Life After Monticello

Madison Hemings, one of Sally’s daughters has said that her mother’s first child passed soon after her return from Paris with Jefferson. The records which Jefferson kept confirmed this story, and also added that Hemings had six children after her return to the U.S. Of the six, four survived into adulthood: Madison, Eston, Beverley and Harriet. With time, all, except for Madison made the choice to live amongst the white society in the North. Madison’s memoir is critical in furthering her mother’s story, and that of her siblings.

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According to Madison, his sisters Beverley and Harriet both married affluent Washingtonians, and lived within DC’s white community. On the other hand, the Hemings brothers both married free women of colour in Virginia. Eston perhaps made the most surprising choice of all; changing his surname to Jefferson, to acknowledge the U.S President as his biological father.