8. See Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968), 7–11.
9. T. H. Breen, "Creative Adaptations, Peoples and Cultures," in Colonial British American: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era, ed. Jack P. Greene and J. R. Poole (Baltimore, 1984), 202, discussing intellectual historians’ engagements with "study of white attitudes about blacks and Indians," and noting, "West Africans possessed an image of the white man that was extremely unflattering. Blacks seem to have associated the color white, at least on human beings, with a number of negative attributes, including evil."
10. Ibid., 200.
11. Philip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 62–70.
12. T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, "Myne Owne Ground": Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640–1676 (New York, 1980). The authors argue that there was a "possibility of a genuinely multiracial society…during the years before Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676." Nathaniel Bacon led a group of lower-class whites and blacks in a revolt against his relation by marriage, Governor William Berkeley, and his upper-class supporters. The property-poor rebels wanted land that belonged to a Native American group with whom the white government officials, who had already gathered their large estates in land, had made agreements. This show of solidarity between poor whites and blacks taught the upper class at least two valuable lessons: (1) if they wanted to continue to rule, they had to drive a wedge between the two groups who might have reason to join together against them; and (2) it was in their interest to have a thoroughly subjugated work force, i.e., slaves who would be in no position to demand a share of benefits within Virginian society.
13. "Whereas some doubts have arisin whether children that are slaves by birth, by charity and piety of their owners made pertakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme, should by virtue of their baptisme be made ffree, its is enacted…that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or ffreedom; that diverse masters, ffreed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavour the propagation of christianity by permitting…slaves…to be admitted to the sacrament." An act declaring that baptisme of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage (Act II, Sept. 1667), in William Waller Hening, comp., The Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619, 13 vols. (Richmond, Va., 1809–23), 2:260.
14. Negro Womens children to serve according to the condition of the mother (Act XII, Dec. 1662), in Hening, comp., Statutes at Large, 2:170. For an extensive and informative discussion of how Virginians constructed racial and sexual identities, see, generally, Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1997). This is the theme of the entire work, but chap. 8 deals directly with the time period that laid the foundation for the world that Elizabeth Hemings and her African mother encountered in the first half of the eighteenth century in Virginia.
15. Brown, Good Wives, 132; Warren M. Billings, "The Cases of Fernando and Elizabeth Key: A Note on the Status of Blacks in Seventeenth-Century Virginia," WMQ, 3d ser., 30 (1973): 467–74. Fernando was a slave seeking freedom because "he was a Christian and had been several years in England." Key was the daughter of Thomas Key and a slave woman. She brought suit, citing the English common law rule that said that children followed the status of their fathers. Fernando lost his case, but Key was successful after a nonsuit was entered against her opponents.
16. Winthrop D. Jordan, "American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British Colonies," WMQ, 3d ser., 19 (1962): 183–200. See also Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (New York, 1980), 134–35 on scientific racism.
17. Gordon-Reed, TJ and SH, 245. Port Anne (College Landing), a mile from Williamsburg’s center, functioned "throughout the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth century as Williamsburg’s major port, linking it to local and European trade routes via the James River." Capitol Landing, a mile to the north, linked "Williamsburg to the Chesapeake by way of Queen’s Creek and the York River." Andrew C. Edwards, Archeology at Port Anne: A Report on Site CL7, an Early-17th Century Colonial Site (Colonial Williamsburg Archeological Report, 1987).
18. Philip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 81.
19. Henrico County Deed Book, 1744–48, April 29, 1746.
20. Henrico Co. Deeds & Wills, 1725–1737, no. 2, part 1, Nov. 17, 1733.
21. Ibid. Both names recur in the Hemings family line. Sarah appears more frequently, but that could be due to simple preference. For the will of John Wayles, see Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine 6 (1924–25): 269.
22. Henrico Co. Deeds & Wills, 1725–1737, p. 277. Cited in note 19 above.
23. Frederick Dorman, Ancestors and Descendants of Francis Epes I (Petersburg, Va., 1992). See, generally, Morgan, "Headrights and Headcounts"; Parent, Foul Means, cited above.
24. Parent, Foul Means, 42–47, discussing the "coup" that black headrights were for the "great planter class" for the period their use was allowed, noting that William Byrd and Ralph Wormeley’s "applications accounted for 44.2 percent of black headrights used in patenting land from 1635 to 1699" (p. 44). The practice conflicted with the Board of Trade’s desire to promote homesteads over land speculating, and eventually the practice was outlawed, but not before vast acreages were taken up by large planters.
25. Dorman, Francis Epes I, 58.
26. See Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 (Chapel Hill, 1982). Edward A. Wyatt IV, "Newmarket of the Virginia Turf," WMQ, 2d ser., 17 (1937): 481–95, noting that horse "racing appeared in southern Virginia at an early date; a race is known to have been held at Colonel Eppes’s store at Bermuda Hundred in 1678" (p. 482). The family continued to be associated with Newmarket well into the nineteenth century.
2: John Wayles: The Immigrant
1. Jefferson Family Bible, LVa, listing the date of the Wayles and Eppes marriage as May 3, 1746. For a discussion of white women’s property rights in Virginia, see Linda L. Sturtz, Within Her Power: Propertied Women in Colonial Virginia (New York, 2002).
2. Malone, Jefferson, 1:153
3. Jefferson Family Bible, LVa.
4. MB, 329 n. 15. The Forest was said to have been burned down during the Civil War. "Historical and Genealogical Notes," WMQ, 6 (1897): 63. In 1728 Parliament enacted a statute designed to better regulate the profession of law, which in England was and is separated between solicitors, who prepare cases in the offices, and barristers, who argue cases in court. The 1728 law required registration of every man trained as a solicitor; when he entered the profession, and with whom he trained. The Attorneys and Solicitors Act of 1728 (2 Geo. 2, c.23). Wayles does not appear on any of these lists. He was thirteen years old when the statute was passed, well before the age that he would have been in training, and he was in America by 1740. Had he been trained as a solicitor, his name should have appeared some time in the 1730s. Nor does Wayles appear in any of the archives of the Inns of Court, whose records of barristers go back to the 1500s. Lists, even those required by law, are compiled by human beings and are therefore fallible, as are the people who search them. But other evidence strongly suggests that Wayles received his legal training after he came to Virginia. Attorney Admitted to the Court of Common Pleas, CP 69/1, CP 70/1. National Archives London.
5. Lancashire Record Office, Records of St. Mary’s Parish, St. Mary Ref. PR3262/1/2, Jan. 1714–March 25/1724.
6. Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, ed. Pat Rogers (Exeter, 1989), 195, 193.
7. Melinda Elder, The Slave Trade and the Economic Development of Eighteenth-Century Lancaster (Halifax, 1992), 19, 30, 169–70. Elder cautions that Lancaster’s participation in the trade may be undervalued because many Lancaster merchants cleared "a number of their vessels from or via Liverpool" in the last decades of the eighteenth century, minimizing the amou
nt of Lancaster-based capital that helped fuel the trade. Ibid., 171–73, 210.
8. Ibid., 210.
9. Lancashire Records Office, Records of St. Mary’s Parish, "Will of Edward Wayles of Lancaster, Butcher, Admon. By Elizabeth Wayles, Widow, unto John, Thomas, Edward, and Anne Wayles the natural children of said Edward."
10. Genealogical Notes of the Lee Family, Papers of Richard Bland Lee, MSS1 L5153 b 13-16, VHS.
11. "Virginia Gleanings in England," VMHB 19 (1911): 289. Charles Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson of Petersburg, Virginia, Blacksmith," WMQ, 3d ser., 8 (1951): 580. Available evidence suggests that Isaac Jefferson’s family name was Granger. In later years he aparently used both Granger and Jefferson. I will use the name Jefferson when referring to him but will use Granger when referring to his relatives. Monticello Research Department, Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
12. Virginia B. Price, "Constructing to Command: Rivalries between Green Spring and the Governor’s Palace, 1677–1722," VMHB 113 (2005): 2–45; Jesse Dimmick, "Green Spring," WMQ, 2d ser., 9 (1929): 129–30; Virginia Gazette, Sept. 1, 1738; A. B. Shepperson, John Paradise and Lucy Ludwell (Richmond, Va., 1943).
13. Will of Philip Ludwell of Westminster, Middlesex, May 6, 1767; Prob. 11/928, Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury; Prerogative Court of Canterbury and Related Probate Jurisdictions: Will Registers. For the reference to Wayles in the Virginia Gazette, see discussion and notes at pp. 19–20. Paul C. Nagel, The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family (New York, 1990), 127–30.
14. The will of Philip Ludwell, cited above, n. 13, gives Corbin’s and Nicholas’s titles. See also "Williamsburg—The Old Colonial Capital," WMQ 16 (1907): 33, describing Nicholas’s close friendship with the popular royal governor Botetourt. Wayles and Waller were described as "Esqrs. Attorneys at Law." Waller was also a representative in the Colonial Assembly in 1752, along with Carter Burwell.
15. Richard Corbin to Philip Ludwell, May 7, 1767; Richard Corbin to Philip Ludwell, Aug. 13, 1764, M 2287 Special Collections, Alderman Library, University of Virginia; Corbin to Lucy Ludwell, May 28, 1768, "Corbin Papers from Colonial Williamsburg," M 2287 Special Collections, Alderman Library, University of Virginia; Robert Carter Nicholas to an unknown correspondent, Jan. 5, 1770. "Understanding after I parted with you that Mr. Wayles & Mr. Waller seem very desirous that the division of Col. Ludwell’s Estate should be immediately completed…." Lee Family Papers, 1638–1867, 1L51f190–415, sect. 94–114, VHS.
16. John M. Hemphill II, ed., "John Wayles Rates His Neighbors," VMHB 66 (1958): 302–6.
17. "Williamsburg—The Old Colonial Capital," 9, 10.
18. Ibid., 10–11, 23. See also Carville V. Earle, "Environment, Disease, and Mortality in Early Virginia," in The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society, ed. Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman (Chapel Hill, 1979), 96–125.
19. Malone, Jefferson, 1:62; "Williamsburg—The Old Colonial Capital," 14.
20. A. G. Roeber, "Authority, Law, and Custom: The Rituals of Court Day in Tidewater Virginia, 1720 to 1750," WMQ, 3d ser., 37 (1980): 29–52. See p. 30, on how "the ‘Dignity and Decorum’ of court rituals—the dramaturgical exercises—in which propertied authority and communal custom defined the shared values of the culture by means of law."
21. Virginia Gazette, March 1744; Virginia Gazette, Oct. 24, 1745.
22. Minutes of the Executive Council of Virginia, April 1741, LVa.
23. Maria (Taylor) Byrd to William Byrd III, April 1760, MSS1B996b13 Byrd, VHS.
24. Maria (Taylor) Byrd to William Byrd III, Sept. 23, 1739, MSS1B9963b10 Byrd, VHS.
25. Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, Aug. 13, 1767; ibid., May 18, 1769; Rind’s Virginia Gazette, May 15, 1769; Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, May 16, 1771; Rind’s Virginia Gazette, May 23, 1771; Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, Sept. 24, 1772; Rind’s Virginia Gazette, Oct. 8, 1772.
26. Jacob M. Price, "The Last Phase of the Virginia-London Consignment Trade: James Buchanan and Co., 1758–1768," WMQ, 3d ser., 43 (1986): 64–98. See Richard B. Sheridan, "The British Credit Crisis of 1772 and the American Colonies," Journal of Economic History 20 (June 1960): 161–86, quoting John Wayles’s description of how easy credit affected Virginians consumption of "luxury" items.
27. For documents related to the failed Prince of Wales venture, see Papers, 15:642–67. Note in particular Farrell & Jones to Wayles and Randolph, Feb. 3, 1772, announcing that the Prince of Wales, one of two ships bound for Virginia, was carrying 400 enslaved Africans, and John Wayles letter to Farrell & Jones of Sept. 24, 1772, confirming the arrival of the ship with "280 slaves." The voyage took longer than expected, which may have accounted for the large number of deaths. On April 3, 1773, Farrell & Jones wrote to Wayles & Randolph saying that "the mortality amongst the slaves could not be prevented."
28. Papers of William Jones, Somerset Record Office, Somerset, Eng.
29. Hemphill, ed., "John Wayles Rates His Neighbors," 302–6.
30. Ibid., 303.
31. Ibid., 305.
32. Ibid. John Wayles, Benjamin Waller, and Richard Hanson advertised themselves as the attorneys for John Lidderdale, arranging for the sale of land and enslaved people in an advertisement in the Virginia Gazette on Feb. 22, 1770. Ironically, on that same day the paper carried a notice of the destruction by fire of TJ’s home at Shadwell.
33. TJ to Daniel Hylton, March 17, 192, Papers, 23:290.
34. Hemphill, "John Wayles Rates His Neighbors," 305.
35. Land Office Patents No. 32, 1752–56 (vols. 1 and 2, pp. 1–715), p. 675, Feb. 14, 1756 (500 acres); ibid., (reel 30) (1,000 acres); 254 acres between Angola Creek and Great Guinea Creek, Land Office Patents No. 33, 1756–61 (vols. 1, 2, 3, and 4, pp. 1–1095), p. 371 (reels 31–32), Feb. 14, 1756; ibid., p. 1054 (reels 31–32), Aug. 7, 1761, LVa; Executive Journals of the Council of Virginia, vol. 5, Nov. 1, 1739–May 7, 1754, p. 454, LVa.
36. Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, July 7, 1766; Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1999), 39–43, does not mention Wayles’s involvement but gives a concise description of the political and economic interests at conflict in the trial.
37. Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, Sept. 9, 1766.
38. Ibid., Jan. 1, 1767.
39. Ibid., Jan. 8, 1767.
40. Ibid., Oct. 10, 1766.
41. Ibid., Oct. 17, 1767.
42. Ibid.; "Old Virginia Editors," WMQ 7 (1898): 9–17, 15.
3: The Children of No One
1. John Wayle’s will, April 15, 1760, Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine 6 (1924–25): 269.
2. Jefferson Family Bible, LVa.
3. Farm Book, 15, 18; Stanton, Free Some Day, 177 n. 178; Lucia Stanton, "Monticello to Main Street: The Hemings Family and Charlottesville," Magazine of Albermarle CountyHistory 55 (1997): 125. Mary Hemings’s grandson described her as an octoroon, which is almost certainly incorrect. If Mary Hemings’s father had been white, she would have been a quadroon like her siblings Robert, James, Thenia, Critta, Peter, and Sally Hemings. Hemings’s situation is interesting. She is alternately described as Mary Hemings or Mary Bell by herself, Mary "Wells" by Thomas Bell, or Wales by a historian of Charlottesville. See Edgar Woods, Albermarle County in Virginia, Giving Some Account of What It Was by Nature, What It Was Made by Man, and Some of the Men Who Made It (1901; reprint, Berryville, Va., 1984). As was noted earlier, Mary was the name of John Wayles’s sister. Madison Hemings, who knew Mary, does not mention her as a Wayles daughter. As of now, there appears to be no demonstrated oral history among the descendants of Mary Hemings that she was a Wayles daughter. It may well be that Mary Hemings’s father was white and that the talk about Elizabeth Hemings and John Wayles led members of their community to assume that any of her older and lighter-skinned children belonged to him.
4. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint (Chapel Hill
, 1998), 81. "As early as the second decade of the eighteenth century, Virginia’s slave population began to grow from natural increase, an unprecedented event for any New World slave population." Morgan also notes (p. 87), "Whereas women in eighteenth-century England began childbearing in their midtwenties slave women in eighteenth-century North America tended to be in their late teens when they conceived their first child."
5. Wayles’s will, cited above, n. 1.
6. Farm Book, 24.
7. See Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860 (Chapel Hill, 1996), 230–37, on the subject of exclusion of testimony of blacks.
8. Robert F. Bennett, then senator from Utah, commenting on the strength of candidate George W. Bush, listed the possible catastrophic things that could derail Bush’s nomination. "Unless George W. steps in front of a bus, some woman comes forward, let’s say some black woman, comes forward with an illegitimate child that he fathered within the last 18 months, or some other scenario that you could be equally creative in thinking of, George W. Bush will be the nominee." Bennett’s remarks caused a furor, and he apologized for them. New York Times, Aug. 17, 1999, sec. A, p. 12, col. 1.
9. Stewart E. Stark, "Estoppel in Property Law," Nebraska Law Review 77 (1980): 756, 759–69.
10. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York, 1991).
11. Joshua D. Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861 (Chapel Hill, 2003), 4.
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