Elizabeth Hemings

According to the oral history of her descendants, Betty was the daughter of a "captain of an English trading vessel" and "a fullblooded African" woman. Madison Hemings in his memoir said the surname of the captain was Hemings; the family tradition was that he had tried to buy Betty when he discovered his daughter had been born.[4] Annette Gordon-Reed speculated that Elizabeth's mother's name was Parthenia, based on the wills of Francis Eppes IV and John Wayles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Hemings
Wikipedia: Elizabeth Hemings (c. 1735 – 1807) was an enslaved mixed-race woman in colonial Virginia.
With her master, planter John Wayles, she had six children, including Sally Hemings.
These children were three-quarters white, and, following the condition of their mother, they were enslaved from birth; they were half-siblings to Wayles's daughter, Martha Jefferson.
After Wayles died, the Hemings family and some 120 other enslaved people were inherited, along with 11,000 acres and £4,000 debt, as part of his estate by his daughter Martha and her husband Thomas Jefferson.

More than 75 of Betty's mixed-race children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were enslaved from birth. They were forced to work on Jefferson's plantation of Monticello.[1] Many had higher status positions as chefs, butlers, seamstresses, weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths, gardeners, and musicians in the household.[2] Jefferson gave some of Betty's enslaved descendants to his sister and daughters as wedding presents, and they lived on other Virginia plantations.

Betty's oldest daughter Mary Hemings became the common-law wife of wealthy merchant Thomas Bell, who purchased her and their two children from Jefferson in 1792 and granted them greater freedoms than other enslaved people were typically permitted.[3] Mary was the first of several Hemingses to gain freedom before the Civil War. Betty's daughter Sally Hemings had six children, all of whom were fathered by Thomas Jefferson, between 1795 and 1808. Jefferson freed all four of her surviving children when they came of age, two of them by his will. His daughter Martha Randolph gave Sally "her time," an informal freedom allowing her to live with her sons during her last decade.
She is said to have been the concubine of Jefferson's father-in-law John Wayles, from whom Jefferson inherited her and her family.
Over 75 of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were enslaved at Jefferson's estate, Monticello.

BIOGRAPHY: According to the oral history of her descendants, Betty was the daughter of a slave-ship captain named Hemings and a woman born in Africa. The place of her birth is uncertain, but by the 1740s she was the property of Frances Eppes IV, of the Bermuda Hundred plantation, whose daughter Martha Eppes was to become John Wayles first wife.

Betty's grandson, Madison Hemings, related the story that Betty was already the property of "John Wayles" at the time of her birth, and her father Captain Hemings attempted to purchase her from Wayles, but Wayles refused because he was curious about how a mulatto child would develop. Captain Hemings then plotted to kidnap his daughter, which Wayles got word of, and took measures against. This account appears to contradict the documentary evidence pertaining to Betty's birth and early life, although it is possible that Wayles could have sold Betty to Frances Eppes, and later regained ownership of her via the dowry of Eppes's daughter, or that Madison's chronology is incorrect and the incident, if it occured, happened later.

After the marriage of John Wayles and Martha Eppes in 1746, Elizabeth became the property of Wayles, and was moved to one of his plantations, where she became a household servant. In the 1750s she gave birth to the first four of her twelve children, Mary, Martin, Bett, and Nance, whose paternity is unknown.

John Wayles had three wives, all of whom pre-deceased him. Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson was the daughter of his first wife. In 1761, after the deathof his third wife, Wayles took Betty Hemings as his concubine. According to her descendants, she had six children with Wayles: Robert, James, Thenia, Critta, Peter, and Sally Hemings. Wayles died in 1773, and all eleven members of the Hemings family became the property of Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson gave the Hemingses privileges positions as artisans and household servants. No member of the Hemings family ever worked the field. While resident at Monticello, Betty gave birth to another son, John, whose father was an Irish workman.

Betty had her own home at Monticello, where she spent roughly the last decade of her life, from 1795 to 1807. Hemings sold cabbages, strawberries, and chickens to Jefferson while she lived there. Her former cabin is now an archeological site, which is expected yield new information about the daily lives of the enslaved.

RELATIONSHIP WITH JOHN WAYLES: Historians have tended to accept the account that Betty Hemings and John Wayles had children together, although, as in the case of many relationships between slave-owners and slaves, documentary evidence is slight. Betty was mentioned in John Wayles will, which some take as an indication of a relationship. Some of Betty's children, according to contemporary accounts, were nearly white. Other support is found in gossip from the first decade of the 19th century, which manifested itself in a few private letters which eventually became public. The accounts of former slaves Isaac Jefferson and Madison Hemings are the most well-known sources for the relationship.

-------------------- Elizabeth "Betty" HEMINGS was born in 1735 in Bermuda Hundred, Virginia. She died on 22 Aug 1807 in Monticello, Albemarle County, Virginia. She married Unknown White Male.

Other marriages:

Unknown Slave, NEILSON, John WAYLES, John

Her mother became pregnant on the slave ship by the captain of the ship, whose name was Captain Hemings. Betty Hemings had 14 children by four different men, according to her grandson, Madison Hemings. Betty Hemings was mentioned in the will of John Wayles, thus providing evidence that she really was his mistress and not merely his slave.

Elizabeth Hemings grew to womanhood in the family of John Wales, whose wife dying she (Elizabeth) was taken by the widower Wales as his concubine, by whom she had six children--three sons and three daughters: Robert, James, Peter, Critty, Sally and Thena. These children went by the name of Hemings. 1873 The Memoirs of Madison Hemings.

Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings (c.1735 – 1807) was an enslaved mulatto in colonial Virginia, who in 1761 became the concubine of her master, planter John Wayles, a three-time widower. He had six mixed-race children with her over a 12-year period, including Sally Hemings; they were three-quarters white and, following the condition of their mother, all were enslaved from birth and half-siblings to his daughter Martha Jefferson. After Wayles died, the Hemings family and the other more than a hundred people he had enslaved were inherited as part of his estate by his daughter Martha and her husband Thomas Jefferson.

Eventually, more than 75 of Betty's mixed-race children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren would ultimately be enslaved from birth. They worked on Jefferson's plantation of Monticello. Many had higher status positions as chefs, butlers, seamstresses, weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths, gardeners, and musicians in the household. Jefferson gave some of Betty's enslaved descendants to his sister and daughters as wedding presents, and they lived at other Virginia plantations.

Betty's oldest daughter Mary Hemings became the common-law wife of wealthy merchant Thomas Bell, who purchased her and their two children from Jefferson in 1792 and granted them greater freedoms than other enslaved persons were typically permitted. Mary was the first of several Hemingses to gain freedom before the Civil War. Betty's daughter Sally Hemings is widely believed by historians to have had six children fathered by Thomas Jefferson over a period lasting nearly four decades. Jefferson freed all four of her surviving children when they came of age, two of them by his will. His daughter Martha Randolph gave Sally "her time," an informal freedom allowing her to live with her sons during her last decade.

According to the oral history of her descendants, Betty was the mulatto daughter of Susannah Epps, a full-blood African woman enslaved in Virginia and Captain John Hemings, an English captain of a trading ship. Madison Hemings in his memoir said the surname of the captain was Hemings; the family tradition was that he had tried to buy Betty when he discovered his daughter had been born. The place of her birth is uncertain (Hemings said it was Williamsburg), but by 1746 Betty was recorded as the property of Francis Eppes IV of the Bermuda Hundred plantation.

Betty's grandson Madison Hemings related the family tradition that Betty was born into slavery as the property of "John Wales" (meaning he owned her mother. The family said Captain Hemings plotted to kidnap his daughter, but Wayles took measures against this.)[4] Wayles may have sold Betty to Francis Eppes and later regained ownership of her when he married Eppes' daughter Martha as his first wife, or else Betty's grandson Madison may have confused some of the chronology.

After John Wayles married Martha Eppes in 1746, her father Francis Eppes IV gave the couple Betty and her mother as part of his daughter's wedding settlement. He stipulated that Betty would always belong to Martha and her heirs (rather than being part of her husband's property). Betty was trained as a domestic servant at one of Wayles' plantations.

In the 1750s, Betty Hemings gave birth to the first four of her twelve children, whose father was a slave. The children were:

Mary (1753 – after 1834), recognized as a seamstress;[3] she was hired out to Thomas Bell and later purchased by him in 1792; they had a common-law marriage and two children together. He informally freed her and their two children, and willed them his estate in Charlottesville. Jefferson kept her older children at Monticello as slaves (see her page);

Martin Hemings, who became the butler at Monticello;

Bett or Betsey, called Betty Brown (1759 – after 1831). Already serving as the personal servant of Martha Wayles Skelton, Betty accompanied her to Monticello after Skelton's marriage to Thomas Jefferson. She was among the domestic slaves taken by the Jeffersons to Williamsburg and Richmond when the planter served as governor. During the British invasion of Richmond in 1781, Betty and her sister Mary Hemings were taken as prisoners of war.[3] Betty's two sons were Wormley Hughes (1781–1858) and Burwell Colbert (1783 – c. 1862), who both served Jefferson as adults. Colbert served for decades as the butler and personal valet to Jefferson, who freed him by his will of 1826.)

Nance Hemings (1761 – after 1827), in 1785 Jefferson gave her to his sister as a wedding gift. Ten years later he bought her back, as she was a skilled weaver and he had started a cotton factory at Monticello.

Betty's master John Wayles was widowed three times. In 1761, after the death of his third wife, rumor has it that Wayles took Betty Hemings as his concubine. She may have had six children with Wayles.[10] If that is true, they were half-siblings to his eldest daughter Martha Wayles, who married Thomas Jefferson. As the historians Philip D. Morgan and Joshua D. Rothman have written, there were numerous such interracial relationships in the Wayles-Hemings-Jefferson families, and Albemarle County and Virginia, often with multiple generations repeating the pattern. Her children by Wayles were:

Robert Hemings (1762–1819), who purchased his freedom from Thomas Jefferson in 1794; James Hemings (1765–1801), freed by Jefferson in 1796 after training his brother Peter for three years to replace him as a chef;

Thenia Hemings (1767–1795);

Critta Hemings Bowles (1769–1850), who married Zachariah Bowles, a free man of color. In 1827, following Jefferson's death, most of his slaves were sold. Critta was purchased and freed by Francis W. Eppes, whom she had cared for as a nurse when he was young, starting in 1802. (His mother was Mary Jefferson Eppes, Jefferson's second daughter, who had died young).

Peter Hemings (1770 – after 1834), served as chef to Jefferson after being trained by his brother James; and Sally Hemings (c. 1773 – 1835), who according to rumor was concubine to Jefferson from about 1789. She had six children, four of whom survived and whom Jefferson freed. Sally was with him to his death in 1826, after which she was "given her time" (informal freedom) by his surviving daughter Martha Randolph.

After Wayles died in 1773, all eleven members of the Hemings family and 124 other slaves were inherited by his daughter Martha Wayles and her husband Thomas Jefferson. The Jeffersons had the Hemings mixed-race children trained as skilled artisans and domestic servants, giving them privileged positions at the plantation. No member of the Hemings family worked in the fields.

While resident at Monticello, Betty Hemings had two more children: John Hemings (1776–1833), whose father was Irish workman Joseph Neilson; John was freed in Jefferson's will after decades of service as a skilled ironworker; and

Lucy Hemings (1777–1786), whose father was believed to be a slave.

In the last decade of her life, Betty Hemings had her own cabin at Monticello, from 1795 to 1807. She raised produce and sold it to the Jefferson household: items such as cabbages, strawberries, and chickens. Her former cabin site is being investigated as an archeological site. It is expected to yield new information about the daily lives of the enslaved African Americans at Monticello.

Historians have tended to accept the account that Betty Hemings and John Wayles had children together. Her last six children were multiracial, with three-quarters white ancestry. As is the case of many relationships between slaveholders and slaves, documentary evidence is slight. Betty was mentioned in John Wayles' will, which some take as an indication of a relationship. However, the marriage contract between John Wayles and Martha Eppes stipulated that Betty, her mother, and their descendants, should go to Martha Wayles and her heirs forever. According to contemporary accounts, some of Betty's children (including Sally) were nearly white in appearance. Other support is found in private letters from the first decade of the 19th century, which later became public.