That is completely besides the point. There are a finite number of Y-chromosomes of European descent. Just looking at one relative to an ancestor 250 years ago doesn’t prove much. But Jefferson had an extremely unusual Y-chromosome, and so if that turns up in a modern day person, that makes a very strong case. Now, the chromosome could have been inherited from another Jefferson male, and so this alone is not conclusive. You have to look at other parts of the historical record to show that Thomas Jefferson, himself, was the most likely Jefferson male ancestor.
Are you kidding? Read Black Indians:A Hidden Heritage by William Loren Katz. Considering the Cherokee and other Southern tribes held slaves before the Trail of Tears, interbred with black people, and had black Indians accompany them west to Oklahoma, there are certainly more people of mixed black and Indian ancestry than you are acknowledging. Including one of my ancestors.
I think you’re confusing named haplogroups or haplotypes with distinguishable genomes. Your own Y-chromosome differs from that of your father! It is estimated that there are on average about 1.0 SNP-type mutations on the Y-chromosome in a single generation, and microsatellite differences as well.
Stated differently, the “number of distinct Y-chromosomes of European descent” is, while admittedly finite (
), approximately equal to the number of males of European descent.
But of course, they wouldn’t perform complete genome sequencing. In fact it appears they just did a 15-marker test. As shown they got a 15-out-of-15 match (though only 14 match with one of the Jeffersons – illustrating that Y-chromosomes do change!) If they’d done the 67-marker test, it’s likely they’d have gotten only 66 match. And those are for cheap tests – a complete genome sequencing shows, in effect, millions of “markers.”
It is true that Jefferson’s haplogroup is rarish, making the result of a 15-marker test more definitive. With a more common haplogroup, they would have needed to test more markers to reach the same confidence. Larger test batteries might be difficult with hostile or exhumed targets but IIRC the testees for the Jefferson test were living specima volunteering cheek swabs.
Well, as to the question of Sally’s pregnancy at the time she left Paris and the reasons she chose to come back to Monticello, I’d say memoirs written by one of Sally’s sons is a reliable enough source to list as “probable,” and there’s nothing to contradict it.The children who lived were in factg freed when they came of age, though Sally was not freed by Jefferson (TJ’s daughter freed her after he died).
Also, Sally was learning French in Paris. Jefferson also paid her and heer brother wages for her work while there. suggesting to me that she was aware that she was for practical purposes not a slave in France.
But you’re right, it would have been quite hard for anyone born in slavery, let alone a 15 year old, to choose life as a freeperson under the circumstances.
Sorry for the repetition from the old thread. I wasn’t on this board back then and did not know this story was already discussed and I guess no longer interesting here.
This. Hell, what adult that was born into slavery could just run away with nothing but the clothes on his back and start a better life?
To use an analogy (and no, I’m not comparing blacks to dogs, just the dependency) if I let my dog go free tonight, he will likely be dead in a week. Even though he comes from a line that is self-sufficient and capable of living in the wild, I have taken that natural instinct away by providing his every need. He has lost the ability to function on his own. He would probably be scratching at my door very soon.
The idea of freedom is a lofty one, but when your belly starts aching, you need to find the best option. And I’m sure that if Sally Hemmings looked at all of her choices, she would find that Jefferson was way above and beyond everything else, her best option. He didn’t treat her like a slave, more like a wife.
You’re right. My mistake. Somehow I was thinking they sequenced his whole Y-chromosome.
No question but that remaining a relatively privileged slave at Monticello would have been far safer than staying in Paris as a freeperson, and many degrees safer than running away from “home.”
But Jefferson had a white wife, and white daughters. He lavished love, care and material goods on them, and adored and doted on his white grandchildren, celebrating their talents and accomplishments publically and privately. Sally and his children with her were servants always and while she was treated better than many other slaves at Monticello (as were all the Hemmings slaves inherited from TJ’s wife’s father) there is no other evidence that Jefferson respected Sally or was concerned about her welfare more than any other Hemmings slave. He did not provide for her future or even her freedom during his life or in his will.
Sally was undoubtedly treated at least as well as many wives of the day, but Jefferson did not treat Sally like his wife or even as a half-sister-in-law (which she unquestionably was to him).
No, I’m not kidding. Sure, there are plenty of blacks with some Indian heritage, but the folk knowledge of the majority of blacks who think they do is generally wrong. I can’t find the exact cite, and I’ll look for it later, but I believe only about 10% of African Americans have Native American ancestry. That is waaaay less than most blacks expect. In the meantime, from Louse Gates:
And all of whom are hostages to the anger of your master. Jefferson could had any or all of them tortured or murdered if Sally ran; he could well have told her so. Terror was always a central part of how slaves were kept under control.
Jefferson seems to have been no better or worse than most masters; he was largely absentee and it’s known that some of his overseers literally did not spare the lash. However, by all accounts, including those of Madison, the Hemings receive preferential treatment due to their skills (and their DNA and skin tone probably didn’t hurt). They likely did not fear torture.
She was probably more fearful of sexual abuse by white men; her sisters bore children to white men, possibly Jefferson’s nephews (the same ones who the family claimed sired Sally’s children until the late 20th century) and whether the relationship was consensual or not the point remains that if they had not consented it would not have mattered much. However, sexual abuse of attractive young girls existed in Paris as well.
Nobody argues that slavery in Virginia, even for a house slave, was paradise, but it’s also not hard to see why she would have willingly chosen Virginia. Also worth noting that if she’d said goodbye to Jefferson (and by extension her family) it was goodbye for all time; the chances of an unskilled maid who spoke no French one day earning enough money for transport to Virginia was unlikely (as evidenced by the fact most free French women did not have that kind of money).
There’s an elephant in this room as well. The Bastille was stormed in July of 1789, the August Decrees(which stripped a lot of the nobles and wealthy of their privileges) followed soon thereafter. Then in October of 1789 the Women’s March on Versailles took place, and the king relocated from the palace to the more defensible lodgings in Paris.
Possibly, just possibly, the heads on pikes popping up around Paris as the French revolution really got underway with the Great Fear was a factor in decision of the Hemmings’(both brother and sister) to return to the US with Jefferson at the end of 1789.
Enjoy,
Steven
“If you love something, let it go. If it doesn’t come back to you, hunt it down and kill it.”
It’s an interesting thought and could have made Sally feel that Virginia was safer than France. But there’s also a possibility that Sally lived with TJ’s daughter at a convent school for much of the time she was in France, although she was boarded elsewhere for some months and TJ bought better clothing for Sally when his daughter left the convent and started to go out in society.
And Sally was said by more than one contemporary to have spoken frequently about her days in France; theere is so far as I know no record that Sally mentioned the storming of the Bastille or any other events of the French revolution.
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theere is so far as I know no record that Sally mentioned the storming of the Bastille or any other events of the French revolution.
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Records of her fill a few pages, unfortunately. She was apparently very pretty with long black hair she wore loose, very light complected, amd knew she and her children would be free when Jefferson died (though they were never anything like acknowledge family). Her son said she tended Jefferson’s grave, implying that she had some affection for him (she certainly wouldn’t have received any money for it as even his legitimate daughter was left penniless). She and her sons and their wives (both married very light skinned free women) lived in a small house in Charlottesville until Eston and family left, then Madison and family left when she died. (They would have had to appeal to the Virginia legislature each year to remain in Virginia, btw, though how pro-forma this approval was depends on the source.)
Madison said that she had a grudge against Dolly Madison, because Dolly had promised her a gift if she’d name her son Madison (or Dolly if it was a girl) but she never paid up. (Dolly Madison’s father was a Virginia farmer who freed his slaves when he became a Quaker and went bankrupt fast/died penniless, which was used as a morality tale against freeing slaves, though as Jefferson and many many others proved [including James Madison {and James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson and his honor many many others}] owning lots of slaves didn’t keep you from major league financial problems either.)
That’s about it from the primary sources. We know next to nothing of her personality or her likes/dislikes or the nature of her relationship with Jefferson when they were alone. That’s why she’s been so popular with novelists and other fiction writers.
Personally I think that some historical fiction writer should take on her children Beverly and Harriet, two figures that nothing is known about save that they “ran away” from Monticello (nudge nudge wink wink) and passed as white.
I understood that all of Sally’s children were freed when they came of age, is that not correct?
Another interesting point is that Sally was white under Virginia law at the time (though legally a slave since she was born into slavery). One wonders if she was aware of that, but as you say the record evidence is so scanty that the imagination tends to take flight, but has no place to land, where Sally is concerned.
From a modern perspective, Jefferson was a rapist. (Not from a contemporary legal perspective, since a slave did not own her own body and had no right to say no to her master.) But that does not necessarily mean Sally Hemings did not love him – she might well have, and not only as a master.
Ooh! Did not know this!
:mad: OK, doing your slave is one thing, but doing your wife’s sister?! That’s creepy!
Yes and no (or, more precisely, no, no, yes, and yes). She had four known children who survived to adulthood: Beverly (a boy), Harriet, Eston, and Madison.
Beverly and Harriet were never actually freed (i.e. they never received manumission papers), they were listed as runaways on Monticello records, though they were never looked for/no reward was ever posted and, as mentioned above, one of Jefferson’s former overseers flat out stated in later years that he personally drove Harriet to Charlottesville to catch a stage coach. There were also very atypical disbursements of cash when they “ran away”- Jefferson probably slid them the folded up bill and said godspeed.
Why he chose to do it this way instead of legally manumitting them can only be conjectured, since the main reason for not freeing a slave you wanted free was so they could remain in Virginia and Beverly and Harriet- per Madison- both left Virginia anyway. Perhaps it was to avoid having to get permission from creditors, because two light skinned house slaves in their late teens/early twenties would each have sold for more than the majority of houses in most towns.
Eston and Madison, who were still minors at the time of Jefferson’s death (they were born when he was in his 60s), were freed in Jefferson’s will, the freedom delayed until their 21st birthday. He freed three other male slaves as well: their uncle John Hemings (Sally’s half brother) and two of their male cousins, Joseph and Burwell (Sally’s nephews), who he referred to as his “servants”:
The Virginia legislature honored his request to let the Hemings brothers remain in the state (though both left within a decade, by which time Sally was dead), but I don’t know if the $300 and other bequests to their relatives were honored.
The Harriet who caught the stage in C’ville was Sally’s second daughter of that name, incidentally. She had an older sister named Harriet who died of an illness while Sally was pregnant with Harriet 2. Jefferson and his daughter actually mention her illness, how sweet the little girl was, and how sad her death was in their correspondence during that period.
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OK, doing your slave is one thing, but doing your wife’s sister?! That’s creepy!
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That’s mild for the creepy relationships under slavery. It may just be 200+ year old malicious gossip, but there were whispered accounts that one of Martha Washington’s (much younger) enslaved half-siblings became the concubine fo her son Jack, which would have been an aunt-niece coupling.
If you’ve seen the movie Lincoln, Elizabeth Keckley (Mrs. Lincoln’s seamstress and close friend [until they had a major falling out a few years later]) was at one point owned by her white half brother. In her memoir she states that when she confronted him with the promise he made their dying father that he would free her, he stripped her naked and whipped her; there’s implication that he sexually abused her as well. Ultimately he sold her to a man who made her sexually available to a business partner, which is how the son she mentions in the movie was conceived. (Like Jefferson’s descendants by Sally, that son crossed the color line to fight in an all white unit.)