Hemings

Robert Scott

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

Robert Scott was born free, the son of Sarah Bell and Jesse Scott, a free man of color whose mother was a Pamunkey Indian. The Scott trio (Robert, his brother James, and his father) were well known musicians who traveled all over Virginia playing at dances at private homes, mountain resorts, and the University of Virginia

Scott married Nancy Colbert, probably the daughter of Burwell and Critta Colbert of Monticello. He was able to purchase her and some of their nine children out of slavery. In 1857 Robert Scott, who had more than three-quarters white ancestry, successfully petitioned the court to be declared “not negro”–an intermediate status between white and black or “mulatto.”

Robert Scott lived in the Bell-Scott house on Charlottesville’s main street for almost ninety years. He was a rich source of recollections about Jefferson and, at his death, was described as “a man who in the course of a long life never failed to command the respect of his fellow citizens.”

Sarah Bell Scott

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

Sarah Jefferson Bell, the daughter of Mary Hemings and white merchant Thomas Bell, lived in freedom on Charlottesville’s main street.  Her husband, Jesse Scott, with their sons James and Robert Scott, led a dance band well known throughout Virginia.

Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

Peggy Preacely, a writer, filmmaker, and public health worker, learned her family history from her mother, Ellen Craft Dammond, the “griot of the family,” who recognized that “there were wonderful stories that needed to be kept alive in the family.” Her mother was a niece of William Monroe Trotter as well as a descendant of the famous fugitive slaves William and Ellen Craft. 

Mother and daughter both participated in the civil rights movement. Ellen Dammond worked with Dorothy Height and Polly Cowan in the Wednesdays in Mississippi initiative. Peggy Preacely, who sees herself as carrying on a double family line of “freedom fighters,” joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was jailed for sit-ins in the south. As she said, “I had to do something in my lifetime to make a difference because Uncle Monroe did and the Crafts escaped from slavery.”