JEFFERSON's DAUGHTERS by CATHERINE KERRISON GIVES US VITAL INSIGHT INTO SALLY HEMING'S and HER DAUGHTER HARRIET

Back in July 2018 I dedicated a month to Sally Hemings, the mistress of Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding Fathers of the United States and our 3rd American President who built the estate called Monticello in Virginia:

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

There has been a debate about the relationship between Thomas and Sally because she was a slave from birth, went to Paris where she was a maid to his daughters as a teenager, and became pregnant by Jefferson at that time.

In France, Sally and her older brother, who was learning to be a gourmet French chef, were not slaves. They could have stayed there, though how they would do in Paris is a question. When they returned to Virginia with Jefferson they were again enslaved. It would be easy to think that Sally would be willing to be left behind and proceed to support herself somehow, but return to the home and life she knew is what she did. The question is if the long relationship between Thomas and Sally, which likely produced several children, was akin to marriage or a master raping his slave woman...

I picked  up this book, published in 2018, as a whim and ended up loving it and recommending it to everyone. It's the result of excellent scholarship and I'm now more in favor of the notion that Sally and Thomas were of their time but also in loving long term relationship.

It was not legal for him to marry her, though she was significantly of the White race, because slavery was passed on by a persons mother's condition as a slave. Now that I know that he would have been defying the law of the land, I see that it was not all about personal choice for him either.

Here are some of my notes from portions of the book:

The summer of 1789 brought an enormous transition in the life of Sally Hemings as well. It is difficult to reconstruct her life at the Hotel de Langeac (this is the townhouse that Jefferson and his family lived in, in Paris, which was also used as a place the public could come to as an official residence of a diplomat...)  We do know she left the house for five weeks...  Annette Gordon - Reed has suggested that Hemings' stay with Dupre (*a boarding house) overlapped with the Jefferson's girls' illness (which was typhus) when Maria *(the younger daughter) was at her lowest ebb (she could have died.) Perhaps Jefferson sent Sally Hemings away to prevent her from contracting the disease, easily spread through body lice, after seeing the harrowing effects on Maria.  (Notes from page 112)  

When the girls returned in April (From their exclusive boarding school in Paris) Sally Hemings' duties may have changed as well. The care of Martha Jefferson's new silk gowns may have fallen to her, as well as dressing her hair, mending, running errands, and generally attending to the girl's requirements of a lady's maid. But Jefferson's expenditures rose for Sally as well, as she more frequently accompanied them in public...

But if anyone was confused about Sally Hemings' place in the Jefferson household, with knowing French discretion, they refrained from asking their wealthier connections ... nor were sexual predations of masters on their female servants unusual either. The young but worldly wise Botidoux*** took the unusual household configuration in stride, diplomatically using the honorific 'mademoiselle' (which normally was never used to address servants) to signal her acceptance of Martha's lead that Hemings was not an ordinary servant. (Notes from page 113)

That was just one of many ways in which Hemings learned something about her position in French society. Whatever her status in Virginia, as far as Parisians were concerned Sally was not a slave in France. Sally Hemings saw a great deal of aristocratic Paris in her attendance on Martha Jefferson. She ate fine French cooking (her brother was a master chef after all) she chatted with Martha's aristocratic friends, and she learned about French social mores from overhearing their talk. Thus, Paris had taught Sally Hemings a great deal about society, rank, presentation, dress, and language in addition to her skills as femme de chambre by the time Jefferson decided to return to Virginia.

Although of course both James and Sally Hemings returned to slavery. Although France's revolution was just beginning, the American Revolution was over, concluded with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. But the changes it had effected for enslaved Americans was severely limited.  Jefferson's own attempt to condemn slavery in the Declaration of Independence had been defeated by the Continental Congress. ...

***This is of interest:  https://history.cass.anu.edu.au/events/mysteries-mademoiselle-de-botidoux  Botidoux was a faithful letter-writing correspondent to Jefferson's daughter Martha.

Also of great interest is what happened to Harriet, who was born as a slave to Sally, but was only one-sixteenth Black. You will want to read this book for the tremendous research that author Catherine Kerrison did in attempt to find her.  Harriet was trained to be a weaver and left her home of Monticello with her older brother as Thomas had promised Sally he would free all her children when they reached adulthood. It is possible she passed as White and married in Washington, D.C.

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DO YOU HAVE A PRE-MISTRESSING FINANCIAL AGREEMENT?

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings had a pre-mistressing verbal agreement witnessed in Paris by her brother.  Pregnant in Paris, where she and her brother who were there with Jefferson could have walked away and lived in freedom from slavery, he promised the teenager that if she came back with him to the United States - Virginia - Monticello - that he would free their children once they became adults - and he did.  At that time, in my opinion, Sally was both vulnerable and at the height of her negotiating power.  (I believe modern women are generally at the height of their negotiating power with a man before they move in with him and I think a Mistress should keep her own residence.) But his willingness to make this deal communicated that he saw them having a future together and that she trusted him.


There is such a thing as a pre-nup, and there has been among the wealthier people for some time.  For instance, before Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis, there were negotiations of how much she could spend a year and how much she would get for each year of marriage should they divorce. Though controversial when he died without completing a divorce from her, Onassis, his lawyers, Ted Kennedy - the brother of her deceased husband President John F. Kennedy, and her lawyers are all rumored, depending on what book about them you read, to have taken part in these negotiations as a legal financial understanding before the wedding.  In some cultures such discussions could be called "bride price" or while a "dowry" is the money that a woman brought into a marriage with her; many poor women without a dowry were unmarriageable.


If you are a Mistress, or contemplating accepting a man's offer to be Kept by him, I strongly suggest you do negotiate, but it feels tacky to many and not romantic.


DO YOU HAVE A PRE-MISTRESSING FINANCIAL AGREEMENT?

SALLY HEMINGS' BROTHER JAMES - JEFFERSON'S PERSONAL CHEF IN PARIS

For five years living with Jefferson in Paris he was considered free, and studied French cooking, yet he returned to America with Thomas Jefferson.  He witnessed the negotiation between his sister Sally and their Master. I can understand that; he wanted to remain with family rather than possibly never see them again, at least that's my opinion and he may have seen himself as a protector of his sister. In France he might have been employed as a cook or a servant, but the class system probably would have been difficult to negotiate if he wanted to marry.

HARRIET HEMINGS? DAUGHTER OF SALLY and THOMAS JEFFERSON?

 So identified on a Pinterest site.  That a person could be mostly Caucasion (be it appearance or DNA) and still be a slave is more mystifying to us presently than it was back in the day.  Sally's father was Thomas Jefferson's wife's father too.  Sally may have also been "mulatto" - biracial. I notice that there are a lot of people making YouTube videos of the results of their DNA ancestry tests.  I wonder if these informational moments are actually backed by one of the DNA test companies. 

Update August 2021.  I learned a slave was a slave based mostly on the mother's status.

MONTICELLO MEANS LITTLE MOUNTAIN in ITALIAN

MONTICELLO OFFICIAL SITE - TOUR


That's Monticello on the back of the nickel (United States coinage) and here you can take a virtual tour.  Sally Hemmings took care of Jefferson's private quarters.

JEFFERSON IN PARIS - MISTRESS MANIFESTO FILM REVIEW

JEFFERSON IN PARIS: This historical drama has some amazing scenes such as the hot air balloon rides that amused the wealthy Parisians and is taking place in the 1780's and pre French Revolution, but focuses on the forbidden love that Thomas Jefferson partook in as a widower.  First with the married Maria Cosway, British, whose parents arranged for her to be married to an artist rather than go into a nunnery; likely her husband was gay.  It is said that they did enjoy a sexual relationship, that he did propose marriage to her but she could not see living in the United States or understand slavery, and that they remained friends and wrote letters to each other for the rest of their lives.  And then with Sally Hemings, his slave brought to Paris as a servant to him and his daughters. Sally was underage by today's standards, and so the lovers story has modern notions of child abuse, seduction, and rape, as well as the power-over of a Master to a Slave. But perhaps the truth is in the long relationship Jefferson continued to have with Sally.  

 
IMDB JEFFERSON IN PARIS (1995)
As you can tell from this YouTuber's selection of frames from the film, it looks loving.

FRAMING A LEGEND by M. ANDREW HOLOWCHAK - THE DNA and DISTORTED HISTORY

Framing A Legend

Exposing the Distorted History of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

M. Andrew Holowchak, assistant professor of philosophy at Rutgers

 2013 Prometheus Books

M. Andrew Holowchak does a fine job of deconstructing (dismissing) some of the books about the Sally Hemings- Thomas Jefferson relationship including Fawn Brodie's which have said that Sally was Thomas slave mistresses and that her 6 children were by him.  One aspect of this book that I found most interesting and perhaps convincing is when he tackles the question of family memory and DNA.  As Holowchak says it, a relative of Jefferson's is, in some branches of the Jefferson family, acknowledged to be the father of the children, meaning that some of the DNA is the same and some is not.  Since I think DNA is the most convincing evidence and that DNA testing is getting more and more sophisticated...I find it all so fascinating, especially as that no one has actually dug up Jefferson to test for his DNA ...

Additionally, I wonder if there is any DNA investigation into the DNA of Thomas Jefferson's wife's DNA, and her fathers, which should also be appearing in Sally and her descendants.

AN 1804 POLITICAL CARTOON MOCKING THOMAS JEFFERSON and SALLY HEMINGS

There had been speculation about Thomas and Sally, but it would seem discretion was used by his friendly peers and he in writing to each other about their lives, families, and politics.  But Thomas Jefferson had his detractors, those who thought the relationship scandalous either because they thought he should have fought against slavery, or because they thought it was wrong to mix with slaves.  The question of how willing Sally was to be his Mistress looms large and one that I myself have struggled with. In this cartoon we see an image of Sally in which she is dark but her facial features including her nose are not stereotypically "African" and I do wonder if this image is actually accurate, based on the testimony of those who actually saw the woman.


Missy

OFFICIAL WORD on SALLY HEMINGS CHILDREN and DNA

MONTICELLO - SALLY HEMINGS brief account

MONTICELLO ORG - ON THOMAS JEFFERSON and SALLY HEMINGS


EXCERPT: According to Madison Hemings, Sally's mother Elizabeth Hemings (1735-1807) was the daughter of an African woman and an English sea captain. By Madison Hemings's and other accounts, Sally Hemings and some of her siblings were the children of John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson's father-in-law, making her the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson (1748-1782). Elizabeth Hemings and her children lived at John Wayles' plantation during his lifetime.

Read the Report of the Monticello Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings for yourself.

*********

If it is true that Sally's mother was one half African/Black and father, the English sea captain, was European/White, then Sally's mother was one half White. If Sally's half-White mother then conceived her with another European/White Man, Mr. Wayles, that would make Sally three quarters White and one quarter Black.  If Sally then had children with Thomas Jefferson, another White/European man, these children would be mostly White.  But color is not the only identifier when it comes to race or ethnicity.  When someone tells me how they identify I respect them by believing them. I know that appearances aren't everything. 

-Missy

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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