Twenty-one-year-old Robert Hemings accompanied Jefferson on his journeys. By 1782 he had traveled so extensively with Jefferson and alone that James Bear wrote of him that “of all the third generation Hemingses…Robert’s life was the least onerous as a bondsman and the most productive as a freedman.”5 Bear was, no doubt, highlighting the fact that Hemings, unlike the vast majority of enslaved people, moved about the country with almost “unrestricted” movement. One says “almost” because Hemings was still at Jefferson’s beck and call. When Jefferson summoned “Bob,” he arrived.
Robert Hemings, his older brother, Martin, to a lesser extent, and his younger brother, James, lived their lives as slaves essentially bound to Jefferson, and when they were not serving him, Jefferson sometimes did not know where these men were. When he was away and planned to return home for a visit, he might write to family members and direct them to find out where Martin was and tell him to be at Monticello by the time he got there. Once, referring to Robert Hemings, Jefferson wrote, “If you know any thing of Bob, I should be glad of the same notice to him, tho’ I suppose him to be in the neighborhood of Fredericksbg. and in that case I will have him notified thro’ Mr. Fitzhugh.” These men had developed lives of their own outside of Monticello and the immediate Charlottesville area. Richmond recurred as a frequent site of their activities. Jefferson wrote to a resident of the town in search of the Hemings brothers: “If you should know any thing of my servants Martin and Bob, and could give them notice to be at Monticello by the 20th. I should be obliged to you.”6
Robert and James Hemings seemed to alternate duties to Jefferson. When one was not available, the other stepped in. After Jefferson was elected to Congress in June of 1783, James rather than Robert accompanied him and Patsy Jefferson through the Shenandoah Valley up to Philadelphia.7 This relatively loose arrangement, and the experiences the Hemings males gained while on their own, seems to have heightened their expectations about what they were entitled to do in life. Theirs was a more open existence that taught them how to function—and that they could function—in the world outside of slavery at Monticello.
Jefferson’s memorandum books during the months he was waiting to go to France record numerous payments to “Bob” for, among other things, household expenses, clothing, shoes, and trips to Wilmington, Eppington, Richmond, and Baltimore. Several entries are particularly significant. On February 1, 1784, while Hemings and Jefferson were in Annapolis, there is a reference—“Pd. Barber for 1.month20/”—and then another—“Bob begins with barber @ 15/per month.” Nine days later—“Pd for barber’s apparatus for Bob/30”—and then a final entry the following day fleshes out the story—“shavg. box for Bob 7/6.” Robert Hemings was in training to become a barber. He had a two-month apprenticeship with a man named Le Bas and was the first member of his family to learn a trade.8
Whether becoming a barber was Hemings’s idea or Jefferson’s is unknown. Being a barber, however, was considered a high-status occupation for men of African descent, during and even after slavery. It was to Hemings’s decided advantage to have a defined skill in a trade that could bring him income. If it was solely Jefferson’s idea, there is no indication how he thought Hemings would use his training, and nothing in the years to come sheds any additional light on the original plan. Whatever the purpose, Hemings gained a new skill that he could use during those times when he was not required to be with Jefferson, which may have been the impetus for the apprenticeship. As things turned out, he would need something else to do for a long time, because Jefferson made another important decision (we do not exactly when) that affected the Hemings family: whenever the final word came that he was to start for France, it would be James, rather than Robert, Hemings who would accompany him.
From the New World to the Old
James Hemings was nineteen years old when he received word that he was going to France. Why Jefferson chose him instead of his brother Robert, who was older and had been the most closely associated with him, is an interesting question. Robert Hemings’s new skills as a barber would have been useful to Jefferson beyond what he knew about being a manservant. Taking him along for what Jefferson expected to be a two-year stint would seem to have been the most natural thing to do. On the other hand, Robert was very likely already a married man, and Jefferson could have been acceding to his desire to be with his wife, something he would do in the years to come. The decision could also simply have been based on Jefferson’s assessment of the younger man’s temperament and potential talent for the profession he wanted to bring him to Paris to learn: James Hemings was going to France to study cooking and to become a French chef in Jefferson’s household there and, when they returned, at Monticello.
We get the first hint of Jefferson’s plan for Hemings in a letter dated May 7, 1784, that he wrote to his soon to be secretary in France, William Short.
I propose for a particular purpose to carry my servant Jame with me…. If you conclude to join me I would wish you to order Jame to join and attend you without a moment’s delay. If you decline the trip, be so good as to direct that he shall immediately come on to me at Philadelphia.9
Short, who was in Richmond, replied, noting the small amount of time he had “to get Jame down here and to reach Philadelphia.”
The Moment I recieved your Letter, I looked out for an Express to send to Albemarle. Whilst in this Search I was informed Jame was in Town with a Mr. Martin whom he accompanied as a riding Valet. I sent immediately to his Lodgings and was told he had set out that Morning to some Place and would return probably in a Day or two. To-day he returned. To-morrow Jame goes off on his way to Albemarle.10
That was not the end of the matter. Short wrote again the same day and addressed the issue of how to get Hemings to Jefferson in time to make the preparations for France.
Jame sets out to Albemarle this Morning. My Intention was, as it was impossible for me to set out immediately that he should go on from Monticello to the Northward. But a Gentleman who is going from hence immediately to Philadelphia wishes very much that he should accompany him. As it will be much more secure for him to travel under his Wing than alone, I have agreed, if the Gentleman, Capt. Bohannon, can await his Return from Albemarle, that he may come this Way. As the Gentleman can furnish him an Horse I wished Jame to go straight from hence to Philadelphia, but he insisted on seeing Albemarle first. Jame has gone now to get the decisive Answer of the Gentleman, whether he could await his Return from Monticello and this is to determine his Route.11
Before Short could finish the letter James returned with an answer.
Jame has this Moment come here and says Capt. Bohannon cannot set out as soon as he had intended by 10 or 12 Days. He will therefore go on from Albemarle. He has been Yesterday Evening and this Morning in Search of an Horse to hire. I understood from him last Night that he had procured one, but this Morning he tells me the Man of whom he was to have the Horse has disappointed him.12
This exchange reveals important aspects of Hemings’s way of life, his personality, his knowledge of Jefferson, and his relationship with his own family. The young man was living in Richmond, having gotten a place to stay on his own and found work that paid enough for him to support himself—not only to get housing but also to rent a horse for travel. He, like his brothers, knew how to ride and did so routinely. Horses were symbols of power and prestige in Virginia. Most enslaved people, and poor whites, walked to their destinations, sometimes for miles. Hemings, atop a horse, actually saw the world from a different perspective, and was seen in a particular way by the people whom he passed on the road. He had known contacts in Richmond because, as Short looked for a way to relay Jefferson’s message to him, the people he spoke to about Hemings knew who he was, that he was already in town, and where he was staying.
One part of Short’s letter—his statement that it would be “much more secure” for Hemings to travel “under the Wing” of Captain Bohannon—reminds us of the problem with taking too rosy a view of Hemings’s situat
ion. Travel with companions always provides additional security for travelers, but even adjusting for the differences in Bohannon’s and Hemings’s statuses, Short’s notion of Hemings being “under the Wing” of Bohannon for the sake of his security hints at something else: Hemings was in potential danger when he traveled about alone. His youth was probably not the issue. A nineteen-year-old male during that time would not have been seen as requiring another man’s protection to travel.
Hemings, however, was not just any nineteen-year-old male. He was a male slave. The institution of racially based slavery was so entrenched in Virginia that any person of African ancestry was presumed to be enslaved. On that point, Short’s expression of concern perhaps gives us another bit of important information about Hemings. This young “bright mulatto” was exactly that—a very light-skinned person who was also recognizably of African origin. That alone was reason to fear for his safety from the people whom he might meet on the road, particularly as he moved beyond his normal haunts in the environs of Charlottesville and Richmond. Slave patrols sometimes met blacks traveling alone in Virginia and assaulted them physically and verbally. For African Americans like Hemings, meeting random white people on the road, even if not in organized patrols, carried a potential hazard.
The Hemings brothers’ relatively free movement on the roads of Virginia was never totally free, because it took place in a slave society under a regime of white supremacy. Slavery was more than just the relationship between an individual master and an individual slave. The entire white community was involved in maintaining the institution and the racial rules that grew up around it, rules that often required interfering with an individual master’s decisions about how he wanted to handle his slaves. As far as Jefferson was concerned, the Hemings brothers could come and go as they pleased, so long as they showed up when he needed them. The community at large, however, had an interest in the unsupervised travel of enslaved people. As early as 1680, Virginia statutes mandated that slaves who traveled without supervision of a master had to carry a pass. If they were caught without one, they could receive up to “twenty lashes.”13 Virginia passed a law in 1782 providing that slaves who were “permitted to go at large as free or to hire themselves out would be seized and sold.”14 Given these restrictions, the Hemings males may have carried a pass from Jefferson stating who they were and that they had permission to be on the road.
Short’s role as an intermediary between Hemings and Jefferson reveals another crucial feature of the Virginian slave society in which they lived: it was a place of densely packed social and family connections, even between masters and slaves. Short was the nephew of Robert and Henry Skipwith, through his mother, Elizabeth Skipwith. The Skipwith brothers were married to John Wayles’s daughters Tabitha and Anne Wayles, respectively. These women were James Hemings’s half sisters. Short was twelve when his uncle Robert married Tabitha Wayles, and fourteen when Henry married Anne.15 He had a connection to the Hemings family by these marriages that predated his connection to Jefferson, who came into his life prominently when he was an older teenager.
One might think that, having heard the directive “he shall immediately come on to me at Philadelphia,” Hemings would be on the first available transport out of Richmond going north. He decided instead to go immediately to Monticello. Short clearly wanted Hemings to follow Jefferson’s direction, but he told his mentor that Hemings “insisted on seeing Albemarle first.”16 Hemings knew Jefferson well enough to know that he had some leeway to interpret “immediately,” and he did that in a way that allowed him to attend to his own personal concerns. Going to France was, after all, a momentous event. Anyone not used to sea travel might be humbled by the prospect of crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Short, who expected to join Jefferson, probably knew and mentioned to Hemings that Jefferson was supposed to be away for about two years. So the young man had at least some idea of what he was facing, and it was to be nothing like his accustomed jaunts between Virginia and other towns along the eastern seaboard, where he was always within easy striking distance of home. His mother and siblings were at Monticello, and he wanted to see them before he left the country.
Hemings need not have hurried. He made it to Jefferson and Patsy in Philadelphia in enough time before they went east to catch the vessel that would take them to Europe. Robert Hemings traveled with them. Even after they arrived in Boston, following stops in New York and other parts of New England, there were additional delays as Jefferson found “on his arrival that there [was] no vessel going for France from any Eastern port.”17 During this waiting period Jefferson repaid money he had borrowed from Robert Hemings and bought him shoes and clothes. He then made arrangements for Hemings to travel through New York with “30 dollars to carry him home” to Virginia, a valediction that would cover the next five years. The next day he wrote to Nicholas Lewis, who was overseeing his plantations in his absence, to tell him that Robert Hemings should be allowed to hire himself out.18 After two weeks of waiting, James Hemings and Thomas and Patsy Jefferson left Boston Harbor on the Ceres, at four in the morning on July 5, 1784, with six other passengers on the ship.19 This young man, of English, African, and Welsh extraction, was the first of his family to reverse the route over the ocean his ancestors had crossed on their very different journeys to Virginia.
The voyage was uneventful, the weather fair, and the Ceres, a brand-new vessel, made the crossing in a mere three weeks. The party “landed at West Cowes,” on the Isle of Wight, on July 26.20 Patsy had become ill at some point and required the services of a doctor while they were in port. This delayed their departure to Portsmouth, on the mainland of England, from where they were to take a ferry across the English Channel to Le Havre, a port at the mouth of the Seine River. Unlike the smooth Atlantic voyage, the Channel crossing was an extremely choppy trek, through a terrible storm in very rude quarters. Patsy Jefferson’s cabin was so small that she had to crawl into it.21 James Hemings’s quarters would not have been any better, as he was almost certainly given an inferior berth for the trip.
Hemings and the Jeffersons arrived at Le Havre on July 31. The next day Jefferson wrote that he “gave James to bear expenses to Rouen 72f.”22 As far as we know, the young man spoke no French at the time, though he likely knew enough words or phrases to get along in a rudimentary fashion. Patsy Jefferson had received some instruction in the language before departure, and Jefferson had studied French from the time of his school years. Both had an interest in at least telling Hemings how to address the people he might meet on the journey. He went alone, through what Jefferson later described as the “fertile” and “elegantly improved” countryside of Normandy, to make arrangements for their lodgings at Rouen.23
Hemings’s destination was the ancient capital of Normandy, famous as the site where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. He accomplished his mission apparently without a problem and with great efficiency because Jefferson noted that on August 3 he had “Recd. Back from James of the money given him 36f.”24 From Rouen, Hemings and the Jeffersons made their way to Paris, on a route that took them through even more beautiful French countryside along the Seine River during harvest time. Hemings had been to the largest cities in North America and had probably seen beggars on the streets. He may not have seen so many and so aggressive a group as the ones who gathered around the Jefferson carriage at every stop. James Hemings had his first look at Paris on August 6, 1784.25
While Patsy settled into life as a student at the prestigious Abbaye de Panthemont soon after their arrival, Hemings and Jefferson lived in what would turn out to be temporary residences until October of 1785, when they moved to the Hôtel de Langeac, their permanent residence until they left country near the end of 1789. At the very beginning, there was the Hôtel d’Orléans in the rue de Richelieu for six days and then the Hôtel d’Orléans “in the rue des Petits-Augustins” for several more weeks. From there Jefferson moved into an actual house at “No 5 cul de sac Taitbout,” which he immediately set about remodeling, althou
gh he had only a one-year lease.26
In that very peripatetic first year or so in Paris, Hemings had new faces to get used to and old faces to meet in a new environment. One of Jefferson’s first orders of business after he was, to some degree, settled was to assemble a household staff. A man of his station, the diplomatic representative of a country, needed a suitable coterie of servants. Hemings could not join that group in his usual role as Jefferson’s personal attendant, because his days would be taken up training for his new profession. His replacement for a time was a man named Marc, whom Jefferson hired in late August as his “Valet de Chambre.” Marc eventually went on to become Jefferson’s maître d’hôtel until he was fired, in 1786, and replaced by Adrien Petit, who had worked for John and Abigail Adams. There were other servants, Legrand and Vendome, and a frotteur named Saget, whose job it was to wax the floors by sliding along on them “on foot-brushes,” which must have been as interesting a sight for Hemings to see for the first time as it is to imagine it now.27
Then there were the arrivals from America whom Hemings already knew, men who stayed with Jefferson at various points during his time in France. David Humphreys, the secretary to the American commission, came early on. Humphreys, who had been an “aide decamp to George Washington,” said that Jefferson’s “politeness and generosity” had led him to suggest that Humphreys stay with him while they were in “residence in Europe.” He did that for a while, but left France and returned to the United States in 1786.28 Jefferson’s protégé William Short joined the household as Jefferson’s private secretary. He lived off and on at the Hôtel de Langeac for the rest of Jefferson’s stay.29 While in Boston, Jefferson had met a man named Charles Williamos, who was also traveling to France, and, as a friendly gesture, offered him a place to stay while he was Paris. He should not have been so trusting. Williamos, who died sometime in 1785, was possibly a British spy, which may explain why he worked so hard during their time together in Boston to become “a very great intimate” of Jefferson’s.30 Over the coming years many more visitors floated in and out, using Jefferson’s residence as a hospitable place of rest and refuge where they could enjoy meals that James Hemings prepared.
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Page 18