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.

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.

Ellen Hemings Roberts

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

Ellen Wayles Hemings, the youngest child of Madison and Mary Hemings, married her next-door neighbor Andrew Jackson Roberts in 1878.  In 1887 they left southern Ohio for Los Angeles, a city in the midst of a land boom.  Less than three percent of its population was African American.  A. J. Roberts first engaged in the hauling business and later established the first black-owned mortuary in Los Angeles.  Both Robertses were active members of the Baptist church.

Ellen and A. J. Roberts’s sons, Frederick Madison Roberts, a member of the California assembly, and William Giles Roberts, joined the family undertaking firm, as did Ivan Saunders, husband of their daughter Myrtle Estelle Roberts.  Her grandchildren revered Ellen Hemings Roberts, who they remember as tall, fair-skinned, and blue-eyed, “very aristocratic” and quiet, but with a sharp wit.  They never heard her talk about her life in Ohio or her connection to Thomas Jefferson.

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.

Pearl Hinds Roberts

Posted on December 9, 2022 by -

Pearl Hinds Roberts was the daughter of Lucy McKinney and Wiley Hinds, a former slave who left Arkansas in 1858 for the Central Valley of California.  The Hinds family divided its time between Oakland and their large cattle ranch in Tulare County.  Pearl Hinds studied music at the Boston Conservatory and Oberlin College, as well as with Fossett descendant Pauline Powell Burns in Oakland.  For a time she headed the music department at what is now South Carolina State University.

In 1921 she married Frederick Madison Roberts, then a member of the California legislature.  They lived in Los Angeles, where continued her musical career as organist and choir director in various churches.  From 1942, she worked in retail—the first black salesperson in a downtown department store.  Her watchword was, “If you have ideals, hang on to them despite disappointments.”