SALLY HEMINGS - WAS SHE A WILLING MISTRESS of THOMAS JEFFERSON or A RAPED SLAVE?

Video added November 2018

Long ago I read a historical novel by an African-American author about Sally Hemings and that was the first I'd heard of her. Since then I've been become familiar with the controversies involved and the historical and family research and DNA science that have been applied to resolve the question of the biological identity of her children. Sally did have children, and they are named in Thomas Jefferson's farm book records, but were any one of them or all of them actually fathered by Thomas Jefferson, one of our Founding Fathers and an early President of the United States?

Often I begin a Mistress of the Month post with a photo, drawing, or painting of that Mistress, but none exists of Sally.  Though exposed for his relationship with her in what might be considered a tabloid press or political cartoon, as "Dark Sally," Sally was estimated to be one eighth African ancestry.  (How light or dark she was is unknown, but we might want to ask Paris Jackson's opinion about color and what artists or photographers do!)  We do know that she was one eighth Black because we know that she was the daughter of a woman who was the daughter of an English sea captain and an African woman, and also that her father was Thomas Jefferson's late wife's father.  Perhaps she even looked like his wife.  Sally was one of the slaves that his wife inherited from her father than came with her into her marriage to Thomas Jefferson and so she had served them and had known his wife.
Sally gave birth to six children.  Is the fact that they were named in the farm book important?  Many slave owners did not name their slaves in their record books. Were all of them fathered by Jefferson?  If so we could say that Sally and Thomas settled with each other.  Two of those children were so light that when they were granted freedom and left Monticello, with some funds from Jefferson, it is said they went north and joined White society.  One son was said to look so much like Jefferson that if you saw him afar on horseback you would think you were looking at Jefferson.


Today there are many people who consider themselves to be ethnically and culturally Black who are light and do not have especially stereotypical "African" features.  Sometimes they are described as having "one drop" as in any African at all makes you all Black.  And here we are a couple hundred years after Jefferson and Sally were a pair.


This month I will be providing you some links to look at and consider such as the link to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's house in Virginia, where he lived with Sally and where officially she was the maid who was assigned to his private quarters.  He had many slaves and these days their humble housing is part of the tour. You can consider the history, the times they lived in, the prevailing life style, and Jefferson's role in the creation of the United States of America.


The issue of how willing Sally was, that is to say if she was continually raped or consenting, is also complicated by the fact that Jefferson was a slave owner and owned Sally but their sexual involvement likely began outside the slave state of Virginia in the very new United States, in Paris, France.  There her brother was Jefferson's cook and they could have walked away and been free.  When in Paris do as the Parisians?  More troubling to us these days is that Sally was about 14 years old she was sent across the seas with his daughter to England and then Paris to be a companion and maid to his daughter.  Let it be known that marriage at that age was not unknown or even illegal in parts of the country. According to Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, another President of the early United States, who met the ship in England and then took Sally and a Jefferson daughter Martha in until they were to sail for France, Sally was a child caring for Martha. According to the film I had once seen that suggested that once in France,  called "Jefferson in Paris," Jefferson treated Sally as special and began a sexual relationship with her, which his daughter, enrolled in a Catholic girls' convent school though they were not Catholics, found disgusting.
To me there are so many gray areas but it's important is to try to understand how different those times were than the ones we live in.

For instance, what about slave mentality?  If your mentality is that you must agree with whatever the person(s) who own you tell you to do, then you have no right to consent in the first place, and you also might not even consider that you have the right to say no.
Another issue is that if you live in an environment where you know other enslaved people are treated with violence or punished for not working hard enough physically, well, you might want to have easier work, or get along, or be especially favored. 

But something I consider is that Jefferson offered Sally a deal which means that in Paris he showed that he thought she was in a position of power, of being able to decide.  He said that if she returned with him (already pregnant) and stayed with him then any children they had he would free when they reached adulthood.  Theirs was a long relationship and he did free the children as promised. 

Were they tender with each other?  Did they love each other?  Were slaves there at Monticello jealous of her position in the household? It's speculation.

Many choices and agreements were made to be in this enduring relationship.

After Jefferson died, Sally went to live with a son in Ohio, a free state, and so in her old age she was free and attached to her own family.

Read on and learn more!


Missy

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