45 Facts About Sally Hemings

Sally Hemings was half-sister to Jefferson's wife and was of approximately three quarters English descent.

In 1787, when she was 14, Sally Hemings accompanied Jefferson and his daughter by Martha to Paris.

In 2018, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation of Monticello announced its plans to have an exhibit titled Life of Sally Hemings, and affirmed that it was treating as a settled issue that Jefferson was the father of her known children.

Sally Hemings was born about 1773 to Elizabeth Hemings, a woman born into slavery.

Captain Sally Hemings tried to purchase them from Eppes, but the planter refused.

Sally Hemings desired to bring my mother back to Virginia with him but she demurred.

Sally Hemings was just beginning to understand the French language well, and in France she was free, while if she returned to Virginia she would be re-enslaved.

The enslaved child, Sally Hemings, was chosen to accompany Polly to France after an older enslaved woman became pregnant and could not make the journey.

The Monticello exhibition on Sally Hemings acknowledged this uncertainty, while noting the power imbalance inherent in the relationship between a wealthy white male envoy and a 14-year-old quarter-black enslaved female.

Sally Hemings seems fond of the child and appears good natured.

Sally Hemings paid Sally Hemings the equivalent of $2 a month.

Toward the end of their stay, James used his money to pay for a French tutor and to learn the language, and Sally Hemings was learning French.

Jefferson purchased some fine clothing for Sally Hemings, which suggests that she accompanied Martha as a lady's maid to formal events.

Sally Hemings agreed to return with him to the United States, based on his promise to free her children when they came of age.

Sally Hemings had six children after her return to the US; their complete names are in some cases uncertain:.

Sally Hemings' documented duties at Monticello included being a nursemaid-companion, lady's maid, chambermaid, and seamstress.

Sally Hemings was described as very fair, with "straight hair down her back".

Sally Hemings is believed to have lived as an adult in a room in Monticello's "South Dependencies", a wing of the mansion accessible to the main house through a covered passageway.

Sally Hemings kept her children close by while she worked at Monticello.

Jefferson eventually freed all of Sally Hemings's surviving children, Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston, as they came of age.

Sally Hemings' children were seven-eighths European in ancestry, and three of the four entered white society after gaining their freedom; their descendants likewise identified as white.

Sally Hemings's will petitioned the legislature to allow the freed Hemingses to stay in the state.

Jefferson's daughter Martha Randolph informally freed the elderly Sally Hemings after Jefferson's death, by giving her "her time", as was a custom.

Sally Hemings lived to see a grandchild born in a house that her sons owned.

Sally Hemings's estate, including his enslaved people, was sold by his daughter Martha to repay his debts.

Sally Hemings wrote that Jefferson "kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves" and had "several children" by her.

Nathan Huggins said that the Sally Hemings story was a way of establishing black people's birthright to America.

Three of the Sally Hemings children were given names from the Randolph family, relatives of Thomas Jefferson through his mother.

Finally, some materials claimed that Martha Randolph and her sons demonstrated that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings had been separated for some fifteen months before the birth of the son "who most resembled" Jefferson.

Sally Hemings conceded that the DNA results "enhance the possibility" of Jefferson's paternity of one or more of the Hemings children but do not prove it.

Sally Hemings suggested that Madison Hemings probably knew who his father was, and there was no evidence that ghostwriter Wetmore injected fiction even if he polished the wording for print.

Sally Hemings added the argument that Madison Hemings' probable date of conception was close to that of the death of Jefferson's daughter Maria ; and that during Jefferson's presidency, Sally Hemings' exact whereabouts did not survive in any records.

Wallenborn added another new observation, of what he called "some striking coincidences", that Sally Hemings' known pregnancies stopped, despite Thomas Jefferson's presence, after both his brother Randolph and Randolph's son Thomas married women outside Monticello, c 1808 or 1809.

Sally Hemings was not able to find much new information about Beverley or Harriet Hemings, who left Monticello as young adults, moving north and probably changing their names.

Sally Hemings knew that Harriet had children and was living in Maryland.

Thomas Eston Sally Hemings enlisted in the United States Colored Troops ; captured, he spent time at the Andersonville POW camp and died in a POW camp in Meridian, Mississippi.

Later, James Sally Hemings was rumored to have moved to Colorado and perhaps passed into white society.

Madison's daughter, Ellen Wayles Sally Hemings, married Alexander Jackson Roberts, a graduate of Oberlin College.

Sally Hemings was commissioned as a Union officer during the Civil War, during which he was promoted to the rank of Colonel and served at the Battle of Vicksburg.

Sally Hemings wrote letters about the war to the newspaper in Madison for publication.

Sally Hemings later moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he became a successful and wealthy cotton broker.

Sally Hemings never married or had known children, and left a sizeable estate.

Sally Hemings has been the main subject of a novel, a television mini-series, a stage play, two operas, and an operatic oratorio.

Sally Hemings is the subject of the second half of the film Jefferson in Paris.

Sally Hemings has appeared as a supporting character or a subject of discussion in many other shows and stage productions.