User:Tonymartin/Harriet Hemings

Harriet Hemings (May, 1801-?) was born a slave at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, in the first year of his Presidency. Her mother was Sally Hemings, a slave acquired by Mr. Jefferson from the estate of John Wayles, the late father of his wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. Upon attaining the age of twenty-one, Harriet was allowed to leave the Monticello estate as a free woman, although she was never legally manumitted.

In 1853, the noted abolitionist and former slave William Wells Brown published his novel Clotel; or The President’s Daughter, based on the fictionalized life of Harriet Hemings. This novel is considered the first ever published by an African American.

In an 1873 interview published in the Pike County (Ohio) Republican, and recorded by journalist S.F. Wetmore, Madison Hemings said of his sister Harriet: "She thought it to her interest, on going to Washington,[D.C.] to assume the role of a white woman, and by her dress and conduct as such I am not aware that her identity as Harriet Hemings of Monticello has ever been discovered." According to Hemings family historian Annette Gordon-Reed, Harriet may have chosen to travel on to Washington in order to join her brother Beverly, who was already there.

In a seperate interview with the same newspaper in December, 1873, Israel Jefferson, who was also born a slave at Monticello stated: “I know that it was a general statement among the older servants at Monticello, that Mr. Jefferson promised his wife, on her death bed, that he would not again marry. I also know that his servant, Sally Hemmings, (mother to my old friend and former companion at Monticello, Madison Hemmings,) was employed as his chamber-maid, and that Mr. Jefferson was on the most intimate terms with her; that, in fact, she was his concubine. This I know from my intimacy with both parties, and when Madison Hemmings declares that he is a natural son of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and that his brothers Beverly and Eston and sister Harriet are of the same parentage, I can as conscientiously confirm his statement as any other fact which I believe from circumstances but do not positively know.”

Speaking of the manner through which Harriet Hemings attained release from bondage, Captain Edmund Bacon, chief overseer at Monticello stated:

"Mr. Jefferson freed a number of his servants in his will. . . He freed one girl some years before he died, and there was a great deal of talk about it. She was nearly as white as anybody and very beautiful. People said he freed her because she was his own daughter."

He continued, "When she was nearly grown, by Mr. Jefferson's direction I paid her stage fare to Philadelphia and gave her fifty dollars. I have never seen her since and don't know what became of her. From the time she was large enough, she always worked in the cotton factory. She never did any hard work.”

During this interview, Capt. Bacon expressed his belief that Harriet Hemings was sired by Peter Carr, a nephew of Thomas Jefferson, and was thus not the daughter of the President. It must be noted that, according to available records, Capt. Bacon did not enter Mr. Jefferson's employ at Monticello until five years after Harriet's birth, or around 1806. DNA test results from a 1998 study indicate "a high probability that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings, and that he was perhaps the father of all six of Sally Hemings' children listed in Monticello records - Harriet (born 1795; died in infancy); Beverly (born 1798); an unnamed daughter (born 1799; died in infancy); Harriet (born 1801); Madison (born 1805); and Eston (born 1808)." This position is also supported by the National Genealogical Society.

Footnote

 * In his 1873 memoir, Madison Hemings also states in reference to his sister: "Harriet married a white man in good standing in Washington City, whose name I could give, but will not, for prudential reasons. She raised a family of children, and so far as I know they were never suspected of being tainted with African blood in the community where she lived or lives."