Madison Hemings
Madison Hemings was the son of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. He was the third of Sally Hemings' four children to survive to adulthood. Enslaved since birth, in accord with the legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem, Hemings grew up on Jefferson's Monticello plantation, where his mother was also enslaved. After some light duties as a young boy, Hemings became a carpenter and fine woodwork apprentice at around age 14 and worked in the joiner's shop until he was about 21. He learned to play the violin and was able to earn money by growing cabbages. Jefferson died in 1826 and Madison was freed in his will, after which Sally Hemings was "given her time" by Jefferson's surviving daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph.
The historical question of whether Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children is the subject of the Jefferson–Hemings controversy. At the age of 68, Hemings claimed the connection in an 1873 Ohio newspaper interview, titled, "Life Among the Lowly," which attracted national and international attention. Following renewed historical analysis in the late 20th century, and a 1998 DNA study that found a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Sally Hemings' youngest son, Eston Hemings, the Monticello Foundation asserted that Jefferson fathered Eston and likely her other five children as well.
After Hemings and his younger brother Eston were freed, they each worked and married free women of color; they lived with their families and mother Sally in Charlottesville until her death in 1835. Both brothers moved with their young families to Chillicothe, Ohio to live in a free state. Hemings and his wife Mary lived there the remainder of their lives; he worked as a farmer and highly skilled carpenter. Among their ten children were two sons who served the Union Army in the Civil War,both of whom who enlisted as white men in the regular army.
Among Madison and Mary Hemings' grandchildren was Frederick Madison Roberts, the first African American elected to office on the West Coast. He served in the California legislature for nearly two decades. In 2010, their descendant Shay Banks-Young, who identifies as African American, together with one Wayles and one Hemings descendant, who each identify as European American, received the international "Search for Common Ground" award for work among the Jefferson descendants and the public to bridge gaps and heal "the legacy of slavery." They founded "The Monticello Community" for descendants of all the people who lived and worked there in Jefferson's lifetime.
Slavery
Madison Hemings was born into slavery at Monticello, where his mother Sally Hemings was a mixed-race enslaved woman inherited by Martha Wayles Skelton, the wife of Thomas Jefferson. Sally and Martha were half-sisters, both fathered by the planter John Wayles. Sally worked in the main house as a domestic servant. Jefferson's wife Martha died on September 6, 1782. While in Paris, from 1787 to 1789, Sally Hemings cared for Jefferson's daughters. She lived her teenage years as a free person in France, where there was no slavery. According to Hemings's memoir, his mother told him that his father was Thomas Jefferson, and that their relationship had started in Paris, where he was serving as a diplomat, having been appointed the Minister to France in 1784. Pregnant, she agreed to return with Jefferson to the United States based on his promise to free her children when they came of age at 21. Sally returned to Monticello and remained a domestic servant in the main house and she also became Jefferson's chambermaid. Her living quarters, located in the South Wing of Monticello, adjacent to Jefferson's bedchamber, were built in 1809. Although there was no window to the outside, it likely gave her and her children a higher-level lifestyle than other enslaved people at Monticello.Hemings referred to Sally Hemings as "mother" and Jefferson as "father", who treated one another with respect. Hemings described Jefferson as even-tempered and "uniformly kind". He compared Jefferson's affectionate treatment of his white grandchildren to that of the Hemings children, who were not treated with affection or partiality. Henry Wiencek asserts that while Jefferson felt no emotion when he saw "eternal monotony" in the faces of black-skinned enslaved people, seeing himself in the faces of the Hemings children, who he enslaved, caused him to remain emotionally distant from his off-spring with Sally.
Hemings grew up at Monticello with an older brother Beverley, older sister Harriet, and a younger brother Eston. Two or more other siblings died young. Sally and her four surviving children were listed together in Jefferson's Farm Book at Monticello in 1810. The children were fair-skinned and some bore a remarkable resemblance to Jefferson. Jefferson's grandchildren were not told that they were related to the Hemings children.
Hemings was named for Jefferson's close friend, James Madison. According to Hemings, Dolley Madison requested the honor of his being named after her husband, who was afterwards President of the United States. As a young child, Hemings and his siblings stayed in or near the main house, sometimes running errands. Unlike other enslaved children, they had light work, were able to stay near their mother, and knew that they would be freed upon coming of age. Hemings learned to read and write from white children and was partially self-taught. At the age of 12 or 14, Hemings was apprenticed to his uncle, Sally's brother John Hemings, to learn carpentry and fine woodworking. Beverley and Eston were also apprentices. The brothers worked in the joiner's shop at Poplar Forest and Monticello in total from 1810 to 1826. By 1824, Jefferson gave Hemings and his younger brother a patch of land to grow vegetables. At harvest, the boys were paid for 100 heads of cabbage. All three of the Hemings brothers learned to play the violin, the instrument associated with Jefferson. As an adult, Eston Hemings made a living as a musician. Their sister, Harriet, learned to weave.
Hemings stated that Beverley and Harriet moved to Washington D.C. in 1822 when they "ran away" from Monticello. Jefferson ensured that Harriet was given $50 for her journey to Washington, D.C. Because of their light skin and appearance, both identified with the white community and probably changed their names. After Beverley had left, Jefferson updated his Farm Book with his name and "runaway 22". Harriet's leaving was similarly recorded. Hemings said they had married white spouses of good circumstances, and moved into white society. They apparently kept their paternity a secret, as it would have revealed their origins as slaves.
Freedom
According to the terms of Jefferson's will, twenty-one-year-old Madison Hemings and his brother Eston were emancipated in 1827. As stipulated in Jefferson's will, the state legislature was petitioned to allow the brothers, their mother, and Joseph Fossett to remain in the state after the one-year residency limit for freedmen. The Hemings rented a house in Charlottesville, where Sally lived with them. At the age of 50, she was considered an old woman in the slave trade. She was not formally freed but was "given her time" by Jefferson's surviving daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph, who was also Hemings' niece. Sally Heming's children were the only family unit freed by Jefferson, and the only young people freed as they came of age. In the 1830 Albemarle County census, Madison, Eston and Sally Hemings were all classified as free whites, sometimes they were classified as mixed race. Sally Hemings died in Charlotte in 1835. During their time in Charlottesville, Hemings had built a wood-and-brick house on Main Street.Married life
On November 21, 1831, Madison wed Mary Hughes McCoy, a free woman of mixed-race ancestry.In 1836, Hemings, Mary, and their infant daughter Sarah left Charlottesville for Pike County, Ohio. Eston and his family—and Mary's family—had already moved there. They lived in Chillicothe, which had a thriving free black community, abolitionists among both races, and a station of the Underground Railroad, helping escapees from slavery in the South. Surviving records in Pike County state that Hemings purchased for $150 on July 22, 1856, sold the same area for $250 on December 30, 1859, and purchased for $10 per acre on September 25, 1865 in Ross County, Ohio. During that time, Hemings helped build houses in Waverly, Ohio, which was known for its anti-black sentiment.
Madison and Mary Hemings were the parents of ten children:
- an unnamed son - died young before they moved to Ohio.
- Sarah Hemings - married Reuben Byrd, and had three children.
- Thomas Eston Hemings a Civil War soldier who died in capture, died unmarried.
- Harriet Hemings - married Civil War veterans, James Butler, and Henry Spears. She had three children with her first husband James Butler.
- Mary Ann Hemings - married David Johnson, had two children.
- Catherine Jane Hemings - married George Washington Hale, had four children.
- William Beverly Hemings - a Civil War veteran, died unmarried.
- James Madison Hemings - a Civil War veteran, died unmarried.
- Julia Ann Hemings - died young, and unmarried.
- Ellen Wayles Hemings - married Andrew Jackson Roberts, and had three children.
Following passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Eston and his family moved in 1852 to Madison, Wisconsin, to get further from possible danger from slave catchers. Slave catchers were known to kidnap free black people and sell them into slavery, as demand and prices were high in the Deep South. Eston lived as a white man in Wisconsin. Of Sally Hemings' children, Hemings was the only one that lived among African Americans after he attained his freedom.
In 1873, Hemings used an Ohio newspaper interview about his life, titled, "Life Among the Lowly", to address the Jefferson/Hemings controversy, stating that Jefferson was his and his three siblings' father. Hemings was a widower when he died of consumption on November 28, 1877, in Huntington Township, Ross County, Ohio.