Editing Sally Hemings (section)

==Return to the United States and children's freedom==
[[File:ThomasJeffersonStateRoomPortrait.jpg|thumb|Thomas Jefferson in 1791]]

In 1789, Sally and James Hemings returned to the United States with Jefferson, who was 46 years old and seven years a widower. As shown by Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles, sexual relationships between wealthy Virginia widowers and female slaves were not unknown. White society simply expected such men to be discreet about them.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rothman|first=Joshua D.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sOU3BxRPX58C|title=Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861|date=2003-12-04|publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]]|isbn=978-0-8078-6312-1|pages=18–19|language=en}}</ref>

According to Madison Hemings, Sally's first child died soon after her return from Paris. Hemings had six children after this; their complete names are in some cases uncertain:<ref name="Brief">{{cite web|url=http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/hemings-jefferson_contro.html|title=Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account|work=Monticello.org|publisher=[[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]]|quote=Ten years later [referring to its 2000 report], [the Thomas Jefferson Foundation] and most historians now believe that, years after his wife's death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings.|access-date=June 22, 2011}}</ref>
* Harriet Hemings [I] (October 5, 1795&nbsp;– December 1797)<ref name="Brief" />
* Beverly Hemings, possibly William Beverley Hemings (April 1, 1798&nbsp;– after 1873)<ref name="Brief" />
* Daughter, possibly named Thenia Hemings after Sally's sister (born in 1799 and died in infancy)<ref name="Brief" />
* [[Harriet Hemings]] [II] (May 1801&nbsp;– Unknown)<ref name="Brief" />
* [[Madison Hemings]], possibly James Madison Hemings (January 19, 1805&nbsp;– November 28, 1877)<ref name="Brief" />
* [[Eston Hemings]], possibly named Thomas Eston Hemings (May 21, 1808&nbsp;– January 3, 1856)<ref name="Brief" />

Jefferson recorded births of slaves in his Farm Book. Unlike his practice in recording births of other slaves, he did not identify the father of Sally Hemings' children.<ref name="appleby">Oldham Appleby, Joyce; Schlesinger, Arthur. ''Thomas Jefferson''. New York: Macmillan, 2003, pp.&nbsp;75–77.</ref>

Sally Hemings' documented duties at Monticello included being a nursemaid-companion, lady's maid, chambermaid, and seamstress. It is not known whether she was literate, and she left no known writings.<ref name="Brief" /> She was described as very fair.<ref name="reed160" /> She is believed to have lived as an adult in a room in Monticello's "South Dependencies", a wing of the mansion accessible to the main house through a covered passageway.<ref name="autogenerated5">{{cite web|url=http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/appendixh.html|title=Appendix H: Sally Hemings and Her Children|work=Monticello.org|publisher=[[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]]}}</ref>

In 2017, the Monticello Foundation announced that what they believe to be Hemings' room, adjacent to Jefferson's bedroom, had been found through an archeological excavation, as part of the Mountaintop Project. It was space that had been converted to other public uses in 1941. Hemings' room will be restored and refurbished as part of a major restoration project for the complex. Its goals include telling the stories of all the families at Monticello, both enslaved and free.<ref name="nbc" /><ref name="wapost" />

Hemings never married. Virginia law did not recognize the marriages of enslaved people, but many forced laborers at Monticello had recognized stable relationships with partners in [[common-law marriage]]s. But unlike those others, Monticello records document Hemings in no such partnership, at any time. But she kept her children near her. According to her son Madison, while young, the children "were permitted to stay about the 'great house', and only required to do such light work as going on errands".<ref name="madisonstatement" /> At the age of 14, each of the children began their training: the brothers with the plantation's skilled master of carpentry, and Harriet as a spinner and weaver. The three boys were all taught and learned to play the [[violin]], which Jefferson himself played.<ref name="madisonstatement" />

In 1822, at the age of 24, Beverley left or "ran away" from Monticello and was not pursued. His sister Harriet Hemings, 21, followed in the same year, apparently with at least tacit permission. The overseer, [[Edmund Bacon (1785–1866)|Edmund Bacon]], said that he gave her $50 ($1,131 in 2021) and put her on a stagecoach to the North, presumably to join her brother.<ref name="monticelloreport">{{cite web|title=Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings|date=January 26, 2000|editor-first=Daniel P.|editor-last=Jordan|work=Monticello.org |publisher=[[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]] (then Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation)|url=http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/jefferson-hemings_report.pdf|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070713105024/http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/jefferson-hemings_report.pdf|archive-date=July 13, 2007|access-date=October 19, 2020}}</ref> In his memoir, published posthumously, Bacon said Harriet was "near white and very beautiful", and that people said Jefferson freed her because she was his daughter. However, Bacon did not believe this to be true, citing someone else coming out of Sally Hemings' bedroom. The name of this person was left out by Rev. Hamilton W. Pierson in his 1862 book because he did not wish to cause pain to anyone living at that time.<ref>''Jefferson at Monticello: Recollections of a Monticello Slave and a Monticello Overseer''. Edited by James Adam Bear, Jr., Charlottesville, Virginia: 1967. This book includes recollections of Isaac Jefferson, c. 1847, a former Monticello slave, and Edmund Bacon.</ref>

Jefferson [[Manumission|formally freed]] two slaves while he was alive: Sally's older brothers Robert, who bought his freedom, and [[James Hemings|James]], who was required to train his brother Peter as a chef for three years to get his freedom. Jefferson eventually (including posthumously, through his [[Last will and testament|will]]) freed all of Sally's surviving children,<ref name="Gordon-Reed 1997 52">{{harvnb|Gordon-Reed|1997|page=52}}</ref> Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston, as they [[Coming of age|came of age]].  (Harriet was the only female slave Jefferson allowed to go free, and these were the only slaves freed as they came of age.) Of the hundreds of slaves he legally owned, Jefferson freed only five in his will, all men from the Hemings family.<ref>{{harvnb|Gordon-Reed|1997|pp=210–223}}</ref> They were also the only slave family group freed by Jefferson. Sally Hemings' children were seven-eighths European in ancestry, and three of the four [[Passing (racial identity)|entered white society]] after gaining their freedom; their descendants likewise identified as white.<ref name="Hemingses">{{harvnb|Gordon-Reed|2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/last-will-and-testament |title=Thomas Jefferson's Last Will & Testament |work=Monticello.org |publisher=[[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]]}} His will specified Sally Hemings's two younger children be assigned as apprentices to their uncle John [James?] Hemings, who was also freed, "...&nbsp;until their respective ages of twenty one years, at which period respectively, I give them their freedom."</ref> His will also petitioned the legislature to allow the freed Hemingses to stay in the state.<ref name="appleby" /><ref name="autogenerated5" />

No documentation has been found for Sally Hemings' own [[manumission]]. Jefferson's daughter [[Martha Jefferson Randolph|Martha (Patsy) Randolph]] at least informally freed the elderly Hemings after Jefferson's death, by giving her "her time", as was a custom. As the historian [[Edmund S. Morgan]] has noted, "Hemings herself was withheld from auction and freed at last by Jefferson's daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, who was, of course, her niece," as Sally was a half-sister to Martha's mother, Jefferson's deceased wife.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/jun/26/jefferson-betrayal/|first=Edmund S.|last=Morgan|title=Jefferson & Betrayal|website=New York Review of Books|date=June 26, 2008|access-date=March 10, 2012}}</ref> This informal freedom allowed Hemings to live in Virginia with her two youngest sons in nearby [[Charlottesville, Virginia|Charlottesville]] for the next nine years until her death.<ref name="monticelloreport" /> In the Albemarle County 1833 census, all three were recorded as free persons of color.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/02/opinion/editorial-observer-fighting-for-space-at-the-jefferson-family-table.html|title=Fighting for Space at the Jefferson Family Table|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=August 2, 1999|access-date=February 28, 2011|first=Brent|last=Staples}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GEN-AFRICAN/1999-05/0926888695|title=Rift runs through Jefferson family reunion|access-date=April 12, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110415145618/http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GEN-AFRICAN/1999-05/0926888695|archive-date=April 15, 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref> Hemings lived to see a grandchild born in a house that her sons owned.<ref name="Egypt">{{cite web |url=http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/bringing-children-out-egypt|title=Bringing Children Out of Egypt|work=Monticello.org|publisher=[[Thomas Jefferson Foundation]]|access-date=January 9, 2012|archive-date=August 13, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170813054741/https://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/bringing-children-out-egypt|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Although Jefferson [[Inheritance|inherited]] great wealth at a young age, he was [[Bankruptcy|bankrupt]] by the time he died. His estate, including his slaves (besides the Hemings), was sold at auction by his daughter Martha to repay his debts.<ref name="Schwabach, Aaron 2010" />