Eston Hemings
In 1852 Eston moved with his wife and three children to Madison, Wisconsin, where they changed their surname to Jefferson and entered the white community.
Beverly Jefferson's five sons were educated and three entered the professional class as a physician, attorney, and manager at the railroad.
[2] What is known of Eston's life is derived from his brother Madison's 1873 memoir, a few entries in Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book, a handful of contemporary newspaper accounts, various census and land/tax records, and the family history of his descendants.
The historians Philip D. Morgan and Joshua D. Rothman have written about the numerous interracial relationships in the Wayles-Hemings-Jefferson families and the region, often with multiple generations repeating the pattern.
"[12] Like their older brother Beverley, at age 14 Madison and Eston each began training in carpentry, under tutelage of their uncle John Hemmings, the master woodworker at Monticello.
She was the daughter of the successful Jewish merchant David Isaacs, from Germany, and Nancy West, a free woman of mixed race.
[16] Prohibited by law from marrying, David Isaacs and Nancy West maintained separate households and businesses for years (she was a successful baker).
About 1837 Hemings moved with his family to Chillicothe, a town in southwest Ohio (a free state) with a thriving community.
Numerous free blacks and white abolitionists had support-stations linked to the Underground Railroad to aid escaping slaves.
A former classmate later wrote that she was introduced as "Miss Anna (or Ann) Heming[s] [sic], the grand daughter of Thomas Jefferson".
[18] In a 1902 article of the Scioto Gazette, a correspondent wrote that while Hemings lived in Ohio in the 1840s, it was widely said that he and his brother Madison were the sons of Thomas Jefferson.
In addition, several neighbors of Eston had traveled together to Washington, DC, where they saw a statue of Jefferson; they commented on how much Hemings resembled him.
The correspondent also recollected: Eston Hemings, being a master of the violin, and an accomplished "caller" of dances, always officiated at the "swell" entertainments of Chillicothe.
Their eldest son John Wayles Jefferson served as a white officer in the regular United States Army during the American Civil War, achieving the rank of colonel.
Before the war, John Jefferson ran the American House hotel in Madison, which was taken over by his younger brother Beverley.
Their five sons gained educations and three entered the professions: one became a doctor in Chicago, another an attorney, another worked in railroad management.
[23] They discovered that in the 1940s, her father and his brothers had decided against continued telling of the Hemings-Jefferson story to their children, out of fear the younger people would be discriminated against.
Historians had long disputed accounts that Thomas Jefferson had a relationship with his mixed-race slave Sally Hemings and fathered children by her.
Since 1998 and the DNA study, many historians have accepted that the widower Jefferson had a long intimate relationship with Hemings, and fathered six children with her, four of whom survived to adulthood.
He recounted that “Old Master’s brother, Mass Randall, was a mighty simple man: used to come out among black people, play the fiddle and dance half the night”.
