society in which blacks lived and moved. Black families, as had white families, picked their own last names to try to fix the boundaries of their families as best they could.

23.
TJ,
Notes on the State of Virginia,
in Merrill D. Peterson,
Thomas Jefferson: Writings
(New York, 1984), 267.

24.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 34–40; TJ to Nicholas Lewis, July 11, 1788,
Papers,
13:343.

25.
Monticello Research Department records on the hiring of Critta and Thenia Hemings.

26.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 104.

27.
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, draft letter, Dec. 25, 1873, VI:U8937.

28.
See, e.g.,
MB
, 419, entry for June 7, 1776, "Pd for shoes for Bob 8/."; 420, entry for June 25, 1776, "pd. For 2pr. Stockings for Bob 15/."; 423, entry for Aug. 19, 1776, "Gave Bob 3d."

29.
Farm Book,
24; Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH,
245;
Papers
, 9:624n.

30.
Stanton,
Free Some Day, 115.

31.
Woods,
Albermarle County in Virginia
, 29.

32.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson,
84.

33.
Stanton,
Free Some Day,
115.

34.
Ibid., appendix (Hemings family tree); Monticello Research Department, on Betsy Hemings and her son Fossett Hemings. The oral history of some lines of Mary Hemings’s descendants indicates that Joseph Fossett was the son of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson freed Fossett in his will. In the Fossett descendants’ view, the name Fossett was just given to Joseph by Jefferson or someone who assumed that William Fossett was his father. While anything, within the laws of physics, is possible, the prime difficulty with this idea is that Joseph Fossett, and his contemporary relatives of the time, acted as if the name Fossett had real meaning in their lives. Joseph Fossett wore his last name when he did not have to. He and other enslaved people knew that last names signified paternity. Fossett named one of his sons William. Again Joseph’s nephew Joseph Hemmings named his son Fossett. In short, the Hemingses of the generation still in slavery were very serious about naming their children, because it was the only way to achieve some semblance of formality in their family relations. It seems unlikely that they would have accepted a name of a true outsider foisted upon them by mere whim.
     
If Mary Hemings was, in fact, Jefferson’s mistress before Sally Hemings—indeed, before Martha Jefferson’s death—his relations with her must have been of a character completely different from that of his relations with Sally Hemings. He repeatedly did the thing that most effectively encapsulated the heinous nature of slavery, the thing that every mother dreaded: he separated Mary Hemings from four of her six children, giving three of them away as wedding presents. The one child of hers that he did free, Joseph Fossett, he freed not as soon as he left childhood, as he did with his children with Sally Hemings, but when he was a forty-six-year-old man. Jefferson made no provision for Fossett’s children, and the supremely determined father then spent years buying back his children—children who would have been Jefferson’s grandchildren.

35.
Sarah N. Randolph,
The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson,
ed. Dumas Malone (New York, 1958), 44.

36.
Martha Jefferson to Eleanor Conway Madison, Aug. 8, 1780,
Papers,
3:532.

37.
TJ,
Autobiography
, in
Writings
, 3; Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 44; Mclaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello
, 46–47.

38.
Jefferson Family Bible; Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 567; Stanton,
Free Some Day,
33–34.

39.
Martha Wayles Skelton, 1772–1782, Part B Household Accounts, Thomas Jefferson Papers Series 7, Miscellaneous Bound Volumes, LOC. March 5, 1777, "made 100 lbs. of soft soap"; March 20, 1777, "made…hard soap not weighed"; June 23, 1773, "brewed a cask of beer"; Dec. 16, 1772, "brewed a cask of beer—20 gallon cask."

40.
Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 566.

1.
Papers
, 1:121–35.

2.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson,
99–103; Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:181–82.

3.
MB
, 419–20.

4.
TJ,
Autobiography
, in
Writings
, 45–46; Richard Henry Lee to TJ, Sept. 27, 1776,
Papers
, 1:522; TJ to John Hancock, Oct. 11, 1776, ibid., 1:524; Richard Henry Lee to TJ, Nov. 3, 1776, ibid., 1:589.

5.
TJ to William Phillips, June 25, 1779,
Papers
, 3:15; TJ to James Monroe, May 20, 1782, ibid., 6:184.

6.
TJ to John Page, June 1779,
Papers
, 2:279.

7.
Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 568.

8.
Ibid., 569–70.

9.
Dunmore’s proclamation of Nov. 14, 1775, Purdie & Dixon’s
Virginia Gazette
, Nov. 25, 1775; Woody Holton,
Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, & the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia
(Chapel Hill, 1999), 155–56.

10.
Farm Book
, 29. Lucia Stanton has noted the change in TJ’s characterization of the actions of the enslaved men and women who left his plantation to join the British forces. His first notations in the Farm Book describe them as having "fled to the enemy" or "joined enemy." Later he characterized these slaves as having been "carried off." TJ to William Gordon, July 16, 1788,
Papers,
13:363–64; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 53. Cassandra Pybus has challenged Jefferson’s estimates of the number of slaves who were "taken from Virginians" by the British forces. After noting that historians have relied on Jefferson’s statement that at least "30,000" slaves were taken from Virginia alone, Pybus reminds us that Jefferson made the comment while he was in Paris away from the scene and that his letter gives no hint of how he had arrived at that number. Without entering the larger debate about exactly how many African Americans joined the British, we should note that Pybus argues that Jefferson, as time wore on, was careless in his statements about how many slaves
he
actually lost to the British. Only twenty-three left, but by 1786 he said that "thirty" had been gone, including in that number four slaves who had actually been recovered, one who died soon after his return, two who were sold, and one who was given away. The other three were slaves who had never been accounted for and were not included in his 1783 listing of losses. Catherine Pybus, "Jefferson’s Faulty Math: The Question of Slave Defections in the American Revolution"
WMQ
, 3d ser., 62 (2005): 243–64.

11.
Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 569; Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:339.

12.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:336–41.

13.
Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 570–71.

14.
MB
, 507. According to the oral history of some descendants of Wormley Hughes, Jefferson was his father. As with the Fossett family oral history, the first question that comes to mind when considering this is why Wormley had the last name Hughes, instead of Brown, which was the last name of his mother, Betty. Betty Brown had several children with the last name Colbert. One of those children she named after herself—Brown Colbert. Pulling names out of a hat did not seem to be the family’s style. Wormley was, in fact, extremely close to Jefferson and was informally freed, along with Sally Hemings, at Jefferson’s instruction.
     
While Joseph Fossett’s family was dispersed after the 1827 auction at Monticello, Jefferson’s grandson Jeff, just days after Hughes’s wife and four youngest children were sold at the event, purchased all of them and brought them to live together at his Edgehill plantation. Was this family-based remorse? As will be discussed later, it is more likely that Hughes’s wife, Ursula, was the impetus for this action. Further reason to doubt that Hughes was Jefferson’s son is that the Randolph family acquiesced in Henry Randall’s apparently extensive interviews with him as he prepared his biography of Jefferson. It is near inconceivable, given their extreme secrecy and sensitivity about Jefferson’s children with Sally Hemings, that they would have directed (allowed) Hughes to talk to a man who was writing a book about their family if Hughes were, in fact, Jefferson’s son.
     
The oral tradition of Mary Hemings’s family holds that Jefferson had children by three enslaved women, including their ancestor, Mary, and Sally Hemings. These individuals did not name the third woman, but given the Hughes tradition and Wormley’s relationship with Jefferson, the most likely third woman they were talking about was Betty Brown. In the 1940s Pearl Graham spoke with these Hemings descendants and Charlottesville residents (not Hemings family members) who knew descendants of others enslaved at Monticello. They all painted a picture of Jefferson as promiscuous with "colored women." He had a habit, they said, of accosting one of his mistresses, a laundress, on her way back from doing her work. See Lucia Stanton "Through the Other End of the Telescope: Jefferson in the Eyes of his Slaves"
WMQ
, 3d ser., 57 (2000): 145.
     
This picture of the sexually predatory Jefferson contrasts sharply with Madison Hemings’s portrayal of him. He stated that he and his sibling were the only children Jefferson had with an enslaved woman. If Jefferson had been involved with Mary Hemings or Betty Brown, it would have been some years before he began his relationship with Madison’s mother, Sally. Still, it seems unlikely that he would not have known that his uncles, whom he saw every day, were actually his brothers.
     
In sum, there is simply not enough information at present to support the idea that Joseph Fossett and Wormley Hughes were Jefferson’s sons. Given that so many slave owners had children with enslaved women, and the "better" among this group freed their children, it is natural (and right) to consider all possibilities when a slave owner frees, formally or informally, a much younger person. But not all the slaves Jefferson freed, or the ones he was very fond of, were his children. We should avoid treating interracial sex as something akin to an addiction or chronic disease—if he had sex and children with one enslaved African American woman, he must have had sex and children with others. The standard for coming to this conclusion must remain the same for each individual case—not primarily for Jefferson’s sake, but for the sake of the enslaved people who had lives and identities that must be treated with as much care and respect as the lives of those who enslaved them. For a discussion of Randall’s relationship with Jefferson’s grandchildren, see Lisa Francavilla, "‘Holding in Trust for the Use of Others’: Jefferson’s Grandchildren and the Creation of the Jefferson Image," a paper presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Worcester, Mass.