Hemings

Nancy Harriet Lee, daughter of Mary Elizabeth Butler and Thomas F. Lee, was raised in Bloomingburg, OH.  She attended the University of Pittsburgh, intending to be a teacher, but could not fulfill her requirement as a practice teacher because of racial quotas.  After this “shocking experience,” she turned instead to social work, ultimately obtaining a master’s degree.  She rose high in the Juvenile and the Domestic Relations court systems in Pittsburgh, becoming the first black supervisor in the former.  She received numerous community awards and led the drive to fund Pitt’s African Heritage Classroom.  She was inspired by Mary McLeod Bethune’s principle, “Each one help one” and once said, “That’s the way we always were as a family, helping each other.”

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 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.

Three daughters of Consuelo and Elmer Wayles Roberts were interviewed together in Los Angeles: Paula Henderson, Robin Roberts-Martin, and Ellen Hodnett, a teacher and school principal. They recalled their father, a graduate of U.C.L.A., a mortician, and a probation officer. In 1976 he told Time magazine he thought Thomas Jefferson would be “unhappy about man’s inability to learn anything about living with his fellow man, despite all the advances in technology.” 

The Roberts sisters had vivid memories of their grandfather William Giles Roberts, who ran the family mortuary before moving to his farm northeast of Los Angeles. They are proud of the Robertses as one of the earliest and most influential black families in Los Angeles. As for their Jefferson ancestry, the genetic tests of 1998 were “just a scientific confirmation of what we already knew.” As Paula Henderson said, “It was really important in the Roberts family that each person do something important.  It didn’t matter who your relatives were if you didn’t do something yourself.”

Three daughters of Consuelo and Elmer Wayles Roberts were interviewed together in Los Angeles: Paula Henderson, Robin Roberts-Martin, and Ellen Hodnett, a teacher and school principal. They recalled their father, a graduate of U.C.L.A., a mortician, and a probation officer. In 1976 he told Time magazine he thought Thomas Jefferson would be “unhappy about man’s inability to learn anything about living with his fellow man, despite all the advances in technology.”

The Roberts sisters had vivid memories of their grandfather William Giles Roberts, who ran the family mortuary before moving to his farm northeast of Los Angeles.  They are proud of the Robertses as one of the earliest and most influential black families in Los Angeles. As for their Jefferson ancestry, the genetic tests of 1998 were “just a scientific confirmation of what we already knew.” As Paula Henderson said, “It was really important in the Roberts family that each person do something important. It didn’t matter who your relatives were if you didn’t do something yourself.”