Sally Hemings

Sally Hemings was enslaved by Thomas Jefferson, was the half-sister of his late wife, and had six children by him. Her mother Elizabeth Hemings was the daughter of an enslaved woman and an English captain, and Sally's father was almost certainly John Wayles, who was also the father of Martha Jefferson; the two women were therefore half-sisters, and Sally came to Monticello as part of the inheritance Martha brought with her. At fourteen she travelled to Paris as maid to Jefferson's daughter, and spent twenty-six months there, where slavery had no legal force and she could have petitioned for freedom. According to the account her son Madison gave to an Ohio newspaper in 1873, she agreed to return only after Jefferson promised that her children would be freed at twenty-one. Four survived to adulthood and all four went free, two by being allowed to walk away and two by his will - they are the only enslaved family at Monticello freed in that way. The allegation was published by James Callender in 1802 during Jefferson's presidency and was denied or explained away for the next two centuries, usually by attributing the children to a nephew. DNA testing in 1998 showed a Jefferson male line in the descendants of her youngest son, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation concluded in 2000 that he was the father of all six. No portrait of her exists and no description of her appearance survives beyond a few second-hand sentences; almost everything known comes from Madison Hemings and from Jefferson's farm records. She was never legally freed, and lived her last years in Charlottesville with her sons. Her room at Monticello was identified in 2017 beneath a lavatory installed in the 1940s and has been restored as an exhibit. Her brother James, trained as a chef in Paris, negotiated his own freedom on condition of teaching a successor.

• Lived: 1773 CE – 1835 CE
• Nationality: American
• Roles: other