Sally Hemings

Sally Hemings
Born
Sarah Hemings

c. 1773
Charles City County, Virginia, British America
Died1835 (aged 61–62)
Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.
Known forSlave owned by Thomas Jefferson, alleged mother to his shadow family
Children6, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston
Parent(s)Betty Hemings
John Wayles
RelativesHemings family

Sarah "Sally" Hemings (c. 1773 – 1835) was a woman enslaved to third President of the United States Thomas Jefferson, inherited among many others from his father-in-law, John Wayles.

Hemings' mother was Betty Hemings,[1] the daughter of an enslaved woman and an English captain, John Hemings. Sally's father, the owner of Betty, John Wayles, was also the father of Jefferson's wife, Martha. Therefore, Sally was half-sister to Jefferson's wife and was of approximately three quarters English descent, making her a quadroon according to then-contemporary racial classification. Martha died during her marriage in 1782. In 1787, when she was 14, Sally Hemings accompanied Jefferson's daughter, also named Martha, to Paris where they joined Thomas Jefferson. There, Sally was a legally free and paid servant as slavery was not legal in France. At some time during her 26 months in Paris, the widower Jefferson is believed to have begun intimate relations with her.

As attested by her son, Madison Hemings, Sally later agreed with Jefferson that she would return to Virginia and resume her life in slavery, as long as all their children would be freed when they came of age. Multiple lines of evidence, including modern DNA analyses, indicate that Jefferson impregnated Hemings several times over years while they lived together on Jefferson's Monticello estate, and historians now broadly agree that he was the father of her six children.[2] Whether this should be described as rape remains a matter of controversy by historians, as there is no evidence that Jefferson sexually assaulted her, but due to his near-complete control over her life, and that she was young when he was in his 40s, the circumstances for coercion are present.[3] Four of Hemings' children survived into adulthood and were freed as they came of age during Thomas Jefferson's life or in his will.[4] Hemings died in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1835 in the home of her freed sons.[5]

The historical question of whether Jefferson was the father of Hemings' children is the subject of the Jefferson–Hemings controversy. Following renewed historical analysis in the late 20th century, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation empaneled a commission of scholars and scientists who worked with a 1998–1999 genealogical DNA test that found a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Hemings' youngest son, Eston Hemings.[6][7] The Foundation's panel concluded that Jefferson fathered Eston and likely her other five children as well.[8] A rival society was then founded, the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, which commissioned another panel of scholars in 2001 that found that it had not been proven that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings' children.[9] In 2018, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation of Monticello announced its plans to have an exhibit titled Life of Sally Hemings, and affirmed that it was treating as a settled issue that Jefferson was the father of her known children.[10]

  1. ^ Betty Hemings - Monticello Explorer
  2. ^ Stockman, Farah (June 16, 2018). "Monticello Is Done Avoiding Jefferson's Relationship With Sally Hemings". The New York Times. Retrieved July 15, 2018.
  3. ^ Rothman, Joshua D. (2003). Notorious in the neighborhood: sex and families across the color line in Virginia, 1787-1861. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 19–20. ISBN 978-0-8078-5440-2.
  4. ^ Gordon-Reed 1997, p. 217
  5. ^ "Sally Hemings". Monticello.org. Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Retrieved April 29, 2018.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference monticelloreport was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Link to report at Monticello.org
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Brief was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Turner, Robert F., ed. (February 2011) [2001]. "The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission" (PDF). Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society / Carolina Academic Press. The question of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more children by his slave Sally Hemings is an issue about which honorable people can and do disagree. After a careful review of all of the evidence, the commission agrees unanimously that the allegation is by no means proven; and we find it regrettable that public confusion about the 1998 DNA testing and other evidence has misled many people. With the exception of one member, whose views are set forth both below and in his more detailed appended dissent, our individual conclusions range from serious skepticism about the charge to a conviction that it is almost certainly false. [The one member concluded that it was more likely than not that Thomas Jefferson fathered Easton.]
  10. ^ "Monticello Affirms Thomas Jefferson Fathered Children with Sally Hemings". Monticello.org. Thomas Jefferson Foundation. 2018. Retrieved August 12, 2019.