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“The rail road hands returning with so much money plays the wild with us; Sarah Jane is dissatisfied with Harriets [daughter Harriet Hughes] wages ($4) & was very firm in her demands for more yesterday morn: & last night, George came in & told his master Lewis had engaged to give him $130. certain, & 30. more if he pleased him, but that he could’nt stay for $160 this year, whereupon the Old Gent [Thomas J. Randolph] rose in his wrath, & told him if he could do better to go elsewhere, that he would not give him $130. & he might take his family & move off; they [finally] took time to think of it but your father has heard of a first rate manager in Buckingham, that Tom thinks he may get, & he is pretty much determined to try him.  I mean, if possible, to keep quiet – do’nt begin to know what I shall do without Sarah Jane but try to have faith that Providence will provide.” (Jane N. Randolph, Edgehill, to Ellen Randolph Harrison, 6 Jan. 1871, University of Virginia Library: 1397)

“Vicksburg is ours. Glory!  Glory!  Glory!  I have just returned from the city and actually saw the heads, hides and entrails of mules which the rebels have been subsisting on for days.  We all feel so joyful today. Even the poor sickly soldiers in the hospitals seem to revive, and look well again. Congress, at its next session, must be petitioned to add 24 hours to the 4th of July, making it 48 hours long, because hereafter we cannot possibly get done celebrating the day in 24 hours.” (Wisconsin State Journal, July 1863)

“During the interval of Mr. Jefferson’s death and the sale to Mr. Gilmer, I married Mary Ann Colter, a slave, by whom I had four children—Taliola, (a daughter) Banebo, (a son) Susan and John.  As they were born slaves they took the usual course of most others in the same condition in life.  I do not know where they now are, if living; but the last I heard of them they were in Florida and Virginia.  My wife died, and while a servant of Mr. Gilmer, I married my present wife, widow Elizabeth Randolph, who was then mother to ten children.  Her maiden name was Elizabeth Farrow.  Her mother was a white woman named Martha Thacker.  Consequently, Elizabeth, (my present wife) was free-born.  She supposes that she was born about 1793 or ‘94.  Of her ten children, only two are living—Julia, her first born, and wife of Charles Barnett, who lives on an adjoining farm, and Elizabeth, wife of Henry Lewis, who reside within one mile of us.

My wife and I have lived together about thirty-five years.  We came to Cincinnati, Ohio, where we were again married in conformity to the laws of this State.  At the time we were first married I was in bondage; my wife was free.  When my first wife died I made up my mind I would never live with another slave woman.  When Governor Gilmer was elected a representative in Congress, he desired to have me go on to Washington with him.  But I demurred.  I did not refuse, of course, but I laid before him my objections with such earnestness that he looked me in the face with his piercing eye, as if balancing in his mind whether to be soft or severed, and said,

            ‘Israel, you have served me well; you are a faithful servant; now what will you give me for your freedom?’

            ‘I reckon I give you what you paid years ago—$500,’ I replied.

            ‘How much will you give to bind the bargain?’ he asked.

            ‘Three hundred dollars,’ was my ready answer.

            ‘When will you pay the remainder?’

            ‘In one and two years.’

And on these terms the bargain concluded and I was, for the first time, my own man, and almost free, but not quite, for it was against the laws of Virginia for a freed slave to reside in the State beyond a year and a day.  Nor were the colored people not in slavery free; they were nominally so.  When I came to Ohio I considered myself wholly free, and not till then.

And here let me say, that my good master, Governor Gilmer, was killed by the explosion of the gun Peacemaker, on board the Princeton, in 1842 or 1843, and had I gone to Washington with him it would have been my duty to keep very close to his person, and probably I would have been killed also, as others were.

I was bought in the name of my wife.  We remained in Virginia several years on sufferance.  At last we made up our minds to leave the confines of slavery and emigrate to a free State.  We went to Charlottesville Court House, in Albermarle county, for my free papers.  When there, the clerk, Mr. Garrett, asked me what surname I would take.  I hesitated, and he suggested that it should be Jefferson, because I was born at Monticello and had been a good and faithful servant to Thomas Jefferson.  Besides, he said, it would give me more dignity to be called after so eminent a man.  So I consented to adopt the surname of Jefferson, and have been known by it ever since.” (Israel Jefferson, Pike County Republican, 25 Dec. 1873)

My dear precious son:

I am glad to inform you that your letter with Post Office order came to me on the evening of the same day I wrote to you that I had not received it. I, as usual, return to you my heartfelt thanks for your kindness. I wish I could give you something better.  I hope you will take the will for the deed. God grant you may never want or even miss what you are so good as to give me.  I am satisfied and grateful for it. I believe I am now more resigned to what seems to be my lot than ever before.  At times, I am quite cheerful, at other times old and new troubles come back to me, but I know now better what to do with them than ever before. I believe God helps me to cast my burdens on Him.

I believe I wrote to you about the snow and cold weather, but today and last night a snow storm has set in that is far in advance of any thing of the kind for severity. It is now 10 o’clock at night and it is blowing and snowing as hard as ever.  The drifts in some places are four and five feet high. At noon today the boys went out to remove some of the snow so we could get out, but now it is as bad if not worse than before. It is about knee deep on a level. While it lasts, we shall be warm inside for every hole is stopped and we are banked up in some places above the windows. I don’t know how it will be by morning. Probably we shall have to be dug out.

I am glad to tell you that the “Colonel” commenced singing on the 27th of Dec. just in low sad notes. He continued in this way for several successive days, when all at once he broke out with the finest singing I ever heard from the bird kind, and so he has kept on ever since. I understand him now when he wants anything. He doesn’t like the lamp to shine in on him, and he gives an unusual cry. I get up and cover his cage and he is perfectly quiet. I attend to him altogether myself and I believe he thinks as much of me as I do of him. The ceiling is so low that I can’t hang him up, so he has been kept all the time on a stand by the window and he seems to feel perfectly at home there.

It is now much later than I thought it was, and must close, wishing my dear son good night and praying the good God to bless him.  (Julia Jefferson to John Wayles Jefferson, 15 Jan. 1877, courtesy of Julia Jefferson Westerinen)

“I know that it was a general statement among the older servants at Monticello, that Mr. Jefferson promised his wife, on her death bed, that he would not again marry.  I also know that his servant, Sally Hemmings, (mother to my old friend and former companion at Monticello, Madison Hemmings,) was employed as his chamber-maid, and that Mr. Jefferson was on the most intimate terms with her; that, in fact, she was his concubine.  This I know from my intimacy with both parties, and when Madison Hemmings declares that he is a natural son of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and that his brothers Beverly and Eston and sister Harriet are of the same parentage, I can as conscientiously confirm his statement as any other fact which I believe from circumstances but do not positively know.

I think that Mr. Jefferson was 84 years of age when he died.  He was hardly ever sick, and till within two weeks of his death he walked erect without a staff or cane.  He moved with the seeming alertness and sprightliness of youth.” (Israel Jefferson, Pike County Republican, 25 Dec. 1873)