Search results
I was born at my father’s seat of Monticello, in Albermarle county, Va., near Charlottesville, on the 19 th day of January, 1805. My very earliest recollections are of my grandmother Elizabeth Hemings. That was when I was about three years old. She was sick and upon her death bed.
- Recollections of Peter Fossett | Monticello
Madison used to come and stay for days with Mr. Jefferson....
- Madison Hemings | Monticello
Madison Hemings (1805-1877) was the second surviving son of...
- Recollections of Peter Fossett | Monticello
“I Was Born At My Father’s Seat Of Monticello” Madison Hemings discusses Jefferson, Monticello, and his own family history.
- How Do We Know That Jefferson Was The Father of Sally Hemings’s Children?
- What Did Sally Hemings Look like?
- Where Did Sally Hemings Live at Monticello?
- How Do We Know Sally Hemings Lived in The South Wing?
- Was Sally Hemings Ever Freed?
- Did Sally Hemings and Her Children Receive Special Treatment at Monticello?
- What Was Sally Hemings’s Racial Identity?
- Was Jefferson A Racist?
The historical evidence points to the truth of Madison Hemings’s words about “my father, Thomas Jefferson.” Although the dominant narrative long denied his paternity, since 1802, oral histories, published recollections, statistical data, and documents have identified Thomas Jefferson as the father of Sally Hemings’s children. In 1998, a DNA study g...
We don’t know. There are no known images of Sally Hemings from her lifetime, and her appearance was described by only two individuals who knew her: Although evocative, these descriptions leave out nearly every detail—height, frame, eye color, hair color, and the shape of her face and its features—needed to construct an adequate representation of he...
Sally Hemings may have lived in the stone workmen’s house (now called the “Textile Workshop”) from 1790 to 1793, when she—like her sister Critta—might have moved to one of the new 12’ × 14’ log dwellings farther down Mulberry Row. After the completion of the South Wing, Hemings lived in one of the “servant’s rooms” there.
Evidence that Sally Hemings lived in one of the spaces in the South Wing comes from Jefferson’s grandson Thomas J. Randolph through Henry S. Randall, who wrote one of the first major biographies of Thomas Jefferson and was in contact with many members of the Jefferson family. Randolph did not specifically point out the exact room, but the descripti...
Sally Hemings was never officially freed. However, after Jefferson’s death, she was allowed to live in Charlottesville in unofficial freedom with her two sons, Madison and Eston, who were granted freedom in Jefferson’s will.
No, and yes. Jefferson’s written records indicate no special treatment for Sally Hemings or her family. They received the same provisions of food, clothing and housing as other enslaved individuals at Monticello. But in his recollections, Madison Hemings stated that Jefferson promised Sally Hemings “extraordinary privileges” for returning to Montic...
We don’t know how Sally Hemings would have identified herself. She was three-quarters-European and one-quarter African. In two separate censuses taken near the end of her life, Hemings’s race is recorded as white in one and as mulatto in the other, hinting at shifting notions of her identity. Of her surviving children, who were 7/8 European and 1/8...
Like many other 18th-century intellectuals in Europe and North America, Jefferson believed blacks were inferior to whites. In his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia(1785), Jefferson expressed racist views of blacks’ abilities, though he questioned whether the differences he observed were due to inherent inferiority or to decades of degrading...
When historians rediscovered the Madison Hemings and Isaac Jefferson newspaper interviews in the 1950s, many Euro-Americans rejected the claims and attacked the validity of these accounts simply because they came from formerly enslaved African Americans.
- Aaron B. Wilkinson
- 2019
Madison Hemings recalled in his memoirs: “I learned to read by inducing the white children to teach me the letters.” Peter Fossett, an enslaved house servant, recalled that Jefferson “allowed” those eager for learning to study with his grandchildren.
In 1873, Madison Hemings, her son, was interviewed for a newspaper article. From his interview, historians also learned about Sally’s life at Monticello and with Thomas Jefferson. When Sally was fourteen, she “crossed the ocean alone” aboard the Arundel with Mary, Thomas Jefferson’s youngest daughter.
