1. Madison Hemings was the son of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.
34 Facts About Madison Hemings
2.
Madison Hemings was the third of Sally Hemings' four children to survive to adulthood.
3.
Madison Hemings learned to play the violin and was able to earn money by growing cabbages.
4.
Jefferson died in 1826, after which Sally Madison Hemings was "given her time" by Jefferson's surviving daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph.
5.
At the age of 68, Madison Hemings claimed the connection in an 1873 Ohio newspaper interview, titled, "Life Among the Lowly," which attracted national and international attention.
6.
Madison Hemings served in the California legislature for nearly two decades.
7.
Madison Hemings was born into slavery at Monticello, where his mother Sally Hemings was a mixed-race enslaved woman inherited by Martha Wayles Skelton, the wife of Thomas Jefferson.
8.
Madison Hemings lived her teenage years as a free person in France, where there was no slavery.
9.
Madison Hemings's living quarters, located in the South Wing, adjacent to Jefferson's bedchamber, were built in 1809.
10.
Madison Hemings referred to Sally Madison Hemings as "mother" and Jefferson as "father", who treated one another with respect.
11.
Madison Hemings compared Jefferson's affectionate treatment of his white grandchildren to that of the Hemings children, who were not treated with affection or partiality.
12.
Madison Hemings grew up at Monticello with an older brother Beverley, older sister Harriet, and a younger brother Eston.
13.
Madison Hemings learned to read and write from white children and was partially self-taught.
14.
At the age of 12 or 14, Madison Hemings was apprenticed to his uncle, Sally's brother John Madison Hemings, to learn carpentry and fine woodworking.
15.
All three of the Madison Hemings brothers learned to play the violin, the instrument associated with Jefferson.
16.
Madison Hemings stated that Beverley and Harriet moved to Washington DC in 1822 when they "ran away" from Monticello.
17.
Madison Hemings said they had married white spouses of good circumstances, and moved into white society.
18.
The Madison Hemings rented a house in Charlottesville, where Sally lived with them.
19.
Madison Hemings was not formally freed but was "given her time" by Jefferson's surviving daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph, who was Hemings' niece.
20.
On November 21,1831, Madison Hemings wed Mary Hughes McCoy, a free woman of mixed-race ancestry.
21.
Madison and Mary Hemings were the parents of ten children:.
22.
Madison Hemings had a quiet life as a modestly successful free black farmer and carpenter.
23.
Madison Hemings was a widower when he died of consumption on November 28,1877, in Huntington Township, Ross County, Ohio.
24.
Sally Madison Hemings had at least six children whose births were recorded.
25.
Some sources, including Madison Hemings's memoir, says that Sally Madison Hemings conceived her first child while in Paris with Jefferson, but that the baby died shortly after birth.
26.
Gordon-Reed noted that this Madison Hemings family was the only one in which all the children were freed, and Harriet the only enslaved woman he freed.
27.
Madison Hemings suggests this special treatment was significant and related to their status as his "natural" children.
28.
Largely as a result of revived interest in this case following Gordon-Reed's book, a Y-DNA analysis of Carr, Jefferson and Madison Hemings descendants was conducted in 1998.
29.
Beverley Madison Hemings' descendants have been lost to history, as he apparently changed his name after moving to Washington, DC and passing into white society.
30.
Descendants of Madison Hemings declined to have the remains of his son William Hemings disturbed to extract DNA for testing, just as Wayles-Jefferson descendants declined to have Thomas Jefferson's remains disturbed.
31.
Madison Hemings was re-elected numerous times, serving for a total of 16 years, and becoming known as "dean of the assembly".
32.
Madison Hemings is believed to have been the first person of African-American ancestry elected to political office west of the Mississippi River.
33.
Several of Madison Hemings's grandsons passed for white, divorcing themselves from their sisters who stayed on the other side of the line.
34.
The researchers found that Madison Hemings' descendants had married within the mixed-race community for generations, choosing light-skinned spouses of an educated class and identifying as people of color within the black community.