Sarah "Sally" Hemings (c. 1773 – 1835) was an enslaved woman of mixed race owned by President Thomas Jefferson of the United States. Some historians believe Jefferson was the father of her six children,[1] born after the death of his wife Martha Jefferson, and that he had a long-term relationship with her. Four children survived to adulthood.[2] Hemings died in Charlottesville, VA, in 1835.[3]
Sally Hemings came to Jefferson's home as an infant with her siblings and her mixed-race mother, Betty, as part of his wife Martha's inheritance of slaves from her father, John Wayles. Hemings was the youngest of six children Betty Hemings is thought to have had with Wayles. If true, she was three-quarters European and a half-sister of Martha Jefferson.[4] In 1787, Hemings, aged 14,[1]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[who?]that Jefferson began a sexual relationship with Hemings in France or soon after their return to Monticello.[2] Hemings remained enslaved in Jefferson's house until his death. In 2017, a room identified as her quarters at Monticello, adjacent to Jefferson's bedroom, was discovered in an archeological restoration. It will be restored and refurbished.[5][6]
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 consensus among historians that Jefferson fathered her son Eston Hemings and probably all her children.[7] A small number of historians disagree.[8]
Hemings' children lived in Jefferson's house as slaves and were trained as artisans. Jefferson freed all of Hemings' surviving children:[9] 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.[10][11] After Jefferson's death Hemings was "given her time," and lived her last nine years freely with her two younger sons in Charlottesville, Virginia. She saw a grandchild born in the house her sons owned.[12]
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.