Sarah 'Sally' Hemings

Sally Hemings (Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, circa 1773 – Charlottesville, Virginia, 1835) was an American slave owned by Thomas Jefferson. She is said to have been the half-sister of Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. Journalists and others alleged during the administration of President Jefferson that he had fathered several children with Hemings after his wife's death. Late 20th century DNA tests indicated that a male in Jefferson's line, likely Thomas Jefferson himself, was the father of at least one of Sally Hemings's children. Hemings's mother, Elizabeth Hemings, was the daughter of the English captain Hemings and an enslaved African woman. Along with other members of her family, she was owned by Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles, who died in 1773. He left nearly all members of the Hemings family to his daughter Martha Jefferson.

Several sources assert that Sally Hemings was a half-sister to Martha, both fathered by John Wayles, which is generally accepted, but not undisputed. Wayles had lost three wives by the time of his relationship with Betty Hemings, and he was said to have had several children with her, of whom the youngest was Sally. The Hemings family were light-skinned and multiracial, at the top of the slave "hierarchy" at Monticello in terms of their domestic work assignments.

If Sally Hemings was the daughter of John Wayles, then she was 3/4 white (quadroon), since she also had a white maternal grandparent. In 18th-century Virginia, such children's legal status followed the position of their mothers, no matter what their racial mixture and no matter how "white" they appeared or were by descent. Therefore Sally was a slave as her mother was. As Annette Gordon-Reed, in her 2008 book The Hemingses of Monticello, points out, the 18th-century and pre-Civil War attitude towards miscegenation was rather more relaxed than in the late 19th and 20th century, when the one-drop rule became the norm. Nonetheless, in the 18th century, largely white slaves were still regarded as slaves and the property of their owners, who were sometimes their fathers.

Sally Hemings, whose given name was probably Sarah, was the daughter of Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings and, allegedly, John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson's father-in-law. She became Thomas Jefferson's property as part of his inheritance from the Wayles estate in 1774 and came with her mother to Monticello by 1776. As a child she was probably a "nurse" to Jefferson's daughter Mary (slave girls from the age of six or eight were childminders and assistants to head nurses on southern plantations.)

Sally Hemings and Mary Jefferson were living at Eppington -- residence of Mary's aunt and uncle -- in 1787, when Jefferson's long-expressed desire to have his daughter join him in France was carried out. Fourteen-year-old Sally and eight-year-old Mary crossed the Atlantic Ocean to London that summer. They were received by John and Abigail Adams, who wrote that Sally "seems fond of the child and appears good naturd."[1] Jefferson's French butler, Adrien Petit, escorted the two girls from London to Paris.

It is not known whether Sally Hemings lived at Jefferson's residence, the Hotel de Langeac, or at the Abbaye de Panthemont, where Martha (Patsy) and Mary (Maria) Jefferson were boarding students. Jefferson, who had expressly asked that someone who had had smallpox or been inoculated against it accompany his daughter to France, soon had Sally inoculated by the famous Dr. Robert Sutton. While in Paris, she undoubtedly received training -- especially in needlework and the care of clothing -- to suit her for her position as lady's maid to Jefferson's daughters. She was occasionally paid a monthly wage of twelve livres (the equivalent of two dollars).

Sally Hemings was certainly acting as Martha Jefferson's attendant in the spring of 1789, when Patsy began to "go out" in French society (increased expenditures for clothing for both Patsy and Sally reflect this). When booking accommodations on the Clermont for the return to America, Jefferson asked that Sally's berth be "convenient to that of my daughters."[2]

After the family's return to Virginia in 1789, Sally Hemings seems to have remained at Monticello, where she performed the duties of a household servant and lady's maid (Jefferson still referred to her as "Maria's maid" in 1799)[3]. Sally's son Madison recalled that one of her duties was "to take care of [Jefferson's] chamber and wardrobe, look after us children, and do light work such as sewing, &c."[4]

There are only two known descriptions of Sally Hemings. The slave Isaac Jefferson remembered that she was "mighty near white. . . very handsome, long straight hair down her back." Jefferson biographer Henry S. Randall recalled Jefferson's grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph describing her as "light colored and decidedly good looking."[5]

Sally may have lived in the stone workmen's house (now called the "Weaver's Cottage") from 1790 to 1792, when she -- like her sister Critta -- might have removed to one of the new 12'x14' log cabins farther down Mulberry Row. After the completion of the south dependencies, she apparently lived in one of the "servant's rooms" under the south terrace (Thomas J. Randolph pointed it out to Randall many years later).[6]

Sally Hemings was never officially freed by Thomas Jefferson. It seems most likely that Jefferson's daughter Martha Randolph gave Sally "her time," a form of unofficial freedom that would enable her to remain in Virginia (the laws at that time required freed slaves to leave the state within a year). Madison Hemings reported that his mother lived in Charlottesville with him and his brother Eston until her death in 1835.[7]

According to Jefferson's records, Sally Hemings had four surviving children. Beverly (b. 1798), a carpenter and fiddler, was allowed to leave the plantation in late 1821 or early 1822 and, according to his brother, passed into white society in Washington, D.C. Harriet (b. 1801), a spinner in Jefferson's textile shop, also left Monticello in 1821 or 1822, probably with her brother, and passed for white. Madison Hemings (1805-1878), a carpenter and joiner, was given his freedom in Jefferson's will; he resettled in southern Ohio in 1836, where he worked at his trade and had a farm. Eston Hemings (1808-c1853), also a carpenter, moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, in the 1830s; there he was a well-known professional musician before moving about 1852 to Wisconsin, where he changed his name (to Eston Jefferson) along with his racial identity. Both Madison and Eston Hemings made known their belief that they were sons of Thomas Jefferson.[8]

The descendants of Thomas C. Woodson (1790-1879) carry the strong family tradition that he was the firstborn child of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Woodson, who does not appear in Jefferson's records, left Greenbrier County, Virginia, for southern Ohio in the early 1820s. He was a successful farmer in Jackson Country.

--Lucia C. Stanton, Monticello Research Department, November 1989, revised October 1994. A brief report of the Hemings-Jefferson Controversy, containing a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, is also posted on this site.

Footnotes:

• 1. Abigail Adams to TJ, 27 June and 6 July 1787, B.11.502,551.
• 2. TJ to James Maurice, 16 September 1789, B.15.433.
• 3. TJ to John W. Eppes, 21 December 1799, ViU.
• 4. Reminiscences of Madison Hemings, Pike County Republican, 13 March 1873. Note: several letters of Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen Randolph make reference to sewing tasks for "Sally," including adding puffed sleeves, flounces, and other trim to her dresses; it is not certain, however, that she refers to Sally Hemings, as Ellen's own maid was named Sally.
• 5. Bear, Jefferson at Monticello, p.4; Randall to James Parton, 1 June 1868, in Flower, Parton, pp. 236-9.
• 6. Flower, Parton, pp. 236-9.
• 7. One of Martha Randolph's wills, dated 18 April 1834, asked that "Sally" be given her "time" (ViU). A register of free blacks for 1833 lists Sally Hemings, as free since 1826, with her son Madison (Library of Virginia).
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notes

Elizabeth Hemings had twelve known children. According to Madison Hemings, six of them were fathered by Wayles (Robert, James, Thenia, Critta, Peter, and Sally).

Sources

• http://www.monticello.org/getting-word/people/elizabeth-hemings

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Sarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed race slave owned by the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. She was said to be the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. There is no record of any marriage between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Thomas Jefferson's account book shows that on April 6, 1789 he spent 96 francs on "clothes for Sally". Then, on April 16, 1789, he spent 72 francs on more clothes for Sally. Then, on April 26, 1789 he spent 23 francs on "making clothes for servants". Finally, on May 25, 1789, he "paid making clothes for Sally 25 francs." This is the only time before or after that the records of Thomas Jefferson show him buying anything at all for Sally or for any of his other slaves. Thus, it appears more than likely that it was in April, 1789 that he started having relations with her. Also, the entire volume of his letters is missing for the year 1789. It appears likely that the letters for that year were destroyed because they contained references to the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Recent research set forth in the latest edition of "The Slave Children of Thomas Jefferson" shows that Sally spent the last years of her life in the place of her birth, Shadwell, Virginia, and died there.

They “reputedly” had the following children:

F i Harriett HEMINGS 1 was born on 5 Oct 1795 in Monticello, Virginia. She died on 7 Dec 1797 in Monticello, Virginia.

M ii Beverley HEMINGS 1 was born on 1 Apr 1798 in Monticello, Albermarle, Virginia. Ancestor of Dr. Edward Graham Jefferson, retired Chairman of DuPont Chemical Corp.

F iii Harriet II HEMINGS 1, 2 was born on 22 May 1801 in Monticello, Albermarle, Virginia. Ran away in 1822. However, she obviously did not run away because in the memoirs of Edmund Bacon, a white overseer for Thomas Jefferson, he says that he gave her $50 stage fare to take a stage to Washington, as she had turned 21 years old. Her subsequent whereabouts are a mystery. Some say she married a white man as she was 7/8ths white and lived the rest of her life in Charlottesville.

M iv Madison HEMINGS was born on 19 Jan 1805. He died in 1877.

M v Eston Hemings JEFFERSON was born on 21 May 1808. He died in 1856.

Read More:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Hemings
• https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Hemings_Sally_1773-1835
• http://www.monticello.org/plantation/lives/sallyhemings.html
• http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/appendixh.html
• http://www.bradyenterpriseassociation.com/Sarah%20%28Sally%29%20Hem...
• http://www.fullissue.com/index.php/sally-hemings-biography-1773-183...
• http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/whm/bio/heming_s.htm
• _________________________________________________ Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings:

The claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, a slave at Monticello, entered the public arena during Jefferson's first term as president, and it has remained a subject of discussion and disagreement for nearly two centuries.

In September 1802, political journalist James T. Callender, a disappointed office-seeker who had once been an ally of Jefferson, wrote in a Richmond newspaper that Jefferson had for many years "kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves." "Her name is Sally," Callender continued, adding that Jefferson had "several children" by her.

Although there had been rumors of a sexual relationship between Jefferson and a slave before 1802, Callender's article spread the story widely. It was taken up by Jefferson's Federalist opponents and was published in many newspapers during the remainder of Jefferson's presidency.

Jefferson's policy was to offer no public response to personal attacks, and he apparently made no explicit public or private comment on this question (although a private letter of 1805 has been interpreted by some individuals as a denial of the story). Sally Hemings left no known accounts. Jefferson's daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph privately denied the published reports. Two of her children, Ellen Randolph Coolidge and Thomas Jefferson Randolph, maintained many years later that such a liaison was not possible, on both moral and practical grounds. They also stated that Jefferson's nephews Peter and Samuel Carr were the fathers of the light-skinned Monticello slaves some thought to be Jefferson's children because of their resemblance to him.

The Jefferson-Hemings story was sustained through the 19th century by Northern abolitionists, British critics of American democracy, and others. Its vitality among the American population at large was recorded by European travelers of the time. Through the 20th century, some historians accepted the possibility of a Jefferson-Hemings connection and a few gave it credence, but most Jefferson scholars found the case for such a relationship unpersuasive.

Over the years, however, belief in a Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings relationship was perpetuated in private. Two of her children - Madison and Eston - indicated that Jefferson was their father, and this belief has been relayed through generations of their descendants as an important family truth. That a Jefferson-Hemings relationship could be neither refuted nor substantiated was challenged in 1998 by the results of DNA tests conducted by Dr. Eugene Foster and a team of geneticists. The study - which tested Y-chromosomal DNA samples from male-line descendants of Field Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's uncle), John Carr (grandfather of Jefferson's Carr nephews), Eston Hemings, and Thomas C. Woodson - indicated a genetic link between the Jefferson and Hemings descendants. The results of the study established that an individual carrying the male Jefferson Y chromosome fathered Eston Hemings (born 1808), the last known child born to Sally Hemings. There were approximately 25 adult male Jeffersons who carried this chromosome living in Virginia at that time, and a few of them are known to have visited Monticello. The study's authors, however, said "the simplest and most probable" conclusion was that Thomas Jefferson had fathered Eston Hemings. The DNA study found no link between the descendants of Field Jefferson and Thomas C. Woodson (1790-1879), whose family members have long held that he was the first son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Madison Hemings, Sally's second-youngest son, said in 1873 that his mother had been pregnant with Jefferson's child (who, he said, lived "but a short time") when she returned from France in 1789. But there is no indication in Jefferson's records of a child born to Hemings before 1795, and there are no known documents to support that Thomas Woodson was Hemings' first child.

The DNA testing also found no genetic link between the Hemings and Carr descendants.

Shortly after the DNA test results were released in November 1998, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation formed a research committee consisting of nine members of the foundation staff, including four with Ph.D.s. In January 2000, the committee reported its finding that the weight of all known evidence - from the DNA study, original documents, written and oral historical accounts, and statistical data - indicated a high probability that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings, and that he was perhaps the father of all six of Sally Hemings' children listed in Monticello records - Harriet (born 1795; died in infancy); Beverly (born 1798); an unnamed daughter (born 1799; died in infancy); Harriet (born 1801); Madison (born 1805); and Eston (born 1808).

Since then, a committee commissioned by the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, after reviewing essentially the same material, reached different conclusions, namely that Sally Hemings was only a minor figure in Thomas Jefferson's life and that it is very unlikely he fathered any of her children. This committee also suggested in its report, issued in April 2001, that Jefferson's younger brother Randolph (1755-1815) was more likely the father of at least some of Sally Hemings' children.

While Thomas Jefferson's paternity of one or more of Sally Hemings' children cannot be established with absolute certainty, and there are noticeable gaps in the historical record, many elements are widely accepted. Among these are:

• Sally Hemings (1773-1835) was a slave at Monticello; she lived in Paris with Jefferson and two of his daughters from 1787 to 1789; and she had at least six children.
• Sally Hemings' duties included being a nursemaid-companion to Thomas Jefferson's daughter Maria (c. 1784-1787), lady's maid to daughters Martha and Maria (1787-1797), and chambermaid and seamstress (1790s-1827).
• There are no known images of Sally Hemings and only four known descriptions of her appearance or demeanor.
• Sally Hemings left no known written accounts. It is not known if she was literate.
• In the few scattered references to Sally Hemings in Thomas Jefferson's records and correspondence, there is nothing to distinguish her from other members of her family.
• Thomas Jefferson was at Monticello at the likely conception times of Sally Hemings' six known children. There are no records suggesting that she was elsewhere at these times, or records of any births at times that would exclude Jefferson paternity.
• There are no indications in contemporary accounts by people familiar with Monticello that Sally Hemings' children had different fathers.
• Sally Hemings' children were light-skinned, and three of them (daughter Harriet and sons Beverly and Eston) lived as members of white society as adults.
• According to contemporary accounts, some of Sally Hemings' children strongly resembled Thomas Jefferson.
• Thomas Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings' children: Beverly and Harriet were allowed to leave Monticello in 1822; Madison and Eston were released in Jefferson's 1826 will. Jefferson gave freedom to no other nuclear slave family.
• Thomas Jefferson did not free Sally Hemings. She was permitted to leave Monticello by his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph not long after Jefferson's death in 1826, and went to live with her sons Madison and Eston in Charlottesville.
• Several people close to Thomas Jefferson or the Monticello community believed that he was the father of Sally Hemings' children.
• Eston Hemings changed his name to Eston Hemings Jefferson in 1852.
• Madison Hemings stated in 1873 that he and his siblings Beverly, Harriet, and Eston were Thomas Jefferson's children.
• The descendants of Madison Hemings who have lived as African-Americans have passed a family history of descent from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings down through the generations.
• Eston Hemings' descendants, who have lived as whites, have passed down a family history of being related to Thomas Jefferson. In the 1940s, family members changed this history to state that an uncle of Jefferson's, rather than Jefferson himself, was their ancestor.

Among the unresolved matters is the genealogy of Sally Hemings. According to Madison Hemings, Sally's mother, Elizabeth Hemings (1735-1807), was the daughter of an African woman and an English sea captain. By Madison's and other accounts, Sally Hemings and some of her siblings were the children of John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson's father-in-law. If so, Sally Hemings would have been the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson (1748-1782). Elizabeth Hemings and her children lived at John Wayles' plantation during his lifetime, but there are no documentary records relating to Wayles' possible paternity of any Hemings children.

Also unknown are the precise nature of the relationship that existed between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings; whether a child was born at Monticello shortly after they returned from France in 1789; and whether there is anything to connect Jefferson, Hemings, and Thomas C. Woodson. Although the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings has been for many years, and will surely continue to be, a subject of intense interest to historians and the public, the evidence is not definitive, and the complete story may never be known. The Foundation encourages its visitors and patrons, based on what evidence does exist, to make up their own minds as to the true nature of the relationship.

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A very pleasant Painting, "not of Sally" is used to fill the square.

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A very pleasant Painting, "not of Sally" is used to fill the square....

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Sarah "Sally" Hemings was an enslaved woman of mixed race owned by President Thomas Jefferson. Most historians believe she was the mother of six children fathered by him, of whom four survived to adulthood; and were given freedom by Jefferson. Hemings was the youngest of six siblings by the widowed planter John Wayles and his mixed-race slave Betty Hemings; Sally and her siblings were three-quarters European and half-siblings of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton. As an infant Sally came to Monticello as part of Martha's inheritance of her father's slave holdings.

In 1787, Hemings, aged 14, accompanied Jefferson's youngest daughter Mary ("Polly") to London and then to Paris, where the widowed Jefferson, aged 44 at the time, was serving as the United States Minister to France. Hemings spent two years there. It is believed by most historians that Jefferson began a sexual relationship with Hemings in France or soon after their return to Monticello. Hemings remained enslaved in Jefferson's house until his death.

The historical question of whether Jefferson was the father of Hemings' children is known as the Jefferson–Hemings controversy. Following renewed historic analysis in the late 20th century and a 1998 DNA study that found a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Hemings' last son, Eston Hemings, there is a near-consensus among historians that Jefferson fathered her son Eston Hemings and probably all her children. A small number of historians disagree.

Hemings' children lived in Jefferson's house as slaves and were trained as artisans. Jefferson freed all of Hemings' surviving children: Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston, as they came of age (they were the only slave family freed by Jefferson). They were seven-eighths European in ancestry, and three of the four entered white society as adults. Descendants of those three identified as white. Hemings was "given her time", lived her last nine years freely with her two younger sons in Charlottesville, Virginia, and saw a grandchild born in the house her sons owned.

Sally Hemings was born about February 1773 to Betty Hemings (1735–1807), a biracial slave. Her father was their master John Wayles (1715–1773). Her mother Betty was the daughter of Susanna, an enslaved African, and John Hemings, an English sea captain. Susanna and Betty Hemings were first held by Francis Eppes IV, where Susanna was referred to as Susanna Epps. John Hemings tried to buy them from Eppes, but the planter refused to give them up. The mother and daughter were inherited by Francis's daughter, Martha Eppes, who took them with her as personal servants upon her marriage to the planter John Wayles. His parents were Edward Wayles and Ellen Ashburner-Wayles, both of Lancaster, England.

After Martha's death, Wayles married and was widowed twice more. Several sources assert that the widower John Wayles took his slave Betty Hemings as a concubine and had six children by her during the last 12 years of his life; the youngest of these was Sally Hemings. They were half-siblings to his daughters by his wives; his first child, Martha Wayles (named after her mother, John Wayles's first wife), married the young planter Thomas Jefferson.

The biracial children of Betty Hemings by Wayles were three-quarters European in ancestry and very fair-skinned. They had a white maternal grandfather and two white paternal grandparents. Since 1662 in Virginia slave law, children born to enslaved mothers were considered slaves under the principle of partus sequitur ventrem. Elizabeth ("Betty") and her children, including Sally Hemings, and all their children, were legally slaves, although the fathers were the white masters and the children were majority-white in ancestry.

After John Wayles died in 1773, his daughter Martha and her husband Thomas Jefferson inherited the Hemings family among a total of 135 slaves from his estate, as well as 11,000 acres of land. The youngest Wayles-Hemings child was Sally, an infant that year and about 25 years younger than Martha. Scholars have noted that as the mixed-race Wayles-Hemings children grew up at Monticello, they were trained and given assignments as skilled artisans and domestic servants, at the top of the slave hierarchy. Betty Hemings' other children and their descendants, also mixed race, also had privileged assignments. None worked in the fields. ]
In 1784, the widower Thomas Jefferson was appointed the American envoy to France; he took his oldest daughter Martha (Patsy) with him to Paris, as well as some of his personal slaves. Among them was Sally's older brother James Hemings, who became trained as a chef in French cuisine. Jefferson left his two younger daughters in the care of friends in the US. After Lucy died of whooping cough in 1787, Jefferson sent for his surviving daughter, nine-year-old Maria (Polly) Jefferson, to live with him. The teenage slave Sally Hemings was chosen to accompany Polly to France after an older slave became pregnant and could not make the journey. Originally, Jefferson arranged for Polly to "be in the care of her nurse, a black woman, to whom she is confided with safety" [Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, Dec. 21, 1786]. According to Abigail Adams, "The old Nurse whom you expected to have attended her, was sick and unable to come. She has a Girl about 15 or 16 with her." [Letter from Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 26, 1787].

Polly and Sally landed in London, where they stayed with Abigail and John Adams from June 26 until July 10, 1787. Jefferson's associate, Mr. Petit, arranged transportation and escorted the girls to Paris. In a letter to Jefferson on June 27, 1787, Abigail wrote, "The Girl who is with [Polly] is quite a child, and Captain Ramsey is of opinion will be of so little Service that he had better carry her back with him. But of this you will be a judge. She seems fond of the child and appears good naturd." On July 6, Abigail wrote to Jefferson, "The Girl she has with her, wants more care than the child, and is wholy incapable of looking properly after her, without some superiour to direct her."

Sally Hemings remained in France for 26 months; slavery was abolished in that country after the Revolution in 1789. Jefferson paid wages to her and James while they were in Paris. He paid Sally Hemings the equivalent of $2 a month. In comparison, he paid his Parisian scullion $2.50 a month, and James Hemings $4 a month as chef in training. The French servants earned from $8 to $12 a month. Toward the end of their stay, James used his money to pay for a French tutor and learn the language. Sally Hemings also was learning French. There is no record of where she lived: it may have been with Jefferson and her brother in the Hôtel de Langeac on the Champs-Elysées, or at the convent Abbaye de Panthemont where the girls Maria and Martha were schooled. Whatever the weekday arrangements, Jefferson and his retinue spent weekends together at his villa. Jefferson purchased some fine clothing for Hemings, which suggests that she accompanied Martha as a lady's maid to formal events.

Under French law, both Sally and James could have petitioned for their freedom, as the 1789 revolutionary constitution in France abolished slavery in principle. Hemings had the legal right to remain in France as a free person; if she returned to Virginia with Jefferson, it would be as a slave. According to her son Madison's memoir, Hemings became pregnant by Jefferson in Paris. She was about 16 at the time. She agreed to return with him to the United States based on his promise to free their children when they reached the age of 21 years. Hemings' strong ties to her mother, siblings and extended family probably drew her back to Monticello.

In 1789, Sally and James Hemings returned to the United States with Jefferson. He was 46 years old and seven years a widower. As shown by Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles, wealthy Virginia widowers frequently took enslaved women as concubines. Historian Joshua D. Rothman noted it was not unusual for the time for Jefferson to choose to do so. White society simply expected these men to be discreet.

According to Madison Hemings, Sally Hemings' first child died soon after her return from Paris. Those Jefferson records that have survived mutilation and purge note Hemings had six children after her return to the US.

Harriet Hemings (I) (October 5, 1795 - December 7, 1797) Beverley Hemings (possibly named William Beverley Hemings) (April 1, 1798 - after 1873) unnamed daughter (or possibly named Thenia after Hemings' sister Thenia) (born in 1799 and died in infancy) Harriet Hemings (II) (May 22, 1801 - after 1863) Madison Hemings (possibly named James Madison Hemings) (January 19, 1805 – 1877) Eston Hemings (possibly named Thomas Eston Hemings) (May 21, 1808 – 1856) Jefferson recorded slave births in his Farm Book. Unlike his practice in recording births of other slaves, he did not note the father of Hemings' children.

Sally Hemings' documented duties at Monticello included being a nursemaid-companion, lady's maid, chambermaid, and seamstress. It is not known whether she was literate, and she left no known writings. She was described as very fair, with "straight hair down her back". Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, described her as "light colored and decidedly good looking". As an adult, she may have lived in a room in Monticello's "South Dependencies", a wing of the mansion accessible to the main house through a covered passageway.

Hemings never married. As a slave, she could not have a marriage recognized under Virginia law, but many slaves at Monticello are known to have taken partners in common-law marriages and had stable lives. (No such marriage for Hemings is noted in the records.) While Sally Hemings worked at Monticello, she had her children nearby. According to her son Madison, while young, the children "were permitted to stay about the 'great house', and only required to do such light work as going on errands". At the age of 14, each of the children began their training: the brothers with the plantation's skilled master of carpentry, and Harriet as a spinner and weaver. The three boys all learned to play the violin (Jefferson played the violin).

In 1822 at the age of 24, Beverley "ran away" from Monticello and was not pursued. His sister Harriet Hemings, 21, followed in the same year. The overseer Edmund Bacon said that he gave her $50 (US$1,000 in 2016 dollars) and put her on a stagecoach to the North, presumably to join her brother. In his memoir, published posthumously, Bacon said Harriet was "near white and very beautiful", and that people said Jefferson freed her because she was his daughter. Madison Hemings said Beverley and Harriet each entered white society in Washington, DC, and each married well.

Of the hundreds of slaves he owned, Jefferson formally freed only two slaves while he was living: Hemings' older brothers Robert, who had to buy his freedom, and James Hemings (who was required to train his brother Peter for three years to get his freedom). He freed five slaves in his will - all males from the extended Hemings family, including Madison and Eston Hemings, his two "natural" children. Harriet was the only female slave he allowed to go free. In addition to manumission for the Hemings men in his will, he petitioned the legislature to allow them to stay in the state. No documentation has been found for Sally Hemings' emancipation.

Jefferson's married daughter Martha Randolph informally freed the elderly Hemings by giving her "her time." As the historian Edmund S. Morgan has noted, "Hemings herself was withheld from auction and freed at last by Jefferson's daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, who was, of course, her niece." This informal freedom allowed Hemings to live in Virginia with her two youngest sons in nearby Charlottesville for the next nine years until her death. In the Albemarle County 1833 census, all three were recorded as free white persons. Jefferson inherited a great amount of wealth at a young age, but was bankrupt by the time he died. His entire estate, including his slaves, were sold to repay his debts. Hemings lived to see a grandchild born in a house that her sons owned.

In 2008 Gordon-Reed published The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which explored the extended family, including James and Sally's lives in France, Monticello and Philadelphia, during Thomas Jefferson's lifetime.[53] She was not able to find much new information about Beverly or Harriet Hemings, who left Monticello as young adults and entered the white community, probably changing their names.[9] More documentation reveals the lives of the younger sons Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings, and of their descendants, from Madison's memoir, a wide variety of historical records, and newspaper accounts.

Eventually, three of Hemings' four surviving children, except for Madison, chose to identify as white adults in the North; they were seven-eighths European in ancestry, and this was consistent with their appearance. In his memoir, Madison Hemings said both Beverley and Harriet married well in the white community in Washington, DC. Harriet was described by Edmund Bacon, the longtime Monticello overseer, as "nearly as white as anybody, and very beautiful." For some time Madison wrote to both his siblings and learned of their marriages. He knew that Harriet had children and was living in Maryland, but gradually she and Beverly stopped responding to his letters, and the siblings lost touch.

Both Madison and Eston Hemings married free women of color in Charlottesville. After their mother's death in 1835, they and their families moved to Chillicothe in the free state of Ohio. Census records classified them as "mulatto," at that time meaning mixed race. The census enumerator, usually a local person, organized individuals in part according to who their neighbors were and what was known of them.

High demand for slaves in the Deep South and passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 heightened the risk for free blacks of being kidnapped by slave catchers, as they needed little documentation to claim blacks as fugitives. Legally free people of color, Eston Hemings and his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin to be further away from slave catchers. There he changed his name to "Eston H. Jefferson" to acknowledge his paternity, and all the family adopted the surname. From then on the Jeffersons lived in the white community.

Madison Hemings' family were the only Hemings descendants who continued to identify with the black community. They intermarried within the community of free people of color before the Civil War. Over time, some of their descendants are known to have passed into the white community, while many others have identified within the black community.

Both Eston and Madison achieved some success in life, were well respected by their contemporaries, and had children who repeated and built on their successes. They worked as carpenters, and Madison also had a small farm. Eston became a professional musician and bandleader, "a master of the violin, and an accomplished 'caller' of dances," who "always officiated at the 'swell' entertainments of Chillicothe." He was in demand across southern Ohio. A neighbor described him as, "Quiet, unobtrusive, polite and decidedly intelligent, he was soon very well and favorably known to all classes of our citizens, for his personal appearance and gentlemanly manners attracted everybody's attention to him."

Madison's sons fought on the Union side in the Civil War. Thomas Eston Hemings enlisted in the United States Colored Troops (USCT); captured, he spent time at the Andersonville POW camp and died in a POW camp in Meridian, Mississippi. According to a Hemings descendant, his brother James attempted to cross Union lines and "pass" as a white man to enlist in the Confederate army to rescue him. Later, James Hemings was rumored to have moved to Colorado and perhaps passed into white society. Like some others in the family, he disappeared from the record, and the rest of his biography remains unknown. A third son, William Hemings, enlisted in the regular Union Army as a white man. Madison's last known male-line descendant, William never married and was not known to have had children. He died in 1910 in a veterans' hospital.

Some of Madison Hemings' children and grandchildren who remained in Ohio suffered from the limited opportunities for blacks at that time, working as laborers, servants or small farmers. They tended to marry within the mixed-race community in the region, who became established as people of education and property.

Madison's daughter Ellen Wayles Hemings married Alexander Jackson Roberts, a graduate of Oberlin College. When their first son was young, they moved to Los Angeles, California, where the family and its descendants became leaders in the twentieth century. Their first son Frederick Madison Roberts (1879–1952) – Sally Hemings' and Jefferson's great-grandson – was the first person of known black ancestry elected to public office on the West Coast: he served for nearly 20 years in the California State Assembly from 1919 to 1934. Their second son William Giles Roberts was also a leader. Their descendants have had a strong tradition of college education and public service.

Eston's sons also enlisted in the Union Army, both as white men from Madison. His first son John Wayles Jefferson had red hair and gray eyes like his grandfather Jefferson. By the 1850s, John Jefferson in his 20s was the proprietor of the American Hotel in Madison. At one time he operated it with his younger brother Beverley. He was commissioned as a Union officer during the Civil War, during which he was promoted to the rank of Colonel and served at the Battle of Vicksburg. He wrote letters about the war to the newspaper in Madison which was published. After the war, John Jefferson returned to Wisconsin, where he frequently wrote for newspapers and published accounts about his war experiences. He later moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he became a successful and wealthy cotton broker. He never married or had known children, and left a sizeable estate.

Eston's second son Beverley Jefferson also served in the regular Union Army. After operating the American Hotel with his brother John, he later separately operated the Capital Hotel. He also built a successful horse-drawn "omnibus" business. He and his wife Anna M. Smith had five sons, three of whom reached the professional class as a physician, attorney, and manager in the railroad industry. According to his 1908 obituary, Beverly Jefferson was "a likeable character at the Wisconsin capital and a familiar of statesmen for half a century." His friend Augustus J. Munson wrote, "Beverly Jefferson['s] death deserves more than a passing notice, as he was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson ... [He] was one of God's noblemen - gentle, kind, courteous, charitable." Beverley and Anna's great-grandson John Weeks Jefferson is the Eston Hemings descendant whose DNA was tested in 1998; it matched the Y-chromosome of the Thomas Jefferson male line.

As of 2007, there are known male-line descendants of Eston Hemings/Jefferson, and known female-line descendants of Madison Hemings' three daughters: Sarah, Harriet, and Ellen.