The Trent sisters—Janie Mosley, Omega Calimese, and Bertha Harmon—are descended from Betsy Hemmings through both their maternal and paternal lines. They heard the history of their connection to Monticello from their aunt Lucy Ann Trent, who was a teacher. Their grandparents, who purchased a Buckingham County farm in freedom, lost two of their sons in a West Virginia mine accident at the end of the nineteenth century. As Bertha Harmon said, they have a “strong willed, hard working, loving family,” a family that has always tried “to do the right thing, to try to help people that needed help and strive for the best.
Ancestry
Elizabeth Hemings
1735-1807Mary Hemings Bell
1753-post 1834Betsy Hemmings
1783-1857Joseph Hemmings
ca. 1800–post 1880Bertha Trent Harmon
1927-
Interview Information
24 Oct. 1997, Farmville, VA
Interviewees: Omega Trent Calimese, Bertha Trent Harmon, Janie Trent Mosley