| Mary Hemings | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1753 Charles City County, Virginia |
| Died | after 1834 Charlottesville, Virginia |
| Resting place | unknown |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Domestic servant; free homemaker |
| Parents | Elizabeth Hemings, Unknown |
| Relatives | Daniel Farley, Molly, Joseph Fossett, Betsy Hemmings, Robert Washington Bell, Sally Jefferson Bell, Sally Hemings, John Hemings, James Hemings, Martin Hemings, Betty Brown, Madison Hemings, Eston Hemings, John Wayles Jefferson |
Mary Hemings, also known as Mary Hemings Bell (1753-after 1834), was born into slavery, most likely in Charles City County, Virginia, as the oldest child of Elizabeth Hemings, a mixed-race slave held by John Wayles. After the death of Wayles in 1773, Elizabeth, Mary and her family were inherited by Thomas Jefferson, the husband of Martha Wayles Skelton, a daughter of Wayles, and all moved to Monticello.
While Jefferson was in France, Hemings was hired out to Thomas Bell, a wealthy white merchant in Charlottesville, Virginia. She became his common-law wife and they had two children together. Bell purchased her and the children from Jefferson in 1792 and informally freed them. Mary Hemings Bell was the first Hemings to gain freedom. The couple lived together all their lives. (They were prohibited from marriage by Virginia law at the time.)
In 2007 Mary Hemings Bell was recognized as a Patriot of the Daughters of the American Revolution, because she had been taken as a prisoner of war during the American Revolution. By this honor, all her female descendants are eligible to join the DAR.
Contents |
Mary was born to Elizabeth Hemings, also called Betty, a mulatto slave who was the daughter of Susannah, an enslaved African, and John Hemings, an English sea captain.[1]
Mary Hemings had six children:
During Jefferson's stay in Paris as US minister to France, his overseer hired out Mary Hemings (with her two younger children) to Thomas Bell in Charlottesville. The two became common-law partners and had two children together:
At Mary's request, after his return Jefferson sold Mary and her two younger children to Bell in 1792. Bell informally freed the three of them that year, acknowledging the children as his. (Jefferson told his superintendent to "dispose of Mary according to her desire, with such of her younger children as she chose." He kept Mary's slightly older children, Joseph Fossett, only 12, and Betsy, then age nine. They were likely cared for by aunts and grandmother.[8][9].)
Thomas and Mary Bell lived the remainder of their lives together, and Thomas Bell became a good friend of Jefferson. Mary Hemings Bell was the first of Betty's children to gain freedom.[10] When Thomas Bell died in 1800, he left Mary and their Bell children a sizable estate, treating them as free in his will. The property included lots on Charlottesville’s Main Street. He depended on his neighbors and friends to carry out his wishes, which they did.[11]
Mary Hemings finished her days in Charlottesville. Her grave site remains unknown.
Jefferson kept Mary's older children Betsy Hemmings and Joseph Fossett enslaved at Monticello. He had already given away her children Daniel and Molly to his sister and daughter, respectively. When his daughter Mary Jefferson married John Wayles Eppes in 1797, Jefferson gave Betsy Hemmings at age 14 to them as a wedding gift. She had to leave her family, and lived with the Eppes family for the rest of her life.
The Hemmings descendants' oral tradition is that after Mary Jefferson Eppes died, the then-21-year-old Betsy became the concubine of the young widower John Eppes. They had a daughter Frances together and other children. Their relationship continued after he married a second time five years later, although it was not openly acknowledged.[6] Betsy Hemmings was buried next to Eppes in his family cemetery at the plantation.[12] His second wife was buried at her daughter's plantation.[6]
Decades later, in 1826 Jefferson freed Joseph Fossett by his will, in recognition of his valuable service as an ironworker. To settle debts of the estate, 130 Monticello slaves were sold, including Fossett's wife Edy and children. With the help of his mother Mary Bell and other free family members, Fossett over several years purchased the freedom of his wife and most of his children. The family moved from Virginia to the free state of Ohio about 1840.[13]
In 1833 his son Peter Fossett's master, John Jones, reneged on his previous agreement to sell the boy back to Fossett. According to Peter Fossett's memoir, published in The New York World, 30 January 1898, he had learned to read and write. Peter Fossett gave his sister Isabel, also still enslaved, a "free pass" enabling her to travel; she escaped to Boston and freedom. Peter escaped twice but was captured, and in 1850 was sold. Friends of his father's bought him and freed him; he then joined his father and the rest of the family in Cincinnati.[14]
In 1780, after Jefferson was elected governor of Virginia, he moved his family and a number of his slaves, including Mary Hemings and Betty Brown, to Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia. The following year he relocated his household to the new capital of Richmond. With the American Revolutionary War underway, when Benedict Arnold’s forces raided Richmond searching (unsuccessfully) for Jefferson, they took Mary Hemings and other Jefferson slaves as prisoners of war. They were freed from the British later that year by General Washington's forces during the siege of Yorktown.[15]
Though free, Mary Hemings remained in close communication with her enslaved family at Monticello and was remembered by them many years after her death.[16] As an elderly man, her grandson Peter Fossett recalled how when he was a child, his free grandmother Mary gave him a suit of blue nankeen cloth and a red leather hat and shoes, grand compared to the attire of children of field slaves.[17]
One of Mary's most notable descendants was William Monroe Trotter, who became a prominent Boston newspaper publisher, human rights activist, and a founder of the Niagara Movement, precursor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Trotter graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1895; in his junior year he became the first man of color to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key there.[18] Trotter was a contemporary of fellow Harvard alumnus W. E. B. Du Bois. In 1896, Trotter earned a master's degree from Harvard, planning a career in international banking. But despite his outstanding credentials, racism thwarted his efforts to find work in that field.