Families
Beverly Frederick Jefferson
Beverly Jefferson, the youngest child of Eston Hemings and Julia Isaacs Jefferson, lived as an African American in southern Ohio until the age of eleven, when his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, changed their surname from Hemings to Jefferson, and thereafter lived as white people. Until 1872 Beverly Jefferson worked in the hotel business, becoming a very popular hotel proprietor after the Civil War. Thereafter he focused on what became the Jefferson Transfer Company, the leading carriage and omnibus firm in the capital. Long obituaries followed the death of this “well known and prominent citizen of Madison.”
Beverly Jefferson and his wife, Anna Maud Smith, had five sons, who included graduates of the University of Wisconsin, a lawyer, and a physician. He apparently spoke of his descent from Thomas Jefferson only to close friends. Long after his death, his grandsons altered the family history to erase the connection to the Hemings family. Present-day descendants had no knowledge of their African American heritage until the 1970s.
Eston Hemings Jefferson
Eston Hemings was the youngest son of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Eston Hemings learned the woodworking trade from his uncle, John Hemmings, and became free in 1829, according to the terms of Thomas Jefferson’s will. He and his brother Madison left Monticello to live in the town of Charlottesville with their mother, Sally Hemings. Together they purchased a lot and built a two-story brick and wood house.
In 1832, Eston Hemings married a free woman of color, Julia Ann Isaacs. About 1838 they sold their property and moved to Chillicothe, OH, where Hemings led a very successful dance band. He was remembered as “a master of the violin, and an accomplished ‘caller’ of dances.”
At mid-century Eston and Julia Hemings and their three children, John Wayles, Anna, and Beverly, left Ohio for Wisconsin, changing their surname to Jefferson and living henceforth as white people. They settled in the capital, Madison, where Eston Jefferson pursued his trade as a cabinetmaker. A 1998 study genetically linked his male descendants with male descendants of the Jefferson family.
Isaac Granger Jefferson
Isaac Jefferson’s father, George Granger, was the only enslaved man to serve as Monticello overseer, while his mother, Ursula Granger, was a particularly trusted household servant. Trained in metalworking, including apprenticeship to a Philadelphia tinner, Isaac Granger worked in the Monticello blacksmith shop and nail factory, and briefly operated a tin shop.
He, his wife, Iris, and their sons Squire and Joyce became the property of Jefferson’s son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph in the late 1790s. In the 1820s Granger gained his freedom and moved to Petersburg, VA, where he practiced his trade as a blacksmith until his death.
Isaac Granger, who adopted the surname Jefferson toward the end of his life, was known in Petersburg for his stories of life at Monticello. His vivid recollections were taken down by Charles Campbell in the 1840s, but not published until 1951, along with a striking daguerreotype of the blacksmith. Campbell noted that Isaac Jefferson “bore a good character.”
Israel Gillette Jefferson
Israel Gillette Jefferson, the son of Edward and Jane Gillette, worked as a boy in the Monticello house, the kitchen, and the textile shop. From age thirteen, he was also a postilion, riding one of the four horses that pulled Jefferson’s landau carriage. He was sold after Jefferson’s death to Thomas Walker Gilmer, who became Secretary of the Navy. The earnings of his second wife, a free seamstress, Elizabeth Farrow Randolph, helped him purchase his freedom from Gilmer.
- Podcast: The Life of Israel Gillette Jefferson (12/4/2020)
At the suggestion of the clerk who wrote out his free papers in 1844, he adopted the surname Jefferson. He and his wife then moved to Ohio, where he first worked as a waiter on an Ohio River steamboat and then bought a farm in Pike County. The Jeffersons were active members of Eden Baptist Church, where Israel Jefferson was deacon and treasurer.
In 1873 Israel Jefferson’s recollections of his life at Monticello and in Ohio were published in a Pike County newspaper.
J. Calvin Jefferson
Calvin Jefferson, who is descended from the Grangers as well as the Hemingses of Monticello, grew up in Washington, DC. After working for the U. S. Postal Service, he became an archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration, from which he retired in 2007 after thirty years. He did not learn of his family’s connection to Monticello until 1996. He has a strong interest in his family history and continues research on the Hemings family, particularly Betty Brown and her descendants.
Timothy Hughes
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. The connection might have been broken because their ancestor, also Wormley Hughes (1851-1901), left Albemarle County with the Union army in the confusion at the end of the Civil War.
Timothy Hughes was excited to learn of the minister in his family tree, since he was studying at Washington Bible College at the time and he bears a striking resemblance to Reverend Hughes. He recalled his conversations with his grandfather John Henry Hughes about a wide range of topics.
Warren Hughes
Wormley Hughes
Wormley Hughes was the oldest son of Betty Brown; his father has not been identified. As a boy, he worked in the Monticello house and the Mulberry Row nailery. He became head gardener, preparing flower beds and planting seeds, bulbs, and trees. He also had charge of the valuable carriage and saddle horses in the Monticello stables. He dug the grave of his master, who had called him “one of the most trusty servants I have.
Wormley Hughes and his wife, Ursula Granger, a niece of Isaac Granger Jefferson, had twelve children. Hughes was informally freed by Jefferson’s daughter Martha Randolph, while the rest of his family was sold at the 1827 dispersal sale. Ursula and some of their children were acquired by the Randolphs, for whom Hughes continued to work. The Randolphs long remembered one of his expressions: “I am in no wise discouraged.” Wormley and Ursula Hughes’s descendants include several ministers, as well as farmers, gardeners, blacksmiths, teachers, and archivists.
Ruth Fleming Hunt
Ann-Elizabeth Fossett Isaacs
Ann-Elizabeth Fossett was the daughter of Joseph Fossett, an enslaved blacksmith, and Edith Hern Fossett, an enslaved cook at Monticello. While her father was freed in Jefferson’s will, Ann-Elizabeth, her mother, and six of her siblings were sold in the 1827 dispersal sale. Through her family’s efforts, Ann-Elizabeth gained her freedom in 1837 and moved with her parents, her husband, Tucker Isaacs, and their children to Ohio. The Isaacs family remained in Ohio only a few years, returning to Charlottesville, where a number of their family members remained, some still in slavery.
In 1850, Ann-Elizabeth Isaacs and her family returned to Ohio, settling on a 158-acre farm in Ross County. Their home is still remembered as a station on the Underground Railroad and their descendants—most notably William Monroe Trotter—continued the fight for freedom and racial equality. As descendant Virginia Craft Rose said in her interview, “Whatever you feel strongly about, fight for it because that’s part of your heritage.”