John Hemings remained at Monticello until about 1831 and died in 1833.
12 Facts About John Hemings
1.
2.
John Hemings was the youngest son of the enslaved, mixed-race Betty Hemings and his father was Joseph Neilson, an Irish workman and Jefferson's chief carpenter at Monticello.
3.
Hemmings was the eleventh of Betty's children and half-brother to her six children by her enslaver John Wayles, including Sally Hemings, as well as to the oldest four by an unknown father.
4.
The vast majority of the John Hemings family stayed within close proximity of each other for much of their lifetimes, as Thomas Jefferson's slave rolls at Monticello rarely changed.
5.
John Hemings children grew up with the understanding that the girls would become house servants and that the boys would become butlers or valets, or perhaps artisans who worked in the many outbuildings on Mulberry Row.
6.
The John Hemings women were not responsible for any agricultural work and instead performed chores and housework like childcare, sewing, and baking.
7.
Priscilla and John Hemings were described as highly devout, and they held religious services in their cabin.
8.
John Hemings Hemmings received his first instructions at 17 years of age in 1793, when Thomas Jefferson wrote to his son-in-law Tom Randolph and asked Randolph to make sure Hemmings received training from the house joiner David Watson to fashion wheels and work with wood.
9.
John Hemings installed a large central skylight and repaired it after a storm in 1819, installed plaster ornaments made by sculptor William Coffee, and made repairs to the house after a roof leak in 1819 and a fire in 1825.
10.
John Hemings Hemmings had some woodworking signatures that helped distinguish his work from other workers at the Monticello Joinery.
11.
Hemmings was one of five members of the John Hemings family freed in Jefferson's will.
12.
John Hemings was buried in a coffin that John Hemmings spent days, if not weeks, fashioning from wood he saved in the joinery for this purpose.