Jefferson's Daughters

by Catherine Kerrison

  “You know we never” EWR to MJR, 27 September 1816, FLDA.

  “take care to require” EWRC to VJRT, 15 October 1830, FLDA.

  “It is well known” James Callender, Recorder (Richmond, Va.), 1 September 1802.

  articles ensued, adding details Michael Durey, “With the Hammer of Truth”: James Thomson Callender and America’s Early National Heroes (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), chapter 7.

  “Black Sal is no farce” 24 May 1811, Elijah P. Fletcher to Jesse Fletcher, Esquire of Ludlow, Vermont. Copy at ICJS.

  “Mr. Jefferson’s notorious” Journal of John Hartwell Cocke, 26 January 1853, Acc. 640.

  The unwritten rule Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood, 13, 50–51.

  “took the Dusky Sally” Henry Randall to James Parton, 1 June 1868, in Gordon-Reed, Controversy, 255.

  “dreams of freedom” Randall, Jefferson, 3:118–19.

  chose to read Jan Ellen Lewis, “The White Jeffersons,” in Lewis and Onuf, Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson, 138, 146–47.

  “the resemblance was so close” Randall to Parton, 1 June 1868, in Gordon-Reed, Controversy, 254.

  “the discomfort” MJR to EWRC, 2 August 1825, FLDA.

  According to Jeff Randall to Parton, 1 June 1868, in Gordon-Reed, Controversy, 256.

  “Remember this fact” Randall to Parton, 1 June 1868, in Gordon-Reed, Controversy, 255.

  Jefferson’s records showed Fraser D. Neiman, “Coincidence or Causal Connection? The Relationship between Thomas Jefferson’s visits to Monticello and Sally Hemings’s Conceptions,” William and Mary Quarterly 57 (January 2000): 198–210.

  “inducing the white children” Hemings, “Memoirs,” 247.

  “there is a general impression” EWRC to Joseph Coolidge, 24 October 1858, EWRC Letter Book, 98–101, Acc. 9090, ViU.

  The white family stories See Gordon-Reed, Controversy; Lewis, “White Jeffersons” and Rhys Isaac, “Monticello Stories Old and New,” in Lewis and Onuf, Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson, 114–26.

  Jeff failed to explicitly Lewis, “White Jeffersons,” 150. It would not have been Madison, who at not quite five feet eight inches lacked Jefferson’s height.

  In her feigned ignorance Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 619.

  “Irish workmen” EWRC to Joseph Coolidge, 24 October 1858, EWRC Letter Book, 100, Acc. 9090, ViU.

  “Putting domestic slavery” Diary, 30 January 1839, Birle and Francavilla, Thomas Jefferson’s Granddaughter, 198.

  “by far too moderate” CJR to VJRT, 11 August 1833, FLDA. Melinda Colbert Freeman, a former Monticello slave, was a freed person by this time, married and living in Washington. It is possible that she was related to Sally. Email communication, Lucia Stanton, 16 March 2014. Cornelia’s account also included Martha’s efforts to discipline an unruly grandson.

  But that prospect crumbled Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 604.

  Like Martha, Sally Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 559–60.

  “treated by the rest” Frederick Town Herald, reprinted in Recorder (Richmond, Va.), 8 December 1802.

  But unlike her mother Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 598.

  unlike most enslaved women Deborah Gray White, Ain’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 97.

  enforced a color hierarchy See Kathy Russell, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall, The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color Among African Americans (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 9–23.

  “The slave is always” Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 87, 88.

  Six years earlier Douglas R. Egerton, Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).

  sixty-one different phrases Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood, 204.

  “the racial order” Eva Sheppard Wolf, Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 86.

  They remained raceless Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood, 204, 208–10.

  When the 1830 census taker Stanton, Those Who Labor, 345n5.

  “Negroes retained” FB, 160.

  “run [18]22” FB, 130.

  “by Mr. Jefferson’s direction” Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 110.

  population of nearly sixty-four thousand 1820 census. census.gov/​history/​www/​fast_facts/​012344.html, accessed 14 April 2009.

  The city had attracted Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 137.

  Philadelphia’s approach to slavery The disappearance of slavery by 1820 most emphatically did not mean the disappearance of bigotry and discrimination, as black Philadelphians knew. White Philadelphians responded to the growing black population with laws and practices that increasingly restricted their rights, including barring black men from the franchise by 1836. See Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

  sent her to Philadelphia I thank Beverly Gray, historian of Monticello’s Getting Word project, for the suggestion that Harriet Hemings may have begun her free life in Philadelphia. Phone interview, 3 April 2009.

  In fact, Madison specified Hemings, “Memoirs,” 246.

  “lurking under the connivance” TJ to John Barnes, 14 June 1817, PTJDE.

  In one instance Joseph Dougherty to TJ, 3 July 1809, PTJDE. Unlike her aunt Sally, Betsy Hemmings spelled her name with two m’s.

  Paul Jennings Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

  Indeed, one historian Taylor, A Slave in the White House, 76; Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 110–11.

  “Beverley went to Washington” Hemings, “Memoirs,” 246.

  One of the last records FB, 164. “They [also] appear on the 1820–1821 cloth distribution list, a page that got separated from the FB over the years….Both of their names have brackets around them, as do the names of three others, including Billy (William Hern, born 1801), who ran away in 1820.” Communication from Lucia Stanton, 17 March 2014.

  The last time FB, 171. The list is under his corn calculations, dated January 1821.

  Sally Hemings’s name FB, 172.

  Jefferson even made FB, 165.

  “as he stood” Mary J. Randolph to VJR, 27 December 1821, FLDA.

  Hemings scholars believe Gordon-Reed, American Controversy, 33. Relying on an edited version of the Farm Book, Gordon-Reed follows an error made in The Garden and Farm Books of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Robert C. Baron (Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum, 1987), 479. Baron placed Harriet’s name under Sally’s in the year 1822. Jefferson’s Farm Book omits both Beverley’s and Harriet’s names in 1822. However, the latest record of Harriet’s presence at Monticello is early 1821 (between January and July), FB, 171.

  as a cooper TJ to Edmund Bacon, 29 November 1820. Massachusetts Historical Society, quoted at monticello.org/​site/​plantation-and-slavery/​coopering. See also, Edmund Bacon to TJ, 4 September 1819, Massachusetts Historical Society. “Davy & Beverly are with cooper they have not failed to deliver 108 barls every week since they began to make and they dress their timber as they go.”

  anything like Paul Jennings Taylor, A Slave in the White House.

  “was of good circumstances” Hemings, “Memoirs,” 246.

  We also suspect Jefferson, Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, 10.

  “She thought it” Hemings, “Memoirs,” 246.

  “By her dress and conduct” Ibid.

  In 1735, South Carolina Foster, “New Raiments of Self,” 134–35; Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 145.

  costume of an enslaved woman Linda Baumgarten, Wh
at Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 96, 120, 136; Foster, “New Raiments of Self,” 162.

  “a dozen or more” Quoted in Foster, “New Raiments of Self,” 91.

  “worked in the fields” Quoted in ibid., 171.

  clearly conscious of the ways Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 119, 122; Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal, 135–36.

  “The clothes which served” EWR to Margaret Nicholas, 26 March 1825, Acc. 1397, ViU.

  the return list Sarah Elizabeth Nicholas to Jane Nicholas Randolph, Randolphs of Edgehill, 25 June [1822], Acc. 1397, ViU. Although archivists have guessed at 1822 as the date for this letter (Margaret [Peggy] Nicholas marshaled the advice of her daughters to reply to Ellen), this letter is most likely the reply to Ellen’s dated letter of March 1825.

  The tab for Ellen’s ensemble Fifty dollars in 1822 was the equivalent of three months’ pay. Gordon-Reed, Controversy, 30.

  White women’s dress A beautiful example of this is pictured in Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal, 44.

  “a remarkably fine looking” “A Sprig of Jefferson was Eston Hemings,” Daily Scioto Gazette, Chillicothe, Ohio, 1902.

  “being with and coming” Fossett, “Once the Slave of Thomas Jefferson.”

  Beverley used to play Lucia Stanton, “Free Some Day,” in “Those Who Labor,” 116. Isaac Granger Jefferson remembered Jefferson’s brother Randolph, who would “come out among the black people, play the fiddle and dance half the night.” Jefferson, Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, 50. A white woman, however, could never be seen in such company without risking her reputation.

  We do not know Albemarle County Minute Book, 1832–1843, 12, cited in Stanton, Those Who Labor, 338n261.

  In addition, respectability dictated Dallett C. Hemphill, Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America, 1620–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 114–16, 144, 187.

  “the subject of dress” TJ to MJ, 22 December 1783, Betts and Bear, Family Letters, 22.

  “an industrious and orderly” Frederick Town Herald, reprinted in Recorder (Richmond, Va.), 8 December 1802.

  question of health and hygiene Kathleen M. Brown, Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), especially chapter 9, “Redemption.”

  questions of body control John F. Kasson, Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), 124–25.

  Far from leveling Hemphill, Bowing to Necessities, 130.

  “when she was nearly” Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 110. This is also the thinking of Lucia Stanton, communication 17 March 2014.

  “month…of unusual” MJR to Nicholas P. Trist, 8 January 1822, FDLA.

  Her husband was serving Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, 182–84.

  “the boys set off” TJ to John Hemings, 18 December 1821, Coolidge Collection, Reel 11, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  seems to have delegated Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 110.

  given James Hemings TJMB, 2:1084; TJ to MJR, 3 June 1802, Betts and Bear, Family Letters, 227.

  “Mrs. Randolph would not” Fossett, “Once the Slave of Thomas Jefferson.”

  We know Ellen traveled EWR to MJR, 19 November 1819, FDLA.

  “There was a great deal” Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello, 110.

  in the small town Edgar Woods, History of Albemarle County Virginia (Bridgewater, Va.: C. J. Carrier Company, 1900), 39.

  “woman who brings a child” TJ to JWE, 30 June 1820, in Farm Book, 45–46.

  CHAPTER 11: PASSING

  It was a good road TJ to MJR, 3 June 1802, Betts and Bear, Family Letters, 227.

  “excessively disagreeable” CJR to VJRT, 16 April 1826, Burke and Trist Family Papers, Acc. 5385ac, ViU.

  “the cool selfishness” Harriet Martineau, Society in America (New York: Saunders and Otley, 1837), 3:90.

  the solicitous concern CJR to VJRT, 16 April 1826, Acc. 5385ac, ViU.

  The hotel occupied Judah Delano, Washington Directory: Showing the Name, Occupation, and Residence of Each Head of a Family and Person in Business (Washington: William Duncan, 1822), 20.

  Its proprietor, Jesse Brown Jonathan Elliot, Historical Sketches of the Ten Miles Square Forming the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.: J. Elliot, Jr., 1830).

  numerous dancing assemblies Daily National Intelligencer, 12 December 1821.

  steamboats that served Elliot, Historical Sketches.

  embody the very principles Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 13–14; Allgor, Parlor Politics, 58–59.

  She saw the great variety Delano, Washington Directory, passim.

  The avenue was lined TJ to Thomas Munroe, 21 March 1803, PTJDE; Capitol, Engraving by Alfred Jones, 1848, in Green, Washington, figure 15. Benjamin Latrobe preserved an 1812 view, showing a gracious tree-lined street coming down from the Capitol in ibid., figure 7. Although unsuited to Washington’s climate, the poplars seem to have persisted until at least the 1840s.

  its population was only This figure does not include Georgetown’s 7,360 or Alexandria’s 8,345 people. 1820 census.

  In the next decade Carl Abbott, Political Terrain: Washington, D.C., from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 28–38, 47–48.

  English visitors Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel (1838; repr., New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 1:237, 266.

  One 1822 visitor Anonymous English traveler, 1822, quoted in John W. Reps, Washington on View: The Nation’s Capital Since 1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 68.

  “will find this place” Margaret (Peggy) Nicholas to Jane Nicholas Randolph, 24 April 1822, Acc. 1397, ViU.

  “expected to see” Quoted in Reps, Washington on View, 76.

  “well dressed” James Hugo Johnston, Race Relations in Virginia & Miscegenation in the South 1776–1860 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1970), 207–10.

  When a fugitive slave Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 159. On this moment, see also Virginia Cope, “ ‘I Verily Believed Myself to Be a Free Woman’: Harriet Jacobs and Her Journey into Capitalism,” African American Review 38 (Spring 2004): 5–20.

  “I will make” Robert Carter Nicholas to TJR, 25 June 1836, Trist Family Papers, SHC, quoted in Judith Justus, Down from the Mountain: The Oral History of the Hemings Family. Are They the Black Descendants of Thomas Jefferson? (Fremont, Ohio: Lesher Printers, Inc., 1990), 130–31. TJR’s letter has not been found.

  “people in straightened” Dolley Madison to Nicholas P. Trist, quoted in Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, 230.

  Mrs. Stewart’s boardinghouse Daily National Intelligencer, 8 January 1822.

  “Gentlemen preferring comfort” Daily National Intelligencer, 1 January 1822.

  “situated near the corner” Daily National Intelligencer, 23 January 1822.

  “a situation” Daily National Intelligencer, 19 March 1822.

  “young lady well skilled” Daily National Intelligencer, 31 January 1822.

  several small schools Delano, Washington Directory, passim and 33.

  “the destiny of ” Mrs. L. G. Abell, Woman in Her Various Relations, Containing Practical Rules for American Females (New York: J. M. Fairchild, 1855), 202, 207. Italics in the original.

  The financial Panic Jefferson had co-signed a note for twenty thousand dollars for his grandson’s father-in-law, Wilson Cary Nicholas, that Nicholas was unable to pay. Land values also plunged, effectively negating Jefferson’s plan to sell land to offset his debts. Dumas Malone recounts this story in Jefferson, 6:303–5, 308–14.

  cultivating the manners Hemphill, Bowing to Necessities, 146, 151; see also Hemphill, “Manners and Class in the Revolutionary E
ra: A Transatlantic Comparison,” William and Mary Quarterly 63 (April 2006): 345–72 .

  Centre Market Described in Jefferson Morley, Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 (New York: Doubleday, 2012), 17.

  “running about” Hunt, First Forty Years of Washington Society, 48–49.

  “Monticello is the only place” EWRC to Henry Randall, 22 February 1856, in EWRC Letter Book, 53, Acc. 9090, ViU.

  Even by age eleven Fossett, “Once the Slave of Thomas Jefferson.”

  guests like Webster Daniel Webster, “A Yankee Congressman Pens a Portrait,” in Peterson, Visitors to Monticello, 99.

  “He that hath not” Poor Richard’s Almanac, February 1744, quoted in Esmond Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 43.

  “white man of good standing” Hemings, “Memoirs,” 246.

  Getting Word project Edna Jacques, “Getting Word,” Monticello.org.

  To this day Author interview, 4 December 2012.

  “The Hemingses had a positive mania” Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 517.

  some Presbyterians John C. Smith, Jehovah-Jireh: A Discourse Commemorative of the Twenty-seventh Anniversary of the Organization of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C. (Washington, D.C.: Thomas McGill, 1855), 33. Sabin Americana.

  Only two of the original Session Records, vol. 1, 1812–1840, First Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C. I am grateful to Theodore Anderson for his assistance. Marriage and Baptism Record Book, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C. I am grateful to Hayden Bryan, who provided access to this record.

  Extracting the name F. Edward Wright, compiler, Marriage Licenses of Washington, D.C. 1811 through 1830 (Silver Spring, Md.: Family Line Publications, 1988).

  For example, baptism records Genealogical Record Committee (GRC), Daughters of the American Revolution. Free: GRC vol. 16, Rock Creek Church Records, baptismal records, 1803–1804; Higdon: Christ Church, Alexandria, records, May 1807; Dyer: Register of baptisms, marriages, and funerals, Presbyterian Church of Alexandria, 11; Hughes: GRC vol. 16, 58; Graves: GRC vol. 16, 71. Rock Creek records.

  Sales was a woman of color GRC series 1, vol. 82, 27.