Sally Hemings

The Sally Hemings Story

The enslaved woman Sally Hemings was the half-sister of Martha Wayles, the white woman who married Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. Hemings, one of several quadroon slave children of the Virginia planter John Wayles, was born in 1773. Her mother was Wayles' beloved mulatto concubine, Elizabeth Hemings. Wayles left Hemings and several of her relatives to Martha in his will when he died in 1773. Sally was just an infant at the time.

When Martha Jefferson died in 1782, all of her slaves became the property of Thomas Jefferson. Sally, then nine years old, stayed with the Jefferson family at their estate in Virginia, called Monticello, where she worked as a house servant and companion to Jefferson's youngest daughter, Maria.

At age 14, Sally accompanied Jefferson and his daughter to Paris, where he served as American minister to France during the American Revolution (1784-1789). Because French law did not recognize slavery, Jefferson treated Sally like a household servant, paying her wages and allowing her many small freedoms.

After the war, Jefferson and his daughter returned to Monticello. Sally returned with them and worked as a privileged house slave. She gave birth to her first child, one of six children, soon thereafter. Two of her children died when they were just babies.

In 1802, Jefferson's political opponents charged him with keeping Sally Hemings as his concubine (or enslaved mistress) and with being the father of her children. It was a raging scandal at the time, and it has continued to be an issue ever since. Jefferson never answered the charges during his lifetime.

One of Sally's sons, Madison Hemings, had no doubts about who his father was, according to testimony given in 1873:

Soon after [their return from Paris, my mother] gave birth to a child, of whom Thomas Jefferson was the father. It lived but a short time. She gave birth to four others, and Jefferson was the father of all of them. Their names were Beverly, Harriet, Madison (myself), and Eston--three sons and one daughter. We all became free agreeably to the treaty entered into by our parents before we were born. We all married and have raised families.

Madison Hemings

Although Jefferson never freed Sally, he did free two of her children in his will. He also allowed two of her children to leave Monticello during his lifetime. All of his other slaves, some 80 in total, remained enslaved throughout his life. Nor were they freed in his will. After his death, Jefferson's daughter freed Sally. She continued to live with her two sons near Monticello until her death in 1835. The U.S. Census records for 1830 list Sally as white.

The issue of Jefferson being the father of Sally Hemings' enslaved children has been a hot topic in American history up to present times. Historians have documented, for example, that Jefferson was present at Monticello nine months before the birth of each of Sally Hemings' children. The talk about all of this reached fever pitch in recent years when DNA evidence seemed to prove conclusively that Jefferson fathered some of Sally Hemings' children.

When white relatives of Jefferson talked about the issue of Sally Hemings in the past, they acknowledged the possibility that Sally's children, who looked like Jefferson, may have been the offspring of Jefferson's nephew. None would accept, however, the idea that Jefferson had fathered her children.

The DNA tests conclusively prove that one of the male children of Sally Hemings was the child of a male Jefferson, either Thomas Jefferson, or his uncle or brother. Circumstantial evidence makes it difficult to believe that the uncle or brother was the likely father. Too much points to Jefferson: the DNA evidence, the fact that Sally Hemings resembled closely her half-sister Martha (whom Jefferson dearly loved), his close proximity to Sally during the times of her likely conception of her children, and the refusal of Jefferson to deny the story.

Still, when all is said and done, what does this episode mean? Historian Roger Wilkins tells us that it is really a story about the ongoing eagerness of white America to deny humanity to black people, both during slavery and up to the present times. Clearly, too, the issue of who fathered Sally Hemings' children tells us much about the complexity of slavery. White men owned black people and could sexually assault them at will. In some few cases, bonds of affection did occur between master and slave. Nevertheless, as the Hemings-Jefferson episode so clearly reveals, such bonds could not be acknowledged openly for fear of grave personal harm to both parties. Not even a person as powerful as the president of the United States could openly embrace the mixed-race mother of his children. Not even in death could he dare acknowledge his own children, else the whole world created by slavery would be turned upside-down.