Families
Julia Jefferson Westerinen
Artist, businesswoman, and mother of four, Julia Westerinen did not learn of her connection to Monticello and her African American ancestry until the 1970s. After genetic testing in 1998 established a link between her family line and Jefferson’s, she went on the Oprah Winfrey show and met Shay Banks-Young, a descendant of Madison Hemings, brother of her ancestor Eston Hemings Jefferson.
Since then, they have been speaking to audiences around the country about their family history and issues of race in America. In her joint interview with Banks-Young, Westerinen notes that since learning of her African American heritage, “I don’t see color anymore like I used to.”
Karen Hughes White
In 1996, four generations of the Hughes family of Fauquier County came to Monticello soon after learning of their descent from Rev. Robert Hughes of Union Run Baptist Church and head gardener Wormley Hughes of Monticello. Their ancestor was Reverend Hughes’s son, also Wormley Hughes (1851-1901), who left Albemarle County with the Union army in the confusion at the end of the Civil War; his parents were “broken hearted.”
The research of Karen Hughes White, an archivist and founder of the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County, was the key to making her family’s connection to the Hughes, Granger, and Hemings families of Monticello. At the Getting Word Gathering in 1997, Karen’s extended family members said that, thanks to her, they were “overwhelmed with joy” to be brought together in the place of their ancestors.
James T. Wiley
James Wiley, a Tuskegee Airman, received a degree in physics from the University of Pittsburgh and wanted to be a scientist, but because of his race could only get a job as a chauffeur. He obtained his pilot’s license and went to the Tuskegee Institute, a “paradise,” as an instructor. After enlisting in 1942, he served in the famed 99th Pursuit Squadron of the Army Air Force, flew more than a hundred missions over southern Europe, and was awarded the Air Medal. In 1965, Colonel Wiley retired from “a wonderful military career” and then worked for fifteen years as a customer engineer with the Boeing Company. He and his wife, Ruby, raised three children.
Bernd Willand
Karen Cox Willand
Anne Mercer Slaughter
Anne Slaughter and four other descendants of Monticello gatekeeper Eliza Tolliver Coleman were interviewed together in 1995. All live in the Washington, DC, area and work (or worked) in various departments of the federal government. They shared their memories of Eliza Coleman’s daughters Lucy Coleman Barnaby Page and Grace Coleman Harris and recalled summers spent at the Monticello gatehouse. Members of the extended Coleman family lived at Monticello for more than a century—far longer than any of the property’s owners.
Lena Willand
Susan Smart
Ronald A. Smith
Twins Robert and Ronald Smith first learned of their connection to the Woodson family after the death of their father, Karl Franklin Smith, an educator, Bible scholar, and bishop of the Church of Christ, Apostolic Faith, in Columbus. In the 1930s Bishop Smith, who they remember as “very quiet in terms of his family history,” had drawn up an ancestry chart based on what he had heard from his mother, but he had never spoken about it. Bishop Smith, who had a far-reaching radio ministry, founded his church and led it for a half century, from a congregation of twenty to over fifteen hundred. Both the bishop’s parents were Methodist ministers. As Robert Smith said about his ancestor Thomas Woodson, “The key has got to be his religion.”
Maxcine Mercer Sterling
Maxcine Sterling and four other descendants of Monticello gatekeeper Eliza Tolliver Coleman were interviewed together in 1995. All live in the Washington, DC, area and work (or worked) in various departments of the federal government. They shared their memories of Eliza Coleman’s daughters Lucy Coleman Barnaby Page and Grace Coleman Harris and recalled summers spent at the Monticello gatehouse. Members of the extended Coleman family lived at Monticello for more than a century—far longer than any of the property’s owners.