Madison Hemings


James Madison Hemings was the son of the mixed-race enslaved woman Sally Hemings. He was the third of her four children—fathered by her enslaver, President Thomas Jefferson—to survive to adulthood. Madison Hemings grew up on Jefferson's Monticello plantation. Born into slavery by his mother's status, he was freed by the will of Jefferson in 1826. Based on historical and DNA evidence, historians widely agree that Jefferson was probably the father of all Hemings' children. At the age of 68, Madison Hemings claimed the connection in an 1873 Ohio newspaper interview, titled, "Life Among the Lowly," which attracted national and international attention. 1998 DNA tests demonstrate a match between the Y-chromosome of a descendant of his brother, Eston Hemings Jefferson, and that of the male Jefferson line.
After Madison and his younger brother Eston were freed, they each worked and married free women of color; they lived with their families and mother Sally in Charlottesville until her death in 1835. Both brothers moved with their young families to Chillicothe, Ohio to live in a free state. Madison and his wife Mary lived there the remainder of their lives; he worked as a farmer and highly skilled carpenter. Among their ten children were two sons who served the Union in the Civil War: one in the United States Colored Troops and one who enlisted as a white man in the regular army.
Among Madison and Mary Hemings' grandchildren was Frederick Madison Roberts, the first African American elected to office on the West Coast. He served in the California legislature for nearly two decades. In 2010 their descendant Shay Banks-Young, who identifies as African American, together with one Wayles and one Hemings descendants, who each identify as European American, received the international "Search for Common Ground" award for work among the Jefferson descendants and the public to bridge gaps and heal "the legacy of slavery." They founded "The Monticello Community" for descendants of all the people who lived and worked there in Jefferson's lifetime.

Childhood

Madison was born into slavery at Monticello, where his mother Sally Hemings was a mixed-race enslaved woman inherited by Martha Wayles Skelton, the wife of Thomas Jefferson. As the historians Philip D. Morgan and Joshua D. Rothman have written, there were numerous interracial relationships in the Wayles-Hemings-Jefferson families, Albemarle County and Virginia, often with multiple generations repeating the pattern. According to his memoir, Sally Hemings told Madison that his father was Thomas Jefferson, and that their relationship had started in Paris in the late 1780s, where he was serving as a diplomat. Pregnant, she agreed to return with Jefferson to the United States based on his promise to free her children when they came of age.
Madison grew up at Monticello. His surviving mixed-race siblings were an older brother Beverley and sister Harriet, and a younger brother Eston. According to his 1873 memoir, Madison was named for Jefferson's close friend and future president James Madison at the request of Madison's wife Dolley. Madison lived as a child with his siblings and mother, who were all spared from hard labor. He described Jefferson as kind but showing little or no paternal interest in the Hemings children.
Like his older brother Beverley, at 14 years of age, Madison was apprenticed to his uncle, Sally's brother John Hemings, the most skilled artisan at Monticello, to learn carpentry and fine woodworking; his younger brother Eston joined him two years later. This gave each of them a valuable trade. All three of the Hemings brothers also studied and learned to play the violin, the instrument associated with Jefferson. Beverley, the oldest, was good enough to be invited to play at dances held by the Jeffersons at Monticello. As an adult, Eston Hemings made a living as a musician and entertainer in Ohio.

Freed in Jefferson's will

In his will, Jefferson gave immediate freedom to three enslaved people: John Hemings, a brother of Sally, to whom he also bequeathed "the service of his two apprentices Madison and Eston Hemings", with instruction that the brothers each be freed at his respective 21st birthday. Jefferson freed two of Sally's nephews: Joseph Fossett and Burwell Colbert. Although the three older men had served Jefferson for decades, Madison and Eston were distinguished by being freed as they "came of age" at 21. Madison was nearly 21 at the time of Jefferson's death; Eston was "given his time" and freed before age 21.
Knowing that his estate was in debt and that freed slaves could not legally remain in Virginia for more than one year, Jefferson by his will requested the legislature of Virginia to guarantee the manumission of the five enslaved people, and to grant the men special "permission to remain in this State, where their families and connections are." Both requests were evidently granted.

Adulthood

Twenty-one-year-old Madison Hemings was emancipated almost immediately after Jefferson died; Eston soon after. The brothers rented a house in nearby Charlottesville, where their mother Sally joined them for the rest of her life.. In the 1830 Albemarle County census, Madison, Eston and Sally Hemings were all classified as free whites.
According to Madison's 1873 memoir, his older brother Beverley and his older sister Harriet moved to Washington D.C. in 1822 when they "ran away" from Monticello. Jefferson ensured that Harriet was given money for her journey. Because of their light skin and appearance, both identified with the white community after their moves and probably changed their names. Hemings said they had married white spouses of good circumstances, and moved into white society. They apparently kept their paternity a secret, as it would have revealed their origins as slaves, and disappeared into history.
In September 1831, in his mid-twenties, Madison Hemings was described in a special census of the State of Virginia as being: 5"7 3/8 Inches high light complexion no scars or marks perceivable". Forty-two years later at the time of his interview, a journalist described him as "five feet ten inches in height, sparely made, with sandy complexion and a mild gray eye."
In 1834 Madison wed Mary Hughes McCoy, a free woman of mixed-race ancestry They had two children born in Virginia.
In 1836 Madison, Mary and their infant daughter Sarah left Charlottesville for Pike County, Ohio, probably to join his brother Eston, who had already moved there with his own family. They lived in Chillicothe, which had a thriving free black community, abolitionists among both races, and a station of the Underground Railroad. Surviving records in Pike County state that Hemings purchased for $150 on July 22, 1856, sold the same area for $250 on December 30, 1859, and purchased for $10 per acre on September 25, 1865. The Hemings had more children born in Ohio.
In 1852, Madison's brother, Eston, moved with his family away from Ohio to Madison, Wisconsin, to get further from possible danger from slave catchers following passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Slave catchers were known to kidnap free black people and sell them into slavery, as demand and prices were high in the Deep South. In Wisconsin, Eston and his family all took the surname Jefferson and entered the white community. They lived according to their appearance and mostly white ancestry. Their oldest son John Wayles Jefferson served as a regular Union officer in the American Civil War, and was promoted to colonel. Their son Beverly also served in the Union Army and married a white woman. Their daughter Anna married a white man. All of Eston's descendants identified as white.
In 1873, Madison used an Ohio newspaper interview about his life, titled, "Life Among the Lowly," to address the Jefferson/Hemings controversy, stating that Jefferson was his father. In this interview, Madison also said, "I was named Madison by the wife of James Madison, who was afterwards President of the United States. Mrs. Madison happened to be at Monticello at the time of my birth, and begged privilege of naming me, promising my mother a fine present for the honor. She consented, and Mrs. Madison dubbed me by the name I now acknowledge, but like many promises of white folks to the slaves she never gave my mother anything."

Children

Madison and Mary Hemings were the parents of 10 surviving children: Sarah, Harriet, Mary Ann, Catharine, Jane, James Madison, Ellen Wayles, Thomas Eston, Julia, and William Beverly Hemings. According to his memoir, their daughter Sarah and an unnamed son who died in infancy were born in Virginia; nine more children were born in Ohio. He had a quiet life as a modestly successful free black farmer and carpenter.

Jefferson–Hemings controversy

The Jefferson–Hemings controversy has concerned the question of whether, after Jefferson became a widower, he had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, a young mixed-race woman whom he enslaved and who was a half sister of his late wife, and fathered her children. The controversy dates from the 1790s: newspaper articles appeared during Jefferson's lifetime accusing him of fathering children with an enslaved woman named Sally. Jefferson's descendants denied it, saying that a relative, Peter Carr, was the father. Major American historians and biographers of Jefferson adopted this theory, and generally avoided the issue of Jefferson's potential relationship, relying on his writings to rule out such a relationship with an enslaved woman.
Since the late twentieth century, historians have conducted new research and begun to reanalyze the body of evidence. Fawn McKay Brodie's 1973 psychobiography, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, explored more fully the possibility of his relationship with Hemings for the first time, and she interviewed several Hemings descendants. They repeated their family history of descent. Mainline male historians criticized her psychological approach and rejected her conclusions related to Hemings.
In 1997, law professor Annette Gordon-Reed published , analyzing the historiography of the controversy. She demonstrated how historians since the nineteenth century had accepted early assumptions and failed to note all the facts. In this book, Gordon-Reed discusses many important facts that other writers of the Jefferson–Hemings controversy were too biased to acknowledge. The most convincing evidence is that all of Sally Hemings's children were freed after coming of age, two being allowed to "walk away" and two granted freedom in Jefferson's will, as they were minors at his death. In addition, Jefferson appealed to the state legislature to allow these two Hemings males to stay in Virginia, rather than being forced out as were other free black people. In his 1873 memoir, Madison Hemings wrote that Jefferson had not displayed fatherly warmth to the Hemings children, but he gave them lighter work responsibilities compared to other people whom he enslaved, and apprenticed them to learn artisan skills when they were old enough.
Sally Hemings had at least five children whose births were recorded. Some sources, including Madison Heming's memoir, say that Sally Hemings conceived her first child while in Paris with Jefferson, but that the baby died shortly after birth. Another daughter named Harriet, whose birth was recorded at the time, also died shortly after birth, but four other children lived to adulthood, three boys and one girl: Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston. Beverly and Harriet left Monticello to go North when they were both around twenty-one years of age, but Madison and Eston were freed by Jefferson's will after he died. Although Jefferson did not legally manumit Beverly and Harriet, he secretly arranged and paid for Harriet's transportation to Philadelphia, using his overseer Edmund Bacon as an intermediary. Although he marked in his Farm Book that both had "run away," Jefferson never made any attempt to re-enslave them. Gordon-Reed noted that this Hemings family was the only one in which all the children were freed, and Harriet the only enslaved woman he freed. She suggests this special treatment was significant and related to their status as his "natural" children.
Largely as a result of revived interest in this case following Gordon-Reed's book, a Y-DNA analysis of Carr, Jefferson and Hemings descendants was conducted in 1998. Y-DNA is passed on virtually unchanged through the direct male line. It showed no match between the Carr male line, proposed for more than 150 years as the father, and the one Hemings descendant tested. It did show a match between the Y-DNA haplotype of the Jefferson male line and the Hemings descendant, which is a rare type.
Since 1998 and the DNA study, which affirmed the historical evidence, many historians have accepted that the widower Jefferson had a long, sexual relationship with Hemings, and fathered six children with her, four of whom survived to adulthood. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which runs Monticello, conducted an independent historic review in 2000, as did the National Genealogical Society in 2001; the scholars of both reviews concluded Jefferson was probably the father of all Hemings's children.
Critics, such as the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society Scholars Commission, have argued against these conclusions. They have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to determine that Jefferson was the father of Hemings's children. The TJHS report, which was not peer-reviewed, suggested that Jefferson's younger brother Randolph Jefferson could have been the father. This alternative was at one time recounted by twentieth-century descendants of Eston Hemings who were classified as white. Their fathers were trying to shield them from racism. The TJHS report also suggested that Hemings may have had multiple partners.
There are no living male-line descendants of Madison Hemings. Beverley Hemings' descendants have been lost to history, as he apparently changed his name after moving to Washington, DC and passing into white society. Descendants of Madison Hemings declined to have the remains of his son William Hemings disturbed to extract DNA for testing, just as Wayles-Jefferson descendants declined to have Thomas Jefferson's remains disturbed.
In 2012, the Smithsonian Institution and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation held a major exhibit at the National Museum of American History: Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: The Paradox of Liberty. It said that "evidence strongly support the conclusion that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children." The exhibit explores the lives of six major enslaved families, including the Hemings, starting with the matriarch Elizabeth Hemings, who had 75 descendants at Monticello.
In June 2018, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation mounted a new exhibit at Monticello, The Life of Sally Hemings. It also announced that it was affirming that Jefferson was the likely father of her children and removing any qualifications to that statement, as no new evidence had been documented to contradict the existing weight of evidence in favor of that conclusion.

Descendants

Madison Hemings' youngest daughter Ellen Wayles Hemings married Andrew Jackson Roberts, a graduate of Oberlin College. They moved from Ohio to Los Angeles, California in 1885 with their first son Frederick, age six. The senior Roberts founded the first black-owned mortuary there and became a civic leader in the developing community. Their son, Frederick Madison Roberts, named for his maternal grandfather, was college-educated and became a businessman in partnership with his father. He also became a community leader. In 1918 Roberts was first elected to the California legislature. He was re-elected numerous times, serving for a total of 16 years, and becoming known as "dean of the assembly". He is believed to have been the first person of African-American ancestry elected to political office west of the Mississippi River. Both he and his brother William Giles Roberts graduated from college. The Roberts descendants for generations have had a strong tradition of college education and public service.
Many of the Hemings' descendants who remained in Ohio were interviewed in the late twentieth century by two Monticello researchers as part of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation's "Getting Word" project. They were collecting oral histories from the descendants of enslaved families at Monticello; material has been added to the Monticello website and was included in the national Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello 2012 exhibit. The researchers found that Hemings' descendants had married within the mixed-race community for generations, choosing light-skinned spouses of an educated class and identifying as people of color within the black community.
In 2010 Shay Banks-Young and Julia Jefferson Westerinen, descendants of Sally Hemings who identify as black and white, respectively, were honored together with David Works, a descendant of Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, with the Search for Common Ground award for "their work to bridge the divide within their family and heal the legacy of slavery." They have spoken about race and their historically divided and united family, and have been featured on NPR and in other interviews across the country.
In June 2016, Shay Banks-Young died. Mention of her death was announced on the Monticello website.