Families

John Freeman Shorter

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

John Freeman Shorter was raised in freedom in Washington, D.C.  In 1863 he left Delaware County, Ohio, for Boston, in order to enlist in one of the first black regiments to be organized, the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.  He became one of only three fully-commissioned black officers in the regiment; the other two lieutenants, James Monroe Trotter and William H. Dupree, were also connected to Monticello.   

Despite promises of equal treatment, the pay of the men of the Massachusetts regiments was half that of white soldiers and Shorter, like Trotter, became a leader in the fight for equal pay.  He was wounded at the Battle of Honey Hill near Charleston, South Carolina, in November 1864.  After being honorably discharged in 1865, he returned to Ohio to marry his fiancé, but died within weeks of reaching home.  Shorter’s brother Charles Henry Shorter served in the 22nd U. S. Colored Infantry and survived the war to be an officer in a Washington post of the Grand Army of the Republic.

Jillian Atkin Sim

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

Jillian Sim, a writer and mother of two, was raised in the white world. Her grandmother, Ellen Love, an actress, told her many family stories heard from her mother, Anita Hemmings Love. She mentioned connections to Jefferson and an English sea captain, but never spoke of descent from enslaved people. Jill Sim learned of her African American ancestry only after her grandmother’s death in 1994. She published an account of her discovery in American Heritage, which tells the story of Anita Hemmings, who made headlines around the world in 1897 when it was revealed that she was passing for white at Vassar College.

Jill Sim believes, but cannot yet say with certainty, that she is descended from Elizabeth Hemings’s son Peter Hemings, a Monticello cook and brewer who worked as a tailor after he became free in 1827, purchased by a relative at the Monticello estate sale.

Gloria Roberts

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

Gloria Roberts, daughter of Pearl Hinds and Frederick Madison Roberts, graduated from the University of Southern California and studied at the Juilliard School of Music. She lived most of her life in Europe, where she pursued a career as a concert pianist and accompanist, specializing in African American spirituals and the music of George Gershwin as well as European classical composers.  She lived as a child in the household of her grandmother Ellen Hemings Roberts and remembers her well.

Patricia Roberts

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

Patricia Roberts, daughter of Pearl Hinds and Frederick Madison Roberts, attended business school at St. Louis University and returned to live in Los Angeles.  After years in business and as an executive secretary and insurance agent, she took great pleasure in retirement as a teacher of young children.

Zeta Brown Nichols

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

Zeta Brown Nichols grew up in Keswick, just east of Charlottesville. She shared memories of life in the area in the 1940s and 50s. Like many others in the Hern family, she became a teacher, initially in a one-room schoolhouse in western Albemarle County and later at Albemarle Training School. She learned of her connection to Monticello from her aunt Martha Hearns Boston, also a teacher.