Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings was born in 1773 at The Forest, the plantation home of her enslaver and father, John Wayles. Her mother was Elizabeth Hemings, an enslaved, mixed-race woman who was also owned by John Wayles (the father of Martha Wayles Skelton, Jefferson’s wife). Following John Wayles’ death, the Hemingses (Sally Hemings, her mother, and her siblings) were brought to Monticello in 1774 as a part of Thomas Jefferson’s inheritance from his father-in-law. As of now, we know little about Sally Hemings’ early childhood.
Martha Wayles Skelton, Jefferson’s wife and Sally Hemings’ half-sister, died in September of 1782. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson left Virginia for Paris to serve as Minister to France. His youngest daughters, Maria and Lucy, went to Eppington Plantation (the home of Jefferson’s sister-in-law), with Sally Hemings sent with them as a lady’s maid. Three years later, in 1787, a 14-year-old Sally Hemings accompanied Maria Jefferson on her trans-Atlantic voyage to reunite with her father and older sister in France.
Hemings spent two years in Paris as a lady’s maid to Jefferson’s daughters, where she had the option of suing for her freedom. According to Madison Hemings’ recollections, upon his mother’s return to Monticello in 1789 at the age of 16, she was “enciente,” or pregnant, by Thomas Jefferson. Thereafter, she labored as a domestic servant in the main house, and Jefferson referred to her as “Maria’s maid” in 1799. In the years that followed, Sally Hemings had at least six children by Jefferson:
- A child born shortly after their return from France
- Harriet Hemings (1795-1797)
- Beverly Hemings (1798-post 1822)
- Daughter (1799-1800)
- Harriet Hemings (1801-post 1822)
- Madison Hemings (1805-1877)
- Eston Hemings (1808-1856)
Madison Hemings’ recollections state that while in Paris, Jefferson promised his mother that he would free any children they might have when they reached the age of twenty-one. Four of their six children survived to adulthood, and all of them became free close to their twenty-first birthdays. In 1822, Beverly Hemings and his sister Harriet Hemings were allowed to leave Monticello without pursuit and passed into white society. Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings were two of the five individuals freed by Jefferson in his will.
Sally Hemings was unofficially freed after Jefferson’s death in 1826 and lived with her sons Madison and Eston in Charlottesville until her own death in 1835.
Elizabeth Hemings
1735-1807Sally Hemings
1773-1835
Additional Resources
Recollections of Madison Hemings (1873)
The Life of Sally Hemings: Digital Exhibit
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account
Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (2000)
Hear the Voices
Israel Gillette Jefferson
1800-ca. 1879“I Can Confirm His Statement”
Israel Jefferson speaks of Madison Hemings as the son of Thomas Jefferson.
“I know that it was a general statement among the older servants at Monticello, that Mr. Jefferson promised his wife, on her death bed, that he would not again marry. I also know that his servant, Sally Hemmings, (mother to my old friend and former companion at Monticello, Madison Hemmings,) was employed as his chamber-maid, and that Mr. Jefferson was on the most intimate terms with her; that, in fact, she was his concubine. This I know from my intimacy with both parties, and when Madison Hemmings declares that he is a natural son of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and that his brothers Beverly and Eston and sister Harriet are of the same parentage, I can as conscientiously confirm his statement as any other fact which I believe from circumstances but do not positively know.
I think that Mr. Jefferson was 84 years of age when he died. He was hardly ever sick, and till within two weeks of his death he walked erect without a staff or cane. He moved with the seeming alertness and sprightliness of youth.” (Israel Jefferson, Pike County Republican, 25 Dec. 1873)
Themes: Hemings-Jefferson Relationship, Jefferson Descent, Monticello
