Jefferson Connection

Fitting Sally Hemmings into the picture

On January 28, 2018, the New York Times Review of Books carried a review of a new book by Mary Beth Norton with the title Jefferson’s Three Daughters — Two Free, One Enslaved. The following paragraph appears in the book review ...

The lives of four Virginia families — Jeffersons, Randolphs, Eppeses and Hemingses — were intertwined. Sally Hemings, daughter of Jefferson’s father-in-law by his mulatto slave Elizabeth Hemings, arrived in the Jefferson household in Paris in 1787 at the age of 14 assigned to be the child Maria’s companion. Following Hemings’s oral history, Kerrison relates how Sally, knowing she could claim freedom by remaining in France when Jefferson returned home in 1789, negotiated a promise of eventual freedom for herself and all her children, who were by parentage seven-eighths white — a promise kept in part by Martha Randolph after her father’s death in 1826. Jefferson listed Beverley, the oldest boy, born 1798, and his younger sister, Harriet, as “run” in 1822, but other sources reveal that he quietly facilitated their departure.

-- NY Times, Jan. 28, 2018

The Eppes family referenced in the above paragraph is the family of Lucy Eppes who married Archibald Thweatt. Lucy's brother John married Maria Jefferson. Sally Hemmings, the African-American daughter of Thomas Jefferson, is identified in the paragraph above as Maria's childhood companion in Paris in 1787 when Maria and Sally Hemmings were children. Martha (also mentioned in the paragraph above) is the older Jefferson daughter and the sister of Maria and half-sister of Sally.

As indicated in the above mentioned book review, the consensus now is that Sally Hemings is the daughter of John Wayles and his slave Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings. Since Martha Jefferson, wife of Thomas Jefferson, is also the daughter of John Wayles via his first marriage to Martha Eppes, this would mean that Martha Jefferson and Sally Hemings are half-sisters. And in addition both are half sisters to Elizabeth Wayles since she is also daughter of John Wayles via his marriage to Tabitha Cocke.

Summary:

• Martha Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Elizabeth Wayles are all half-sisters.

• Archibald Thweatt's mother-in-law, Elizabeth Wayles, was half-sister to both Martha Jefferson and Sally Hemings and brother-in-law to Thomas Jefferson.