The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Read Free Page B

Book: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Read Free
Author: Annette Gordon-Reed
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family who were prime movers, as much as enslaved people could be. Mary Hemings, the eldest of the first generation of Hemings siblings, exerted a remarkable influence upon the family. She was the first to maneuver her way out of slavery on the mountain. She was able to be a source of refuge, stability, and monetary support for her relatives who remained in bondage at Monticello—up to and beyond the time of the family’s dispersal in 1827, when Jefferson’s human property was sold after his death to pay his enormous debts.
    Every story has a beginning, and we will start there. One could argue strenuously that the central (and most compelling) figure in the family’s history was not Sally Hemings but her mother, Elizabeth, whose experiences in life helped project her influence down the family line. Elizabeth Hemings, known as Betty, was the matriarch of a family that over four generations numbered in the dozens. She was well suited to that role for many reasons, not the least of which is that she lived a very long time—seventy-two years, well beyond the average life span of Virginians of her day, black or white. Also, she had many children—by one count, fourteen of them, although only twelve have been positively identified as hers. Half of her children had a black father, half had a white father. Her grandchildren, some of whom were born while she was still bearing children, had black fathers and white fathers. The mixing continued into succeeding generations until some of her descendants decided to move totally away from their African origins, while others resolutely clung to it.
    Behind all of this stands Elizabeth Hemings, the person of origin for the family and their story. The unnamed African woman who was her mother, John Wayles (who fathered six of her children, including Sally Hemings), Martha Wayles Jefferson (Wayles’s eldest daughter, Jefferson’s wife, and Sally’s half sister), Thomas Jefferson, and Sally Hemings—all of them lived for a time under her knowing gaze. If one person could be brought forward to help tell this story of slavery, intertwined families, pain, loss, silence, denial, and endurance, hers would be the most valuable voice.
    Like all enslaved parents, Elizabeth Hemings lived with the possibility that her family would be broken up by sale or gift. In fact, two of her adult children were sold—one to be united with her enslaved husband, who lived on a nearby plantation, the other to cohabit with a white merchant in Charlottesville. Jefferson freed two of her sons during her lifetime, and they left Monticello to live on their own. Another daughter was given as a wedding present to one of Jefferson’s sisters. For the most part, however, the Hemings family remained intact, or within close proximity to one another, for their entire lives. As a result each member had, in the person of Elizabeth Hemings, a mother/grandmother to be the repository of family lore and center of family attention.
    The women of the family were house servants who worked alongside one another for years. Their brothers, sons, and nephews were butlers or valets to Jefferson. The Hemings men who were not in the house were artisans who worked just outside of it on Mulberry Row, which abuts and runs parallel to the main house at Monticello. One of Hemings’s many grandchildren set the scene recalling a childhood spent running errands in and out of the big house surrounded entirely by (and this to him was extraordinary and important) members of his family. In this compact area, the Hemingses would have seen and interacted with one another every single day.
    In sum, this family was at least as much “together” as many other families who lived on farms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Moreover, in the Hemingses’ confined world on the mountain, the entire enslaved community in which they lived was basically stable over the years. With few exceptions—births, deaths, temporary moves from one household

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