The Road Not Taken: The Decision of Sally Hemings

By William S Robinson

The book portrays the thoughts, feelings and actions of Sally Hemings, a slave living in the household of Thomas Jefferson during her life at Jefferson’s plantation in Virginia and during her time living in Jefferson’s house in Paris. When she arrived in Paris at age 14 she found that French law made her a free person when she arrive

• Language: English
• Publisher: Go To Publish
• Release date: Oct 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781950073672

William S Robinson

William S. Robinson was born in Bloomington, Indiana and graduated from Indiana University undergraduate school and University of Chicago School of Medicine. As Professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine he carried out research on viruses where after investigation of retroviruses, influenza viruses and others, he discovered the virion of hepatitis B virus in the blood if infected patients and characterized that virus, cloned and sequenced its DNA, discovered related viruses in rodents, investigated their role in liver cancer, and with collaborators carried out the first antiviral treatment studies of hepatitis B virus infected patients. His relatives and ancestors from Southern states have informed him of Southern culture and history, and led to his interest in the subject of this book

Book preview

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, 1915

Chapter 1

My Story

My name is Sally Hemings. Once upon a time I was a young slave at Monticello, and once upon a time I came to a fork in the road and had to choose which road to take, one was to walk away to freedom, the other to continue in slavery. At the time I wanted, for different reasons, to take parts of both but that was not possible. I had to make a choice. I had to decide which road to take. I want to tell my story because I want people to understand the reason for the choice I made, and the consequences of that choice for many different people over a long period of time.. I want to try to describe my thoughts and feelings at the time I made that decision and during subsequent events resulting from the decision. I want people to understand why I, as a slave from Virginia, who was made free by a visit to Paris, chose to return to Virginia as a slave instead of remaining free in Paris.

As I tell my story now in this year of 1834, I am a tired old woman living in Charlottesville with my sons Madison and Eston Hemings. My hair is graying and I wear eye glasses to read but I am doing well and get around pretty good, although I suffer from rheumatism and low back trouble with pain that sparks down the back of my left leg if I move the wrong way. My mind and memory are good, and my sons keep me informed about things happening in Charlottesville and in Virginia. Madison and Eston, both sons of Thomas Jefferson, urged me to tell my story and recount my memories of Thomas Jefferson because I know things about him that no one else could possibly know. Between 1787 and 1826, in Thomas Jefferson’s private life, I was his lover, confident, confessor, advisor, student, sleeping partner, bathing partner, nurse, and mother of his last seven children. In his public life, I was just his slave. Because I don’t write that well with rheumatism in my hands, I agreed to recount my thoughts to Madison, and he would write them down.

I am legally black, the legally white people of Virginia consider me black, and the Virginia government labels me black. However, I don’t look like most Virginia slaves because I look almost white. I don’t speak like most slaves and I don’t think like most slaves because, even though I was born a slave, I grew up and worked in homes full of white people, listening to them talk; I was a playmate, companion and personal maid of Patsy and Polly Jefferson; and I spent many hours listening to Thomas Jefferson read to me from his favorite books, and talk to me and to his white friends.

I never labored in the fields from sunrise to sunset. I never felt the pain of the lash. I have never been held in chains with a heavy iron collar and hands shackled behind my back. I was never tied to other slave women by a rope around the neck. I was never shown naked on the auction block to be sold to the highest bidder and split away from parents and brothers and sisters. I was never treated as a stupid farm animal. I was never used as a beast of burden. I was never raped. I was never used as a breeder to produce more enslaved field hands. I saw and heard about all of those things, feared them and hated them but I feel lucky because they never happened to me.

I was, however, subjected to one kind of physical cruelty that marked me for life. Most slaves at Thomas Jefferson’s plantation Monticello were branded by the overseer with a cross over the middle of the chest. The purpose was said to be to place an identifier on each Monticello slave so that if they ran away and were caught, the capturer would know exactly who owned that slave and where the slave belonged. I was branded that way at age twelve, about the age that all Monticello slave children were branded. I’ll describe the actual branding later.

After I lived in Thomas Jefferson’s house in Paris, he spent many hours trying to educate me, but what always seemed to me to contradict that effort was that, at first, he told me he did not want me to learn to read because girls and women should pursue activities that don’t require reading. But I think the real reason was that he didn’t want me to read of ideas that were counter to his own, or arguments that destroyed the rationale used by slave owners to justify slavery. After all, his wife and daughters, and other women he respected the most could all read and write very well. He eventually changed his mind and taught me to read and write.

So he would read and explain to me passages from favorite books of his that he thought would provide ideas to shape my mind such as Bible passages recounting the teachings of Jesus often presented in parables; Aesop’s Fables; poems and ideas of John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Blake, and Gaelic poet Ossian; writings of ancient Greek philosophers; books on history and science and medicine; and even a little of Tusculan Disputations of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Reading such books with Thomas Jefferson increased my knowledge of the world by a large amount, brought to me interesting ideas I had never thought about before, and greatly expanded my vocabulary compared to that of other slaves.

Thomas Jefferson had a book full of every word I could think of, and many words I didn’t know so couldn’t think of, by an English man named Samuel Johnson called A Dictionary of the English Language¹ that listed all English words in order of the alphabet, and gave the correct spelling and meaning of all the words. Thomas Jefferson let me read that book any time I wanted, and it became one of my favorite books, and I spent many hours learning the meaning and spelling of words that were new to me.

Thomas Jefferson really liked the old Greek thinkers. He could even read their language. He was impressed with their ideas and he read some of their writings to me. He thought they knew how to figure things out. More than two thousand years ago, they correctly understood many human weaknesses that still exist today. Thomas Jefferson often used their ideas as examples of the correct way to think about things today.

Thinking back now, I believe the most interesting stories he read to me were Greek tragedies like that of Oedipus and of Achilles, and Shakespeare plays like Hamlet in which a great person with exceptional personal qualities was brought to an unhappy or disastrous end by fate, and by a tragic flaw in their thinking and in their character; the hero was often brought down by the same difficulties he was struggling to remove. My favorite was Romeo and Juliet describing two young lovers tragically killing themselves over a misunderstanding. Thomas Jefferson’s favorite was Macbeth describing the tragic consequences of guilt over a murder. Since Thomas Jefferson died and disappeared from my life, I have been impressed at how such stories seem to apply in important ways to him. In truth, I think he enjoyed rereading those passages and stories and poems for himself as much as he wanted them to please and educate me. He also began reading aloud, books that ordinarily he would read silently to himself for his own interest or necessity, so that I could listen and obtain some sense of them even though I could not always completely understand it all.

My family. Although I may know things about Thomas Jefferson that nobody else knows, three generations of my Hemings family, all slaves, were also careful Thomas Jefferson watchers during much of his adult life and thus know much about him and his family. From the time my mother, Elizabeth Hemings, and her ten children at the time, including one year old me, moved to Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, Monticello, in 1774, members of my family had close contact with Thomas Jefferson. My Hemings family received special status and treatment in Thomas Jefferson’s house and in his life away from Monticello. After 1774, my mother worked in his house and became a trusted domestic servant with great responsibility. All my mother’s children and grandchildren called her Mammy.

In all, Mammy had 12 children that lived to a working age. The first four were fathered by the black slave husband of my mother, and the next six, including me, were fathered by white planter and Mammy’s owner John Wayles before Mammy came to Monticello. After moving to Monticello, she had two more children fathered by a white Monticello carpenter. These 12 children and over 30 of her grandchildren, all slaves, carried out important household and skilled-worker jobs at Monticello except for a few Hemings that were given away as gifts to Thomas Jefferson’s sisters and daughters.

The young Heming’s boys worked as fetchers and carriers, fire builders, table setters and waiters, greeted guests to the mansion, carried out errands, and worked as nail makers. When older they became personal valets to Thomas Jefferson, butlers, cooks, coachmen and carriage drivers, stable managers, carpenters, blacksmiths, gardeners, and musicians.

Young Hemings’ girls worked as child minders, errand runners, and playmates of Thomas Jefferson’s daughters. When older they became personal maids to Thomas Jefferson’s wife, sisters and daughters; and became cooks, seamstresses, weavers, laundresses, and housekeepers.

None worked in the fields and none were sent there for the annual wheat harvest as required of all other slaves.

My oldest half-sister Mary Hemings, my mother’s first child, became a pastry cook and a seamstress at Monticello and she was always busy preparing meals for the many visitors there. She was 20 years older than me and I always remember her as the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her skin was darker than mine but a very warm color. Her hair was long and wavy, her teeth white as snow, and her face was very handsome.

My oldest half-brother Martin, 18 years older than me, became the Monticello butler, and later was given the freedom to hire himself out to other white planters during Thomas Jefferson’s long absences during his public service.

My second oldest half-sister, Betty Brown, my mother’s second daughter and 14 years older than me, was the personal maid of Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha, from the time Martha married Thomas Jefferson in 1772 and moved to the Jefferson plantation, Monticello, until Martha’s death in 1782. Betty Brown continued as a much-appreciated household slave at Monticello after Martha died, and there she had seven children that lived to adulthood and worked as slaves for Thomas Jefferson.

My half-sister Nancy Hemings, 12 years older than me, worked as a house servant at Monticello and had two children Billy and Critta that became servants at Monticello. Mary, Martin, Betty Brown and Nancy were children of my mother and her black slave husband named Brown.

My five older brothers and sisters fathered, like me, by white planter John Wayles, were also household servants. Robert Hemings, 11 years older than me and called Bob by Thomas Jefferson, and James Hemings, 8 years older than me and called Jamey by Thomas Jefferson, became Thomas Jefferson’s personal servants caring for his personal needs not only at Monticello but they traveled with him to Philadelphia in 1775 and 1776 to serve his personal needs when he was a Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress where he was principle author of the Declaration of Independence, the document that announced the American colonies’ independence from England, and started the Revolutionary War between the Continental Army and the British Army sent from England.

My brothers traveled with him to Williamsburg 1779 and then to Richmond in 1780 when he served as Governor of Virginia, and were serving him as personal attendants when he wrote his Notes on the State of Virginia in 1781 and 1782. He taught them to read, thus they could and did read some of things he wrote, and they were with him as he discussed ideas and events with acquaintances as he dined and socialized with these acquaintances. In later years my brothers told me things they learned from him during those times.

After my brothers had served Thomas Jefferson as personal attendants, he had Robert trained as a barber to shave him and cut his hair, and he permitted Robert to travel alone and work for wages outside of Monticello when Thomas Jefferson was away for a long time working in government.

James became a cook in the kitchen at Monticello, then trained as a chef in Paris and returned to Monticello to cook French style food, and train his younger brother, Peter, in French cooking.

My sisters Thenia Hemings, 6 years older than me, and Critta Hemings, 4 years older than me, were household servants at Monticello. My brother Peter Hemings, three years older than me, was a cook at Monticello and was trained by our older brother James in French cooking which he took over from James when James left Monticello.

After arriving at Monticello in 1774, my mother had two more children fathered by a white carpenter at Monticello named Joseph Neilson: John Hemings, two years younger than me, became an expert carpenter and cabinet maker; and Lucy Hemings, 4 years younger than me, died at age nine when I was living away from Monticello caring for Thomas Jefferson’s daughters. I was pretty young when these children were born, and I don’t remember Joseph Neilson, and I don’t know how my mother came to mate with him.

Undoubtedly the most important favored treatment Thomas Jefferson gave some Hemings slaves was their freedom. He freed my brothers Robert, James, and John Hemings as well as all of my children fathered by him, three of my nephews Joseph Fossett, Wormley Hughes and Burwell Colbert, and eventually me; all freed only after reaching adulthood. Only three slaves were legally freed in his will. The others were informally freed by letting them walk away and not pursuing them. This informal kind of emancipation was granted to me and a nephew of mine by Thomas Jefferson’s daughter Patsy after Thomas Jefferson’s death and following his instructions. Thomas Jefferson had never freed any slave before he freed Robert and James Hemings. Freedom from slavery was a wish of all slaves and was only granted by Thomas Jefferson to certain Hemings.

However, none of these Hemings slaves were freed based on a voluntary decision by Thomas Jefferson. In every case freedom was granted only after he, and later his daughter Patsy, were strongly coerced to act by James Hemings and me, or by me alone as I will explain later.

Thus Heming’s family members of three generations including my mother, her children and children of her children were an integral part of Thomas Jefferson’s life and they all knew him well. As I have described, many were skilled workers that made important contributions to life at Monticello and they were much trusted as they provided personal services to Thomas Jefferson and his family. They were keen observers of many aspects his and his family’s personal lives, and had intimate knowledge his eating habits, sleeping habits, bathing habits, toilet habits, exercise preferences, and many other things about him. My family shared all the information that anyone of us learned about Thomas Jefferson and his family.

The reason for our privileged treatment was always thought to be because some Hemings were actually part of Thomas Jefferson’s family by blood. My mother’s five children fathered by John Wayles (Robert, James, Thenia, Critta, Peter, and me) were half siblings of Thomas Jefferson’s wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Martha’s sisters, all fathered by John Wayles. Then all of my surviving children (Thomas, Beverly, Harriet, Madison and Eston) were fathered by Thomas Jefferson and thus were his own children. These blood ties had to be on the minds of Thomas Jefferson and his wife and daughters as they interacted with all of the Hemings, although the Jeffersons would never acknowledge their blood ties to black slaves out loud.

I think there is another reason for the favorable treatment of my family, and that is because my mother and brothers and others in the family were smart, capable and dependable. Thomas Jefferson liked and favored people, free or enslaved, who were smart, capable and dependable. What ever the reason we Hemings received favorable treatment and special privileges, other slaves at Monticello were not treated that way, and this was recognized by them, and was a source of some jealousy and resentment by them.

My situation. As I reflect on the factors that have directed the course of my life I see that, like all slaves, my life was in the hands of a master who, by law and by custom, owned me. It was decisions made by him and his surrogates, his family and his associates, that determined who would own me, where I lived, where I traveled, what I ate, what clothes I wore, what work I did, what education or training I received, what people I could know, what would happen to me if I was caught running away, and even who could make me pregnant. He could punish me in any way, for anything he wanted to. He could even beat me to death without being charged with a crime because I was his property. Although all Hemings down deep wanted to be free, we regularly submitted to our life as slaves and had some appreciation of the better life we had than any other slave at Monticello.

But given the reality of my condition as a slave, and despite the privilege Thomas Jefferson enjoyed of using me as he wished exclusively for his own benefit and ends, I am struck by the number of times in my life when unpredicted and unexpected events intervened to determine my fate. Unpredicted events that determined, or sometimes changed, decisions that my master made about what he did with me. These were most often unpredicted things that happened as a consequence of births, marriages or deaths of white people, and I will describe them as we go along. Much less often, but just as important, were a few important decisions that I made for myself that determined the direction of my life, and that determined the road that I would take.

But all that’s getting ahead of my story. I want to first describe the circumstances of my birth and the parents that brought me into the world. I was born in 1773 at The Forest, the Cumberland County Virginia plantation of my white father, John Wayles, a well-known lawyer, slave trader and planter. My mother, Elizabeth Hemings, was John Wayles’ slave. I never knew my father, he died the year I was born, nor did I know any grandparent. So most of what I know about my family is what my mother has told me, and what I’ve learned from Thomas Jefferson who knew John Wayles (Wayles was only eleven years older than Thomas Jefferson) and his family. Both men practiced law in Virginia, and as I have said, Thomas Jefferson married John Wayles’ daughter and my half sister, Martha Wayles, in 1772. Most of the dates I have come from Thomas Jefferson. He was a detail and date man with good memory and extensive records.

Chapter 2

My Beginnings and the Death of John Wayles in 1773

To understand how I became a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson and how I came to be the sister of Thomas Jefferson’s wife Martha, it is necessary to know something about the plantation life into which I was born. My father, John Wayles, I have been told, was born in Lancaster, England around 1715, was educated as a lawyer and became a slave trader in Lancaster, the business that brought him to Virginia. In Virginia he became a big landowner that included The Forest, his plantation on the James River in Charles City County where he continued his slave trading business. He acquired much wealth in his property holdings and slaves but at the same time he accumulated a lot of debt by taking loans f rom banks.

In 1746 he married Martha Eppes, who was born at Bermuda Hundred plantation just across the James River from John Wayles’ Forest plantation. Bermuda Hundred was originally built and owned by Martha Eppes’ father Colonel Francis Eppes IV. Francis Eppes IV was the original owner of his slave and my grandmother Parthenia. This marriage of John Wayles and Martha Eppes would have a profound and unexpected effect on the course of my mother’s life, and would eventually lead to my conception and birth. This is because, as part of her dowry, Martha Eppes brought with her several personal slaves, that included my grandmother, Parthenia, and her children including twelve year old daughter and my mother, Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings. This marriage brought my mother as a twelve-year-old slave into the household of John Wayles.

Elizabeth’s mother (my grandmother), Parthenia, was born in Africa, was captured in Africa by slave traders, transported in a slave ship to Virginia, purchased by Francis Eppes IV, and she then lived at his Bermuda Hundred plantation. She had been made pregnant by the English sea Captain John Hemings, and the baby was born at Bermuda Hundred in 1735, and was named Elizabeth Hemings, my mother. Virginia law stipulated that any child born of a slave woman was a slave, owned by the mother’s owner, no matter who the father was. Thus my mother got her white blood half and her last name from her father, Captain John Hemings, and her black blood half and being a slave from her mother, Parthenia.

Captain John Hemings when later visiting ashore in Williamsburg, a town very close to Bermuda Hundred, found out that Parthenia’s daughter, Elizabeth, was his child. He then tried to buy my mother, Elizabeth Hemings, considering her to be his own flesh, from her owner for a high price but the Eppes family refused to sell.

Francis Eppes IV died in 1734, and his slave Parthenia and daughter Elizabeth, born just after that, continued to live at Bermuda Hundred until Francis Eppes daughter, Martha Eppes, married John Wayles in 1746, and my grandmother Parthenia and her daughter Elizabeth went with Martha Eppes as personal servants to live at John Wayles Forest plantation. The marriage contract between John Wayles and Martha Eppes stipulated that Parthenia and all her children including Elizabeth, were to remain the property of Martha Eppes or her heirs in the case of Martha’s death, or be returned to the Eppes family should there be no heirs.

John Wayles and Martha Eppes Wayles had one daughter that survived to be an adult and they named her Martha Wayles, born about 1748 at Forest plantation. Within a week or so of Martha Wayles birth, her mother, Martha Eppes, died leaving slaves Parthenia and all her children, including her daughter and my mother, Elizabeth, the legal property of newborn Martha Wayles.

John Wayles then married his second wife, Tabitha Cocke, and they had three daughters that survived before Tabitha Cocke died. The oldest of these daughters, Elizabeth Wayles, married Francis Eppes VI and they lived at his Eppington plantation in Chesterfield County, where, as I will describe later, I once lived for 3 years with Thomas Jefferson’s daughters.

John Wayles married a third wife, Elizabeth Lomax Skelton (widowed from Reuben Skelton) in 1760; she had no children before dying in 1761, again leaving John Wayles a widower for the third time. He then took my mother Elizabeth Hemings who was his slave living at Forest plantation, and said then to be a very good looking mulatto woman at age 26, as his concubine and they had six children: Robert Hemings born in 1762, James Hemings born 1765, Thenia Hemings (named after her grandmother Parthenia) born 1767, Critta Hemings born 1769, Peter Hemings born 1770 and me born in 1773, just after John Wayles died in 1773 at age 57. At birth I was named Sarah, but people always call me Sally.

Thus half of the blood of my brothers and sisters and me was white blood from our father John Wayles; and one fourth of our blood as white blood and one fourth as black blood, our last name, and our being slaves were all from our mother Elizabeth Hemings. Thus three fourths of our blood was white, given to us by a white grandfather and then a white father, and we looked like it; and John Wayles other daughters including Martha Wayles Jefferson and Elizabeth Wayles Eppes, were our half-sisters.

In 1766 at age 18, Martha Wayles married Bathurst Skelton (the brother of Elizabeth Lomax Skelton’s first husband). She had one son they named John Wayles Skelton. Bathurst Skelton died falling from a horse in 1768 and Martha, as a young widow, returned to Forest plantation to live again with her father. Martha’s son John died suddenly of a fever on June of 1771, at a time she was already engaged to her distant cousin Thomas Jefferson.

In 1772 at age 23 she married a second time to 29-year-old Thomas Jefferson at her father’s home, Forest plantation. They lived at Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, Monticello in Albemarle County, taking my 13-year-old half-sister Betty Brown with her as her maid. This separated daughter Betty Brown from her mother and siblings, and caused much distress for all. My mother, Elizabeth Hemings, and her other children remained at Forest with John Wayles.

As I said before, my father John Wayles died on May 23, 1773 and I was born two months later in July (nobody remembers the day), and in 1774 when I was one year old, my 39 year old mother and her six children fathered by John Wayles: Robert, James, Thenia, Critta, Peter, and me; and her four children born in the 1750’s before she became John Wayles’ concubine, children fathered by a slave named Brown: Mary Hemings, Martin Hemings, Betty (Bett) Brown, Nancy (Nance) Hemings, all came to Monticello, being the legal property of Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. Although I never saw my father because he died before I was born, people that had known John Wayles always told me that my face looked very much like his.

Martha Wayles Jefferson had inherited a total of 135 slaves, eleven thousand acres of land, and a large debt owed to banks from her father. Since Virginia law specified that upon marriage, a woman’s property and debts be transferred to her husband; my mother, my brothers and sisters, and I became slaves of Thomas Jefferson. His marriage and John Wayles death had more than doubled his land holdings and more than tripled the number of slaves he owned, and greatly increased his debt.

Chapter 3

My Early Years at Monticello

The history of my origins that I have just described, I learned from other people. So now I want to describe events in my life that I remember. My earliest recollections are of life at Monticello as a young slave girl living in a one room log cabin on Mulberry Row at Monticello with my mother and brothers and sisters, playing with my brothers and sisters and with Patsy and Polly Jefferson, children of Martha and Thomas Jefferson, and later working in the big house for my half sister, Thomas Jefferson’s wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. Mammy and other house slaves called her Ms Martha for Mistress Martha. They called Thomas Jefferson Massa Tom for M aster Tom.

The center of my own life as a child and that of all my family was in Mulberry Row, a long row of buildings extending east from the main house along a road lined with Mulberry trees and surrounded by a high fence. Included were a smokehouse and dairy, blacksmith shop, nail-making shop, joiners shop, sawpit, coal sheds, a weaver’s cottage, storehouse for lumber, and several small cabins where some 40 slaves lived. Housed there were servants working in the main house as well as the skilled workers such as weavers, carriage men, stable hands, cooks, washer women, carpenters, blacksmiths, gardeners, furniture makers and masons. Mammy and her younger children lived in one of the cabins in Mulberry Row.

As a kid I was skinny but strong. I could run faster and climb trees better than all of the boys my age. I was tall for my age and had a few freckles and long straight dark brown, nearly black hair. I went barefoot most of the time. As a girl the only clothes I wore most of the year was a long dress except in winter when I also wore shoes and a coat for outdoors.

I played some with my brother Peter who was 2 years older than me, and also with Isaac Jefferson, 2 years younger than me, and who was the son of slave George Granger, called Great George, and his wife Ursula, a house slave, like Mammy. Although a slave, Great George was Massa Tom’s foreman of labor and eventually was made a paid overseer at Monticello. Ursula was a cook and laundress. The Grangers were given special and privileged treatment like the Hemings because they were smart, capable and dependable.

The Jefferson daughters, Patsy one year older than me, and Polly 4 years younger than me, liked playing with dolls and I played with them sometimes but I preferred playing with the boys who did more interesting things.

Isaac Jefferson’s mother Ursula liked me a lot, and I think that was because all of her children were boys and she had no daughter. She was a cook at Monticello and often gave me special treats to eat from the kitchen.

As a young child playing with Patsy and Polly I considered myself their equal and they treated me as an equal. As we grew older our roles slowly and steadily changed as I assumed the role of their servant and they increasingly expected to be served by me. They began studying with a tutor to learn great literature, poetry, the French language, Bible study, and music including instruction in playing the pianoforte and harpsichord.

My older sisters and I received training, and then were assigned, some household work such as making beds, keeping Jefferson family clothes in order, washing dishes, washing clothes, sewing, serving the family at meals. I would run errands and assist my brother James when he was cooking meals for large dinner parties. As I got older I spent most of my effort in sewing to make and to mend dresses and other clothes, and serving as ladies maid for Patsy and Polly, fixing their hair and organizing their clothes.

When my brothers and sisters and I reached age 9 or 10 we began work in the house. Many of our friends at this age went to the fields as workers and we saw much less of them after that. As I have described, at that time my brothers Robert and James were made personal servants of Massa Tom, organizing his clothes, keeping his bedroom in order, dressing him, shaving him, following him on horseback, waiting on him at the dinner table and anticipating his every personal need. As I said before, James later trained in cooking and became the main cook at Monticello, and then trained in French cooking when he went to Paris with Massa Tom and he cooked French food on his return to Monticello. Robert was trained as a barber. My sisters Critta and Thenia were maids in the main house and helped raise our half-nieces Patsy and Polly Jefferson.

Ms Martha. My half sister and mistress, Martha Wayles Jefferson, as Massa Tom’s wife was in charge of managing the household at Monticello and she made most decisions about the work assigned to each household slave. She was able to bake cakes, make soap, brew beer, sew and mend clothes but she actually did little of the work. Most of the labor for these things was actually carried out by slaves under Ms Martha’s directions.

Ms Martha was just over five feet tall with a thin build; I would say she was underweight. Some people called her frail. She had reddish brown hair and light brown eyes. She had small pox as a girl that left a few pox scars on her face. When I knew her in her last few years of her life, she was not strong and tired easily, but she pushed herself with many activities. The ones she liked most, it seemed to me, were making music, singing and playing harpsichord and guitar, playing music with Massa Tom on the violin almost every evening, and she was very good at that; and her second favorite interest was embroidering at which she spent a good amount of time.

Young slave girls working in the house, did chores for the family women like Ms Martha and had little contact with the men in the house, and I almost never saw or talked to Massa Tom. Young slave boys worked for the men in the house. As I said before, my older brothers were personal valets for Massa Tom.

Ms Martha had a quick temper that came down on all of us at one time or another, but she was just as quick to get over it and would always apologize for what she had said. When I was nine I began running errands for Ms Martha and she seemed to like me a lot.

One of my jobs was to look Ms Martha up in the middle of the morning and ask her what she wanted for supper each day and then relay that message to Ursula and my older sister Mary in the kitchen. Then it was my job to fetch Ms Martha when her supper was ready which was just about noontime. Ms Martha often liked soup for supper, pea soup was one of her favorites and she liked it hot. Patsy, Polly and Lucy would eat supper with her, and Massa Tom would be there when he was not away from Monticello, which was quite often. Dinner was served in early evening, and the menu was always planned by Ms Martha and was more extensive. Visitors often stayed at Monticello and would join the family for meals.

After her daily practice on the harpsichord Ms Martha would sometimes teach me to play simple tunes. I was never very good at it because I didn’t have the time to practice for hours as did she and her daughter Patsy, but I could play a few songs and sing along as I played.

Ms Martha also read poems to her daughters and me, and it was easy for me to memorize them just from hearing them a few times. One of our favorites was William Wordsworth’s Daffodils:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils

In my mind I could always see pretty yellow flowers dancing in the wind when reciting that poem. Ms Martha was delighted and thought it was remarkable that I could remember and recite this poem and others after hearing her read them only two or three times. I couldn’t say how remarkable that was but I do know that Patsy and Polly couldn’t do that.

Massa Tom had let my brothers learn to read from tutors he provided for his daughters, and they knew the alphabet and were able to teach it to me. It was easy for me to remember only 26 letters. I learned that words are made with these letters, and I learned the spelling of words for supplies needed for the kitchen that James would write down on paper to make a list of things he needed for cooking. As I watched the written words of poems and songs as Ms Martha read those to me and her daughters, I was able to learn how to recognize written words that were common in those poems and songs.

Massa Tom. Massa Tom did not pay much attention to female house slaves when they were children, and when I was little he knew my name but little more about me, but the male slaves like my brothers got much more attention as they served him in various ways. His children with Martha were all girls and with no son of his own, he seemed, in some ways, to consider my brothers as sons, and although they were half brothers of Martha Wayles Jefferson, they always knew, and he let them know, they were his slaves.

My childhood memory of Massa Tom was as the tallest man I had ever seen at six feet, two-and-one-half inches in height, slender yet strong, broad shoulders, very long arms and legs, very large hands and feet. His neck was long, and head was set forward on his shoulders. Although stooped when he stood, his body was erect in the saddle and when walking with an easy, steady gait. He rode a horse better than anybody. He slouched in a chair. He had a very ruddy complexion with freckles on his face, red-blonde hair that was thick, and grey eyes with brown flecks. He had a long face and chin. His teeth were good but he didn’t show them much when he laughed. He was always singing some tune when walking or riding.

Ms Martha was devoted to Massa Tom and would do anything for him. My memory of Monticello when I was small was that he was gone most of the time to Philadelphia or Richmond or some other place, and wife Martha could hardly wait for him to return, and was excited and delighted each time to see him.

On the other hand, Massa Tom was not always easy to live with. Mammy told me she thought he was too demanding and always got what he wanted. Not in a loud or confrontational way because he always maintained his dignity and composure, and spoke softly. But Massa Tom expected and got from Ms Martha complete subordination. He thought he was always right. This was his expectation and this was considered her duty to accept it. Her job was to run the house, entertain him and bear him children, not to disagree with him. Although she couldn’t wait for him to return when he was away; when he had been home for a while, it seemed like it was something of a relief for her when he went away again.

Hemings born at Monticello. Several children were born into my family at Monticello when I was a child. The first that I remember was the birth of my half-brother John Hemings in 1776 when I was three. Mammy was made pregnant by a white carpenter Joseph Neilson, who was the chief carpenter at Monticello and mentor of white carpenter William Fossett, the man who, as I said before, made Mammy’s daughter and my half sister Mary Hemings pregnant with my nephew Joe Fossett in 1780. These Monticello carpenters seemed to like mating with Hemings’ woman a lot.

At age 16, John Hemings started working as an out-door carpenter, cutting down trees, hewing logs, building fences and barns, and helping to build the log slave cabins on Mulberry Row. At age 17 he began training with James Dinsmore, the Irish joiner responsible for most of the special woodwork in the Monticello house. John learned to make spoked wheels, mahogany furniture, and to use wood planes to make decorative interior moldings. John made much of the woodwork in Massa Tom’s house at Poplar Forest in Bedford County. He also made all the wooden parts of a landau carriage built in 1814. He became a highly expert joiner and cabinetmaker. John also made toys and furniture for Massa Tom’s grandchildren.

My half-sister Mary had five children at Monticello including Joe Fossett, fathered in 1780 by white Monticello carpenter William Fossett. Joe worked in the Monticello nail factory as a boy, and then learned blacksmithing and became an exceptional ironworker who could do anything with steel or iron. He did the ironwork for the construction of carriages and other equipment at Monticello.

Joseph Neilson made Mammy pregnant again in 1777, and the result was my half sister Lucy. Lucy died of fever at age nine.

In 1780 my half-sister Betty Brown was made pregnant by Stephen Hughes, a white gardener, and birthed Wormley Hughes in 1781. Wormley worked in the nailery from the age of thirteen. He also worked some in the house. At age 17 he began training as a gardener with Robert Bailey, a Scottish gardener at Monticello. Wormley became the head gardener and planted seeds, bulbs, and trees sent back from all over by Massa Tom. Wormley laid out and planted the flowerbeds and the vegetable garden. Wormley then followed Jupiter as hostler in the stables, caring for the horses and stable equipment. He loved horses.

Betty Brown had seven children at Monticello including Wormley Hughes who became Monticello’s head gardener, and Burwell Colbert who became the Monticello butler and Thomas Jefferson’s much trusted personal valet.

Mammy, Mary Hemings and Betty Brown all felt forced to mate with these white men. They couldn’t complain to and be protected by Massa Tom because he was at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1776, in Richmond at the Virginia House of Delegates in 1777, and in Richmond as the Virginia Governor in 1780. If Massa Tom had been at Monticello, I don’t think these white men would have touched Mammy or my sisters. If John Wayles had not died in 1773, probably Mammy, Mary and Betty would not have been so abused by white men like these. Mammy being John Wayles mistress would have been protected, and the same for her children.

Childhood memories of the beauty of Monticello. Certain pleasant memories of my childhood at Monticello will always be with me. In addition to playing with other children and working for Ms Martha, I remember fondly the natural beauty surrounding Monticello. I remember the wonder of watching the stars at night. It was hard for me to imagine how far away they were, how many were there, and why they twinkled as they did. My brothers knew the names of some of the stars like the North Star at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper, Castor and Pollux of Gemini, and Pleiades of Taurus, the Big Dipper.

I could not take my eyes off the moon when it was in the night sky. The large orange harvest moon coming up over the horizon was easy to see from Monticello that was located on a mountaintop that provided long distant views. The bone white overhead moon had darkened places that looked to me like mountains.

Lying in bed at night, familiar night sounds would sing me to sleep. The whip-poor-will song as darkness fell signaled bedtime. For sleep, rainfall on the roof and familiar animal sounds were like music to my ears. The hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo, hoo of the great horned owl sitting every night in a big old shagbark hickory tree near our cabin, and the howls of distant wolves were songs that put me to sleep. I didn’t mind being awakened at first light by the delicious sounds of mourning doves calling coo-ah, cooo-cooo-cooo to each other, and I would lie there in the early morning enjoying them until I had to get up.

Summers were very hot and the occasional relief brought by warm summer rain was always an occasion to run outside with only a thin dress to get wet all over and feel the rain splashing on my face. Sometimes in early mornings in summer, the valley to the west of Monticello would be completely covered with thick fog seen from the top of the mountain, the dense layer only broken by a few wooded hills sticking up through the fog like islands in a lake. As the sun rose, the fog would break up and disappear as the morning progressed. The caw, caw, caw of the crows as they picked corn kernels out of horse apples around the stables was a familiar summer sound.

Autumn was my favorite season because the heat of summer was over and in October the trees changed color with red-orange maples, deep maroon tupelos, brilliant red sumacs, glorious golden oaks, red-orange maples, golden yellow poplars, and a splash of green loblolly pines. From the top of the mountain at Monticello, the thick forest went on as far as the eye could see and the forest painted with with October colors made a most beautiful site to see.

Winters were cold and sometimes wet, and fireplace fires were maintained all day to stay warm. Trees were bare, roads were muddy, and nights were long. It snowed two or three times each winter. Food stored away from summer harvest was used all winter.

Spring was always welcome relief from winter with warming weather, earlier sunrises, and lengthening days. The renewal of life began with new green leaves on bare trees, and then the appearance of white dogwood flowers and purple-pink of red bud. From the top of the Mountain at Monticello in spring, the light green colors of spring leaves extended as far as the eye could see and must cover the entire deep forest of Virginia. Field hands would come to the garden near the house and plow up the brick red Virginia soil to prepare it for Massa Tom, his children and house servants to plant the vegetable garden that Massa Tom loved so much; the garden that would provide fresh vegetables for the table all summer and into the winter.

This is the kind of life I had as a child and the place I lived most of my life. These were the memories of