Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
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.
Lloyd Hughes, a lifelong resident of Fauquier County, VA, served in the U. S. Army in World War II and afterward worked as a carpenter and cook. He was proud of how his daughter Karen White’s research made the connection to Monticello and recalled his father, John Henry Hughes, who worked with horses and as a gardener, as did his Monticello ancestor: “Gardening, it all comes back to that, yard and gardening.”
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
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.
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
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.
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
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.”
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
Sally Hemings came to Monticello as an infant as part of Jefferson’s inheritance from his father-in-law, John Wayles. She spent two years as lady’s-maid to Jefferson’s daughters in Paris, where she could have claimed her freedom. After returning to Monticello in 1789, she was a domestic servant in the main house. She was unofficially freed after Jefferson’s death in 1826 and lived with her sons Madison and Eston in Charlottesville until her own death.
Years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson fathered at least six of Sally Hemings’s children. Four survived to adulthood and are mentioned in Jefferson’s plantation records: Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings. According to her son Madison Hemings, Jefferson promised Sally Hemings in Paris to free any children they might have at the age of twenty-one. Four of their children reached adulthood and became free close to their twenty-first birthdays. Beverly Hemings and his sister Harriet Hemings were allowed to leave Monticello without pursuit and passed into white society. Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings Jefferson — freed by the terms of Jefferson’s will — left for Ohio in the 1830s and chose to live on different sides of the color line.
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
Clara Fisher, artist and counselor for a non-profit social service agency, is the mother of two boys and a graduate of Duquesne University. Her father, Edward James Lee, died when she was only eight. She remembers helping him in his vegetable garden and accompanying him on his rounds as a constable, serving subpoenas. She said, “My father always told me that Thomas Jefferson was his great-great-grandfather.” She is thus only four generations removed from Madison Hemings of Monticello. In 2009, a letter she wrote to Jefferson on the occasion of Barack Obama’s inauguration was published in Newsweek magazine.
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
Monticello blacksmith Joseph Fossett, freed by Jefferson in his will, had to struggle to reunite his family after they were sold at the dispersal sale in 1827. With the support of his free relatives, including his mother, Mary Hemings Bell, he had achieved the freedom of his wife, Edith Hern Fossett, and five of their ten children by 1837. They then moved to Ohio, settling in Cincinnati by 1843.In this thriving city on the dividing line between slavery and freedom, the Fossetts did not turn their backs on those still in bondage. Joseph Fossett and his sons William, Daniel, and Jesse pursued the blacksmithing trade and the whole family actively participated in helping fugitive slaves traveling the Underground Railroad. Almost all of the Fossett children reached Ohio before their parents’ deaths. It took until 1850 in the case of their son Peter Fossett, who became a renowned minister.
Joseph and Edith Fossett’s descendants include artists, attorneys, caterers, civil servants, and musicians. In every generation Fossetts fought for freedom and equality, the most famous among them being William Monroe Trotter.
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
Posted on December 9, 2022 by refresh -
Patti Jo Harding became the family historian and, with the help of her cousin Diana Redman and Getting Word consultant, Beverly Gray, has been gathering information from courthouses and graveyards to understand the rich history of her family. She was present at the very first Getting Word interview, with other members of her family. She said, “Everybody keeps talking about Thomas Jefferson, … but I’d like to find out more about Sally.”
