Jefferson's Daughters

by Catherine Kerrison

  I am especially indebted to the many archivists who pointed me in all manner of helpful directions. I thank the staff of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, especially Regina D. Rush; the staffs of the District of Columbia Public Library, the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center of Howard University, and the National Archives; Anna Berkes of the International Center for Jefferson Studies; Linda Eaton, head curator of textiles, Winterthur Museum; and Margaret M. O’Bryant, librarian of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society. For permission to publish images from their collections, I thank the Fenimore Art Museum, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Muscarelle Museum of Art, Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, and the Museum of Wisconsin Art.

  For enormously helpful discussions of my questions, I thank Ann Lucas Birle, Lisa A. Francavilla, Richard Guy Wilson, Martha King, and Allyson Hobbs. As are all researchers on Jefferson-related topics, I am indebted to Andrew O’Shaughnessy for his warm support of my project and his direction of the ICJS, which provides the most congenial environments in which to research, write, and discuss our work with other scholars. At Monticello I was fortunate to make a friend of Elizabeth Chew, whose passion for the Randolph sisters inspired my own. With her help, I was able to spend days poring over their schoolbooks in one of their second-story bedrooms (now renovated and open to visitors, owing to Elizabeth’s research). She generously met with two Villanova student groups I brought to Monticello and put me in touch with Greg Graham, the owner of Edgehill. I thank him for graciously allowing me to visit the Randolphs’ home.

  In Washington, my detective work searching for Harriet Hemings was aided and abetted by the staff of the Daughters of the American Revolution Library; Ali Rahmaan of the District of Columbia Archives; Dayle Dooley and John Kreinheder of Historic Congressional Cemetery; Daniel Stokes of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church; J. Theodore Anderson of National Presbyterian Church and Center; Hayden Bryan of St. John’s Episcopal Church; and Ruth Williams of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland. I thank Elisabeth Williamson for her gracious response to the inquiries of a stranger, opening her personal family archive to me and even providing a DNA sample.

  I have been enormously privileged to meet or speak with descendants of the extended Hemings family. I thank J. Calvin Jefferson and Karen Hughes White for their help and suggestions as I began my search for Harriet Hemings; Beverly Gray and Edna Jacques for conversations about where Harriet might have gone; and Rosemary Ghoston for her kind efforts to help me with the DNA samples that could make connections the archival records cannot.

  I am profoundly grateful for the generous institutional support this project has received from the beginning. Fellowships at the International Center for Jefferson Studies, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and the Virginia Historical Society supported my initial research. A full year’s research was supported by the American Association of University Women, supplemented by my own institution. A fellowship from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, together with a sabbatical from Villanova University, enabled a full semester devoted solely to writing. I am grateful for Villanova’s commitment to support faculty research, particularly the award of two summer grants over the course of this project and a generous subvention grant. Work in archives located in Washington was supported through the generosity of the Albert Lepage Research Fund and the department’s Summer Research Fund.

  I thank my wonderful agent, Howard Morhaim, for his immediate interest in this book and his help in preparing the proposal, and for finding it a home at Ballantine Books. Susanna Porter’s editorial pen has smoothed out the prose, as has her editorial team, and Emily Hartley has patiently ushered me through the many steps of the publication process.

  I reserve my final thanks for my friends and family who know well that I could not have finished this book without their unstinting love and support. For more hours than I can count, Wendy Hamilton Hoelscher and Sallie Cross listened to my stories of Martha, Maria, and Harriet and encouraged me to press on to bring them to the world. Elizabeth Ince Wright opened her gracious home to me on many a Washington research trip. As always, my children—Elizabeth Foster, Sarah Foster, and Justin Foster and his wife, Dani—are my raison d’être. I thank them for their love and unending pride in me, which will always mean more to me than the most glowing accolade the world can give.

  I dedicate this book to James P. Whittenburg, my former professor and mentor, to thank him for setting me on this scholarly path and for his continued friendship, guidance, and encouragement over the years. A dedication is but a token; it cannot come close to repaying a debt. But I hope it conveys something of my deep gratitude and respect.

  As I have written this book, I have had the happy experience of discovering, as Jefferson did, that “grandchildren…furnish me great resources of happiness.” I hope that, unlike Jefferson’s daughters, Everett, Luke, and Madeleine will know the grace of living in a world that respects the dignity of every human being.

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