Harriet Hemings
As the historians Philip D. Morgan and Joshua D. Rothman have written, there were numerous interracial relationships in the Wayles-Hemings-Jefferson families, Albemarle County and Virginia, often with multiple generations repeating the pattern.
It is widely believed that Jefferson and Hemings had a 38-year secret relationship beginning in Paris several years after the early death of his wife.
[4] Although Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge wrote that he had a policy of allowing nearly white slaves to leave and she recalled four who had,[5] this was not accurate.
[4] Edmund Bacon, chief overseer at Monticello for about twenty years, described Harriet's gaining freedom: Mr. Jefferson freed a number of his servants in his will ...
'")[6]Bacon wrote, When she was nearly grown, by Mr. Jefferson's direction I paid her stage fare to Philadelphia and gave her fifty dollars.
[4] Jefferson's daughter Martha gave Sally Hemings "her time" after his death; this enabled her to leave Monticello and live freely with her last two sons in Charlottesville for the last decade of her life.
According to the scholar Annette Gordon-Reed, Harriet likely chose to move to Washington in order to join her brother Beverley, who was already there.
[4] While Harriet and Beverly disappeared into history, more is known about the lives of their brothers Madison and Eston Hemings, who married in Charlottesville and began their families there.
The Jefferson-Hemings controversy concerns the question of whether Jefferson, after becoming a widower, had an intimate relationship with his mixed-race slave, Sally Hemings, resulting in his fathering her six children of record.
In 1997, Annette Gordon-Reed published a book that analyzed the historiography of the controversy, demonstrating how historians since the 19th century had accepted early assumptions and failed to note all the facts.
[4] A consensus began to emerge after the results of a DNA analysis in 1998, which showed no match between the Carr male line, proposed for more than 150 years as the father(s), and the one Hemings descendant tested.
Since 1998 and the DNA study, most 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.
[11][12] Historian Catherine Kerrison has attempted to examine and re-evaluate Hemings' life through the limited sources available.
[17] Dr. Foster wrote, "It is true that men of Randolph Jefferson's family could have fathered Sally Hemings' later children...We know from the historical and the DNA data that Thomas Jefferson can neither be definitely excluded nor solely implicated in the paternity of illegitimate children with his slave Sally Hemings.
In 1811, Elijah Fletcher wrote "the story of Black Sal is no farce – That [Jefferson] cohabits with her and has a number of children with her is a sacred truth."
