John Hemings
[2] He was the youngest son of the enslaved, mixed-race Betty Hemings and his father was Joseph Neilson, an Irish workman and Jefferson's chief carpenter at Monticello.
The vast majority of the Hemings family stayed within close proximity of each other for much of their lifetimes, as Thomas Jefferson's slave rolls at Monticello rarely changed.
[3] Hemings children grew up with the understanding that the girls would become house servants and that the boys would become butlers or valets, or perhaps artisans who worked in the many outbuildings on Mulberry Row.
The Hemings women were not responsible for any agricultural work and instead performed chores and housework like childcare, sewing, and baking.
[2] At some point, Hemmings also learned how to read and write, although exactly when and who taught him is unclear; unlike the rest of his family, he spelled his name with a double m.[5] Although Virginian law then forbade marriages between enslaved people, John married Priscilla and had a lifelong partnership with her.
John Hemmings received his first instructions at 17 years of age in 1793, when Thomas Jefferson wrote to his son-in-law Tom Randolph and asked Randolph to make sure Hemmings received training from the house joiner David Watson to fashion wheels and work with wood.
[8] Hemmings independently completed the Chinese railing, Venetian blinds, cellar sashes, bedchamber closet, and window shutters at Monticello.
At Poplar Forest, Hemmings created the classical trim on the interior and completed work on the roof, including the decorative railing.
[5] Hemmings took Jefferson's sons Beverley, Madison, and Eston Hemings to Poplar Forest to teach them the basics of carpentry and joining.
The joinery changed focus and began creating furniture for Monticello and Jefferson's second home at Poplar Forest.
[9] After Hemmings became master craftsman of the Monticello Joinery,[5] he trained other enslaved people, including Thomas Jefferson's three sons by Sally Hemings.
[5] Hemmings also informed Jefferson when Nace, a person enslaved at Poplar Forest, stole produce from the house garden.
[5] Jefferson rewarded Hemmings with an annual bonus, beginning in 1811, of fifteen to twenty dollars, or about one month's wages.
In it, he stipulated that John Hemmings would be freed as of a year after his death, given all the tools of his trade, and gifted a life estate in a house and an acre of land, provided that he stayed close to his wife, Priscilla.
He was buried in a coffin that John Hemmings spent days, if not weeks, fashioning from wood he saved in the joinery for this purpose.
[14] In 2012, Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty, an exhibition co-presented by the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, opened in the NMAAHC Gallery at the National Museum of American History.
This exhibition highlighted Jefferson's paradoxical dual positions as the drafter of the Declaration of Independence and a slaveholder.
This statue is visible today in the Paradox of Liberty section of the National Museum of African American History and Culture[17].
