That is the part that I think is interesting. It makes the story pretty different than most people assume when they first hear it. Sally was already part of the family and presumably mostly white in appearance. Their children were only 1/8th black as a result yet still remained “black” slaves which is another interesting illustration of the legal and social conventions of the time.
As mentioned above, some of her nieces and nephews were white slaves. Had her two eldest children remained in Virginia they may have been legally white slaves.
To Sally, Jefferson would probably have been godlike. He wasn’t just her master and the master of Monticello, he was a white man of whom other white men, including some who were very clearly powerful and some of whom were his enemies, were in obvious awe. You can also only imagine what it would have been like going from a Virginia plantation to Paris on the eve of the Revolution.
She probably spoke at least some French, this being because in addition to living in Paris it’s known that her brother, James, learned the language (at his own expense) and would probably have taught her at least some key phrases. Isaac Jefferson remembered that she had long straight black hair that she always wore loose and that everybody on the plantation, white and black, thought she was beautiful (Callender said her nickname was “Dashing Sally”). While I doubt it was a love match, it’s easy to see why each would have been attracted to/seen a benefit in relationship with the other. (Certainly if he had ordered her to his bed she would not have had a choice after returning to America, but unlike many slave-master liaisons it’s easy to imagine how it began by mutual consent and probably had emotional elements.)
It’s known that her son Beverly was an accomplished musician who played the harpsichord and the violin. Eston and Madison were carpenters whose training is specifically mentioned in Jefferson’s will. Fortunes later in life ebbed and flowed; reading that Madison left an estate valued at under $1,000 may imply he died indigent until you realize that most Americans were worth under $1,000, and he did own his own land and house. Beverly was said by Madison to most resemble Jefferson and recalled an incident when a visitor to Monticello did a double take at seeing a young Thomas Jefferson serving his food; some of Eston’s descendants passed down an oral tradition of Jefferson being irked when a visitor mistook Sally’s children for his [legitimate] grandchildren- a double whammy since it adds in TJ’s age.
There was a novel and play in the 1850s (though only the novel survives) about two fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. It is a complete fabrication, a melodrama whose characters bear no real relation to any events of the Hemings family, and as you can imagine it was very controversial and banned in some places north and south. I personally have no interest in writing it, but Beverly and Harriet Hemings are both prime for a historical novel since there’s enough known of them to add some context and enough missing (there’s nothing known of them after they became adults) to completely go wild plotwise. (I wonder if there’s been a study of Census and legal records for men named Beverly born ca. 1798.)
I understand the Star Wars prequels have deleted scenes that depict this.
The famous Alkaselzer Skywalker scenes.
ALKASELZER SKYWALKER: Hey Annie, I know your mom told you some shuck and jive about the Force and a bunch of miniclorox or whatever the hell it is knocking her up, but truth is, the woman never could hold her Jawa Juice. We hooked up after the Jabba Jamboree day and next thing you know she’s knocked up and gone off claiming she’s a knocked up virgin- about twenty years too late for that one you know what I mean- and that she’s a slave to boot- like you can’t frigging run from a half Fred Sanford-half dragonfly anytime you damned well want to, and if there even is slavery why haven’t we heard of it before the fourth damned movie?- and hell, for all I know she’s probably claiming the baby’s going to be a Wookie and whatever-the-hell-Yoda-is hybrid, she was always such a drama queen- well, the point is, sorry I wasn’t around much, but I’m your daddy.
DARTH VADER: Noooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
Anyone care to comment on The Thomas Jefferson Foundation and it’s purpose?
Having visited Monticello about three years ago and in looking over the web site, I get the feeling that it leans away from preserving Jefferson’s legacy and toward Slavery in America.
I heard it was “Dusky Sally”, but maybe both. Still, isn’t "dashing’ an odd way to describe a woman’s appearance? Was it used for both men and women in the 18th century?
Both. Dashing Sally is what Isaac Jefferson called her in his memoirs. I think Callendar called her ‘dusky’, which is not quite an insult and not quite not an insult if that makes sense.
Dusky Sally was also the name of a tavern song about her that became popular after Callender’s articles. It’s sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle. It’s highly offensive, obviously, but since I can’t find it in its entirety online in a cut & paste format (just digitized books) I’ll nevertheless transcribe it here for benefit of future online searchers, though the lyrics vary from source to source.
DUSKY SALLY
Of all the damsels on the green
On mountain or in valley
A lass so luscious ne’er was seen
as Monticello Sally.
Search every town and city through
Search market, street, and alley,
No dame at dusk shall meet your view
So yielding as my Sally.
[Chorus]
When press’d by loads of state affairs
I seek to sport and dally
The sweetest solace of my cares
Is in the lap of Sally.
[Chorus]
Let Yankee parsons preach their worst
Let Tory whittlings rally!
You men of morals! All be curst
You would snap like sharks for Sally
[Chorus]
She’s black you tell me- grant she be
Must color always tally?
Black is love’s proper hue for me
and white’s the hue for Sally.
[Chorus]
What though she by the gland secretes
Must I stand shilly-shally?
Tucked up between a pair of sheets
there’s no perfume like Sally.
[Chorus]
You call her slave? But, pray, were slaves
made only for the galley?
Try for yourselves, ye witless knaves,
Take each to be your Sally.
For those familiar with the complete history of Yellow Rose of Texas know that it had some alternate verses that were even more graphic than these.
I believe Thomas Jefferson fathered Sallys children. I am a descendant of Nicholas Faulcon who married Sally Cocke the sister of John H Cocke. Jeffersons behavior was the talk at the time of course never to his face. But its mentioned in several letters that my family had possesion of. It was also common practice for slave owners to “dally” with their female slaves. There are even instances of them staying together even after the civil war.
I also believe that Jefferson loved Sally Hemmings and her children. I fault him not for his actions you can’t help who you love. 
Yeah, and you can’t release them from bondage either. :rolleyes:
Could he have? I always heard that Jefferson was in debt up to his eyeballs and that his creditors would have had to approve any manumission of his slaves. Is that inaccurate?
On a side note, how does this Y chromosome testing work? My understanding is that, as a male, I have the exact same Y chromosome as my father, and his father, and his father and his father, so that if we took a sample of my DNA, it would match the Y chromosome of my 9th great grandfather (assuming male lineage). Correct?
If so, then why doesn’t every male in the world have the same Y chromosome (or the same very few)? Does it change over time?
Yes, it changes over time. Think of it like a photocopy, and your photocopy is of your father’s photocopy, and his is of his father’s. Occasionally a little speck was on the glass, so all the copies after that have the speck. If you look at all the photocopies that the males today have, you can trace back a lineage by looking at these specks, who has which ones in common.
He could have freed his slaves, but he didn’t. Jefferson was left a substantial amount of money by his friend, a Polish nobleman named Koziosko (sp?) for the express purpose of freeing his slaves.
He also wrote about the unique profit to be gained by investing in slaves, i.e. that this kind of property would “increase” by 4% a year, all the while taking care of his household and providing his livelihood by working at Monticello. Including little boys as young as 7 who were put to work manufacturing nails on the property.
Hey, those rich Southern blokes read the Old Testament and fucking took it to heart.* Though The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood may be a dystopian fantasy novel, the material it draws on is made of historical facts. Written in the 1980s, it extrapolates a combination of Ayatollah Khomeini and Jerry Falwell into the future… and is currently proving remarkably prescient about some extremist tendencies now emerging in the lunatic fundie fringe of the Republican party.
In fact, the part about the patriarch fucking the handmaids is probably the only part of the O.T. that actually appealed to Jefferson. What do you want to bet?
Your last sentence made me laugh, as Jefferson prized a painting of Sarah presenting a scantily clad, very curvy Hagar to Abraham. I think it still hangs at Monticello actually.
Truth is often stranger than fiction. In March of 1788 Thomas Jefferson was in Paris, but took a trip to Amsterdam to shore up relations between the fledgling(and still constitution-less) USA. There he was particularly taken, as he related in a letter to his friend Maria Cosway, by the works of Adriaen van der Werff. Particularly “Sarah presenting Hagar to Abraham” of which he wrote
It should be noted that in 1787, less than a year before the trip to Amsterdam, Jefferson’s daughter, Polly, came to live with her father in Paris, bringing her fourteen to fifteen year old handmaiden, Sally Hemmings. In December of 1789 Sally Hemmings was pregnant with her first child and the Jeffersons moved back from Paris to Monticello. Hemmings would give birth to a son, who was named Tom.
Enjoy,
Steven
Yes, and Sally could have stayed in France as a freeperson, but somehow Jefferson convinced her to return to America, likely by promising that “her” 9i.e. their) children would be freed.
Call me crazy, but if you love someone, freeing them from slavery is paramount.
No, there are mutations over time. Now, normally, it would be very hard to tie a given offspring of a random European to a distant ancestor, but as luck would have it (or otherwise), Jefferson had a very unusual Y-chromsome for a European male. Hence, descendants with that same chromosome can be assumed to have come form his male line.
Interesting zomby. Let me pick a year-old nit:
Untrue. Given the Y-chromosomes of two agnatic cousins, an estimate of time (or number of generations) to most recent agnatic ancestor can be derived. (You wouldn’t be able to measure generational depth precisely, so wouldn’t be sure whether the common ancestor was instead TJ’s son or brother …)
So, lets say hypothetically that the authorities (with proper permission) dug up a guy presumed to be my 5th great grandfather (all male lineage). A sample is taken from the corpse, and from me. Could/must/maybe there be a definite match?
[QUOTE=Mtgman]
Truth is often stranger than fiction. In March of 1788 Thomas Jefferson was in Paris, but took a trip to Amsterdam to shore up relations between the fledgling(and still constitution-less) USA. There he was particularly taken, as he related in a letter to his friend Maria Cosway, by the works of Adriaen van der Werff. Particularly “Sarah presenting Hagar to Abraham” of which he wrote
[/QUOTE]
And message boards, like history, tend to repeat themselves. Post 28, made over a year ago, bottom line.
[QUOTE=huck]
Yes, and Sally could have stayed in France as a freeperson, but somehow Jefferson convinced her to return to America, likely by promising that “her” 9i.e. their) children would be freed.
[/QUOTE]
That was what Madison said, as mentioned, but there’s more to the story.
[Sophia Petrillo]Picture it. Paris. 1780s…[/Sophia Petrillo]
You have two choices:
1- Virginia. Yes, you’re a slave there, but… it’s also where your mother, all of your siblings and grandma and friends, and essentially everything that you have ever known is. You speak the language there as fluently as anybody that you know. You know that your family can be sold, but nobody in your family ever has been sold, and everybody knows you’re related to the young misses on the place.
2- Paris. You don’t know the language or any of the people at all well, and the only person who will be there, the person you will be absolutely dependant on, is your brother, an alcoholic with an erratic temper (alcoholism and temper mentioned in TJ’s letters). You have seen people begging and starving in the streets (probably the first actual starving people you’ve ever seen), you know from the servants in the house that jobs are very hard to come by, and even being a naive teenager you probably know what prostitutes are as you probably saw them (and worse) in your trips through the cities in America and here. And you don’t have to speak French or know Jacques about politics to know that something is badly wrong in this place and getting worse.
It’s worth remembering that her brother, who could have stayed in Paris and who had a much better chance of being able to support himself, also went back with Jefferson. He later left Monticello for northern cities, but returned. (He eventually committed suicide.)
She had more reasons than just an alleged promise her child would be free. And, as mentioned, other than Madison’s comment there’s no proof she was pregnant when she left Paris.