Hemings
Wilmetta Cunningham Austin
Ethel Hughes Bolden
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.
Ethel Bolden heard that her grandfather Rev. Wormley Hughes, who was known to be a very hard worker, pastored several churches in Fauquier County. Her father, John Henry Hughes, was a deacon in his church. Her niece Karen Hughes White noted, “You go down to Aunt Ethel’s and there are flowers all over the place.”
Pauline Powell Burns
Pauline Powell Burns, a great-granddaughter of Joseph and Edith Fossett, was born and raised in Oakland, California. Her grandmother, Isabella Fossett, was sold away from Monticello and her family at the age of eight, but succeeded in escaping to Boston in the 1840s, using a free pass forged by her brother Peter Fossett. Always at risk of re-enslavement because of the Fugitive Slave Act, Isabella joined the rest of her family in Cincinnati by 1860.
After Isabella’s death in 1872, her daughter, Josephine Turner, moved to Oakland with her husband, William W. Powell, a porter on the new transcontinental railroad. Their daughter Pauline demonstrated artistic and musical talent at a young age and pursued years of study of both painting and piano. She gave numerous public recitals in the Bay Area and was hailed as “the bright musical star of her state.” An exhibit of her paintings in 1890 was said to be the first by an African-American artist in California. She and her husband, Edward E. Burns, both cultural leaders in their community, left no descendants.