The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy

by Robert F Turner

  This interpretation is also supported by the fact that Jefferson made no references in his own records either of Sally (or any other Monticello slave) giving birth to the child in question, nor to its assumed death the following year. Indeed, there appears to be nothing in the surviving records to suggest that this child did not live a long life—as the property of John Eppes. Since there are no references in Jefferson’s records to this child beyond the letter to Eppes, Monticello scholars seem to have simply assumed it died shortly after birth. Since it was born in December 1799, they presumably assumed it might have died in 1800. Plausible, but hardly probable.

  One reasonable explanation for Jefferson’s note is that “Maria’s maid” was left at Monticello to have her baby—perhaps because her mother or an experienced midwife lived there—giving Jefferson all the more reason to mention her status to her owner (John Eppes). The most logical candidate for “Maria’s maid” is presumably Betsy Hemings.

  Monticello scholars have attributed the child born to “Maria’s maid” to Sally Hemings (and presumably Thomas Jefferson), but this seems based on the flimsiest of evidence and is likely a result of a careless misreading of Jefferson’s Farm Book records. Page 54 of the Farm Book is entitled “Diary 1796.” The following page is dated “1799.Oct.” and constitutes a distribution list for beds, blankets, shoes, and other items for various slaves. On this list, under the name “Doll” are the indented names “Thenia .93.” and “Dolly 94.” On the same list, “Sally” is followed by an indented “Beverly 98”—a clear reference to Sally’s first son who was born in 1798. Page 56 is entitled “Plantation” but is undated. It is a distribution list for fish and beef to various slaves. On this list, under “Sally” are listed “Beverly” and “Thenia” but Thenia’s name is struck through. From this evidence, and the Jefferson-Eppes letter referring to “Maria’s maid” having a baby, Monticello scholars have apparently concluded that Sally must have given birth to a child named “Thenia” whose name was struck-through because she died.

  However, on this same undated list the child “Thenia” is not listed under “Doll.” Page 58 of the Farm Book includes an unrelated list dated “1799, June 27.” At the bottom of that page is another list dated “1800. July 15.” The next page begins with a November 1800 list in which Thenia is back under Doll, and Beverly appears alone under Sally.

  From this it is certainly possible to speculate that Doll’s Thenia was absent for some reason on one list, that Sally gave birth to a separate Thenia about that time, and then Sally’s Thenia died as Doll’s Thenia returned home. It is also possible that Jefferson mistakenly listed Doll’s Thenia as Sally’s child, and then struck-through the name when he realized his error. But perhaps the simplest explanation is that for some reason Doll’s Thenia was living for a brief period with Sally Hemings, and soon thereafter she returned home. (If we turn back to page 50 of the Farm Book, we find a “Bread List” for 1796 and under Sally’s name is the name “Edy,” although Monticello does not interpret that as evidence of another Hemings child.)

  As the preceding paragraphs demonstrate, the Farm Book lists are not always in chronological order. The undated list that seems to shift the name “Thenia” from under the name of “Doll” to that of “Sally” is located between lists dated October 1799 and a list on the following page dated four months earlier. Perhaps the undated list was prepared following the December birth to “Maria’s maid.” We just do not know. But, given the many uncertainties and alternative scenarios, to assume that the child was born to Sally Hemings and that its name was “Thenia” is a bit of a stretch. To this one might add that including a child of six or seven (like Doll’s Thenia) on a meat ration list would make a lot more sense than listing a new-born infant—all the more so if the infant was the child of a slave who was the maid to a woman who did not even reside at Monticello.

  * * *

  Footnotes

  1. The two arguable exceptions to this are 1873 articles in the Pike County [Ohio] Republican alleging to report the recollections of former Monticello slaves Madison Hemings and Israel Jefferson. As will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter Four, both statements are filled with factual inaccuracies, and were actually written by an anti-Jefferson journalist of minimal credibility. While Israel does claim that “Mr. Jefferson was on the most intimate terms with [Sally],” and seeks to confirm Sally’s son Madison Hemings’ assertion that Jefferson was his father, he adds that he “did not positively know” the truth of the situation. His statement does not allege that he ever personally witnessed any “intimacy” between them.

  2. See Chapter Four.

  3. Former Monticello resident director James A. Bear, Jr., correctly notes the irony that “less is known of the well-known Sally Hemings than of many of her brothers and sisters.” James A. Bear, Jr., The Hemings Family of Monticello, VIRGINIA CAVALCADE, Autumn 1979 at 84.

  4. Some use the year 1774, but since Jefferson’s Farm Book includes an entry saying he received Sally on January 14, 1774, and giving her year of birth as 1773, the later date is almost certainly wrong. Role of the slaves of John Wayles which were allotted to T.J. in right of his wife on a division of the estate. Jan. 14, 1774, in THOMAS JEFFERSON: THE GARDEN AND FARM BOOKS 227 (Robert C. Baron, ed. 1987).

  5. Id.

  6. LUCIA STANTON, FREE SOME DAY: THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN FAMILIES OF MONTICELLO 103 (2000).

  7. The first public reference to the allegation of which I am aware was by Jefferson’s Georgia Federalist enemy Thomas Gibbons, who is discussed further in Chapter Nine. There is no reason to believe that Gibbons would have had any knowledge of the facts in this matter. In preparation for their book Anatomy of a Scandal, genealogists Rebecca and James McMurry spent several years researching John Wayles, and concluded: “We simply found no hints of John Wayles’s being involved in such a relationship, and we found strong, though not incontrovertible, evidence against it.” REBECCA L. MCMURRY & JAMES F. MCMURRY, JR, ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL xviii (2002). Former Monticello guide White McKenzie Wallenborn asserts that Sally was born at Guinea Plantation in southeast Cumberland County, which was about three days’ travel from Wayles’ plantation, The Forest. Dr. Wallenborn notes that John Wayles was not in good health for the last few years of his life, and the trip to Guinea Plantation where Betty and Sally Hemings lived would have been too stressful for a man of his age and health. (E-mail from White McKenzie Wallenborn to Bob Turner, Mar. 31, 2002, 6:41 PM, Subject: TJ letter.) I not only remain an agnostic on the matter, but I do not see it as being at all critical to this issue and I have little interest in knowing the answer.

  8. Until 1847, the only evidence of John Wayles’ paternity of Sally seems to have come from Thomas Jefferson’s political enemies Thomas Gibbons and Thomas Turner, probably reporting rumors or speculation. (A useful summary of this issue appears in Monticello Report, Appendix F at 6.) That year, in what may be the most important evidence in support of such a relationship, former slave Isaac Jefferson said “Folks said that these Hemingses was old Mr. Wayles’s children.” (JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 4 [James A. Bear, Jr., ed., 1967].) Then, in 1873, Sally’s son Madison Hemings alleged that, after his wife died, John Wales [sic] took Betty Hemings as his “concubine” and fathered six of her children. This article is discussed in Chapter Four. While Sally Hemings may well have been John Wayles’ daughter, these rumors and political attacks hardly constitute persuasive proof of that fact.

  9. In addition to Sally Hemings, a quick perusal of the Farm Book reveals the following: In 1777 Will and Abby had a Sally at Shadwell and a Sal was born at Bedford. The following year Sue had a Sally at Elk Hill. In 1788 Kate gave birth to a Sally. A Sally was born on the Tufton farm and another to Molly at Bedford. Jenny and Lewis had a “Sally” in 1792, and in 1797 a “Sall” at Lego passed away who reportedly was born about 1735. In 1798 Jenny and Lewis had their Sally, and Hanna named her new baby Sally as well. We also have Aggy’s Sally, born in 1812. This doesn’t include the Sally who appare
ntly accompanied Jefferson’s sister, Anna Scott Marks, on a visit. See THOMAS JEFFERSON: THE GARDEN AND FARM BOOKS 240, 244–246, 248, 300, 383–84, 387, 389–90, 446, 465, 469, 471. This may not include every “Sally,” nor am I certain that some of these entries do not refer to the same “Sally.”

  10. Id. at 390.

  11. To add to the confusion, Thomas Jefferson’s brother and favorite grandson were named, respectively, Randolph Jefferson and Jefferson Randolph. While the grandson went by the name “Jeff,” his full name was Thomas Jefferson Randolph, which causes still more confusion because his father (daughter Martha’s husband) was Thomas Mann Randolph, who had a half-brother also named Thomas Mann Randolph. Both Thomas Mann Randolph and Thomas Jefferson Randolph were occasionally referred to as “Col. Randolph.”

  12. See, e.g., FAWN M. BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON: AN INTIMATE HISTORY 238 (1974); JOSEPH J. ELLIS, AMERICAN SPHINX 85 (1996).

  13. Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 26, 1787, in 11 THE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 502 (Julian P. Boyd, ed., 1955).

  14. Id., June 27, 1787, at 503. While Fawn Brodie attempts to dismiss Captain Ramsay’s negative comments about Sally Hemings’ talents by assuming he wished to ravish her on the trip back to America, an even more “creative” approach is found in E. M. Halliday’s post-DNA volume Understanding Thomas Jefferson (which appropriately is dedicated to “the memory of Fawn Brodie”). He notes that Abigail Adams estimated that Sally was “about 15 or 16,” and concludes:

  [T]he most sensible interpretation of Abigail’s overestimate of Sally’s age—for she was only fourteen—is that the girl was already physically a woman, with well-developed breasts that must have been obvious despite her nondescript shipboard attire. It must have made Mrs. Adams nervous to think of this nubile creature living under the same roof in Paris with a master who, she was aware, loved attractive young women and had been without a sexual partner (as far as she knew) for a long time now.

  Being Abigail, she took action, or at least made a stab at it. She found a willing ally in Captain Ramsay. …After consulting with him, she sat down and wrote Jefferson to bring him up to date on Polly’s state of mind. …[I]t is an index of Abigail’s apparent apprehension about having Sally join the household in Paris that …she was so ready to block a brother-sister reunion. …

  E. M. HALLIDAY, UNDERSTANDING THOMAS JEFFERSON 86–87 (2001).

  Professor Fawn Brodie would no doubt have loved the approach, which to its credit at least avoids the stereotyping of Captain Ramsay. But being one year off in estimating Sally’s age hardly warrants such a complex explanation, and there is not the slightest bit of historical evidence to support it. There is certainly no reason to assume that Abigail Adams thought Thomas Jefferson had a special fondness for “young” (teenaged) women. The youngest women we do know he was attracted to during that period of his life were roughly twice the age of Sally Hemings. It may be worth noting that a Monticello slave who knew Sally at the time she left for Paris estimated her age to be “about eleven years old” at the time. See MEMOIRS OF A MONTICELLO SLAVE, reprinted in JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 4. As will be discussed, Monticello overseer Edmund Bacon described Sally as “a little girl” when she left for Paris.

  15. Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 6, 1787, in 11 THE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 551 (1955).

  16. Polly reached her ninth birthday shortly after arriving in Paris.

  17. Ten days after arriving in the comfort of the Adams home in London, Polly was still so upset that Abigail Adams told her father: “[S]he last evening …was thrown into all her former distresses, and bursting into Tears, told me it would be as hard to leave me as it was her Aunt Epps [sic]. She has been so often deceived that she will not quit me for a moment lest she should be carried away. Nor can I scarcely prevail upon her to see [Jefferson’s servant] Petit.” Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 6, 1787, in 11 THE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 551.

  18. Jefferson to Elizabeth Wayles Eppes, July 28, 1787, in id. at 634.

  19. JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 4.

  20. Reprinted in id. at 100.

  21. Id. at 102.

  22. Id.

  23. Id.

  24. The “sister” may have been Betsey Hemings, who belonged to the Eppes family.

  25. Quoted in STANTON, FREE SOME DAY 114.

  26. In addition to having no surviving writings by Sally Hemings, her son Madison reportedly stated that he learned to read by persuading Jefferson’s white grandchildren to teach him his letters. (See Chapter Four.) Had Sally been literate, one might have expected her to play some role in teaching her children to read and write.

  27. Monticello Report, Appendix F at 2.

  28. On the other hand, it may be significant that Madison is not quoted as attributing his stories to his mother. If he based them on Callender’s allegations or derivative stories, or even made them up, he might have been reluctant to attribute them to his deceased mother. Then again, perhaps he did attribute them to Sally and this point did not make it into the Wetmore article. Once again, we simply do not know.

  29. See Chapter Four.

  30. Joseph J. Ellis, Jefferson: Post-DNA, 57 WILLIAM & MARY Q. 127 (Jan. 2000).

  31. Id.

  32. BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 467.

  33. DUMAS MALONE, JEFFERSON AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 136 (1951). Adams says she arrived on July 16. WILLIAM HOWARD ADAMS, THE PARIS YEARS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 220 (1997).

  34. Eric S. Lander & Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Father, NATURE Nov. 5, 1998, vol. 396, issue no. 6706 at 13.

  35. ADAMS, THE PARIS YEARS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 221.

  36. ELLIS, AMERICAN SPHINX 82.

  37. See, e.g., EDWARD DUMBAULD, THOMAS JEFFERSON: AMERICAN TOURIST 63 (1946); GEORGE GREEN SHACKELFORD, THOMAS JEFFERSON’S TRAVELS IN EUROPE 13 (1995).

  38. The use of the term “fantasy” here is not intended to exclude the possibility that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings found each other attractive or even produced children together, but rather refers to the romantic tale of “Sally” and “Tom” dancing across Paris and Washington that is so contrary to known evidence as to be almost certainly untrue. Surely, had such an “affair” been so indiscreet, someone would have made note of it for history.

  39. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 163.

  40. Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Research Committee, Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Jan. 2000 (hereinafter referred to as Monticello Report) Appendix H at 2.

  41. STANTON, FREE SOME DAY 109.

  42. James A. Bear, Jr., The Hemings Family of Monticello, VIRGINIA CAVALCADE, (Autumn 1979), 85. See also 16 PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON xxxi (1961).

  43. BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 228.

  44. “There are indications that his [Madison’s] mother Sally received some formal instruction while in France.” GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 149.

  45. Id. at 163.

  46. See Chapter Four.

  47. Monticello Report, Appendix H at 3. See also, BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 233 (suggesting this was to provide a chaperone for Sally while Jefferson was away from Paris).

  48. Thomas Gibbons to Jonathan Dayton, Dec. 20, 1802. This portion of the letter is quoted by Professor Gordon-Reed. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 171.

  49. Id. (This portion of the letter, the original of which is located in the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, is quoted by neither Professor Gordon-Reed nor the Monticello Report.)

  50. BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 234.

  51. Monticello Report, Appendix H at 3.

  52. STANTON, FREE SOME DAY 117.

  53. Monticello Report, Appendix H at 3; Bear, The Hemings Family of Monticello 85.

  54. Monticello Report, Appendix H at 3.

  55. Id.

  56. [Samuel E. Wetmore], Life Among the Lowly, Number 1. Madison Hemings., PIKE COUNTY REPUBLICAN, Mar. 13, 1873, reprinted in Monticello Report, Appendix E at 27–28. Former Monticello slave Peter
Fossett told a journalist in 1898 that “Mr. Jefferson allowed his grandson to teach any of his slaves who desired to learn, and Lewis Randolph first taught me how to read.” Once the Slave of Thomas Jefferson: The Rev. Mr. Fossett, of Cincinnati, Recalls the Sage of Monticello—Reminiscences of Jefferson, Lafayette, Madison and Monroe, THE WORLD (New York), Jan. 30, 1898, at 33.

  57. JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 104.

  58. Id. at 100.

  59. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 178.

  60. Monticello Report, Appendix H at 4.

  61. Lucia Stanton, “Responses to Bob Turner’s questions of 14 November 2000,” attachment to e-mail from Dan Jordan to Robert Turner, Dec. 8, 2000, 4:22 PM, question 12.

  62. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 259.

  63. BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 50.

  64. Monticello Report, Appendix E.

  65. 2 JEFFERSON’S MEMORANDUM BOOKS 1502 (James A. Bear, Jr. & Lucia C. Stanton, eds. 1997).

  66. Id.

  67. 1 id. 729, 731.

  68. 2 id. 1053.

  69. 1 id. 685.

  70. Id. 731.

  71. Id. 690, 718, 721, 722, 725 (paid small wage in 1788–1789).

  72. Sally Hemings is also mentioned by the editors of the published edition of the Memorandum Books in a half dozen footnotes. See 1 id. 285, 677, 686, 746; 2 id. 1299, 1408.

  73. See pages 91–93.