DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello:
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Description of Pictures: Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty
January 27, 2012 – October 14, 2012
This exhibition explores slavery and enslaved people in America through the lens of Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and called slavery an—abominable crime,” yet he was a lifelong slaveholder. In an age inspired by the Declaration of Independence, slavery was pervasive—28% of the American population was enslaved in 1790. The exhibition provides a glimpse into the lives of six slave families—the Hemings, the Gillettes, the Herns, the Fossetts, the Grangers and the Hubbard brothers—living at Monticello and reveals how the paradox of slavery in Jefferson’s world is relevant for generations beyond Jefferson’s lifetime.
Museum objects, works of art, documents, and artifacts found through archaeological excavations at Monticello provide a look at enslaved people as individuals—with names, deep family and marital connections, values, achievements, religious faith, a thirst for literacy and education, and tenacity in the pursuit of freedom. The family stories are brought to the present via Monticello’s Getting Word oral history project, which interviewed 170 descendants of those who lived in slavery on Jefferson’s plantation.
Highlights include the following objects:
The portable desk used by Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence
Ceramic tableware and wine bottles from Shadwell, the tobacco plantation of Jefferson’s parents, one of four farms (Monticello, Tufton, and Lego were the others) that were part of Jefferson’s agricultural enterprise
The headstone of Priscilla Hemmings (Sally’s sister-in-law and nursemaid to Jefferson’s grandchildren, ca. 1776–1830)
Bill of sale for a “negro girl slave named Clary,” for 50 pounds
Cast-iron cooking pot and kitchen utensils from Mulberry Row (the road encircling the Monticello house). Jefferson provided each family with weekly rations of cornmeal, pork or pick ...More...
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
MONTI_120212_012.JPG: The names of Jefferson's slaves appear on the wall behind the statue
MONTI_120212_014.JPG: A Solution to Slavery?
Jefferson Proposes -- Abolition of the Slave Trade
At the end of the 18th century, Jefferson and many other Americans believed that stopping the import of enslaved people from Africa and the Caribbean would hasten the end of slavery. In 1807, three weeks before Britain abolished the Atlantic slave trade, President Jefferson signed a law prohibiting "the importation of slaves into any port of place within the jurisdiction of the United States."
MONTI_120212_017.JPG: A Solution to Slavery?
Jefferson Proposes -- Gradual Emancipation
Throughout his life, Jefferson privately endorsed a plan of gradual emancipation, by which all people born into slavery after a certain date would be freed and sent beyond the borders of the United States when they reached adulthood. He published a short description of this plan in his book Notes on the State of Virginia.
MONTI_120212_020.JPG: "This Deplorable Entanglement"
Jefferson and many other patriots believed slavery should be abolished in the new American nation. Emancipation would fulfill the ideal that "all men are created equal."
Yet over the course of his life Jefferson himself owned 600 people. Their names appear on the wall behind the statue. He was unable to extricate himself from what he called the "deplorable entanglement" of slavery.
Jefferson spent much of his life wrestling with and proposing various solutions to this national problem. But slavery was not abolished, and he remained a slaveholder throughout his life.
MONTI_120212_029.JPG: Thomas Jefferson's portable desk:
Made by Benjamin Randolph, Philadelphia, 1776. Mahogany
Thomas Jefferson wrote his "rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence on this desk. In one section, later deleted by Congress, he accused King George III of waging "cruel war against human nature itself" for supporting the slave trade in his empire.
In 1825, Jefferson gave this desk to Joseph Coolidge, husband of his granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge. The Coolidge family presented it to the United States in 1880.
MONTI_120212_034.JPG: Thomas Jefferson
1743-1826
Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. He wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and served the nation he helped create as minister to France, secretary of state, vice-president, and president of the United States.
He founded the University of Virginia and contributed to the fields of architecture, horticulture, ethnography, paleontology, archaeology, and astronomy. He believed human freedom was the surest path to human progress and consistently opposed slavery, calling it a "moral depravity." Yet, over the course of his life, Jefferson owned 600 people at Monticello and his other Virginia plantations. Their names appear on the wall behind the statue. Jefferson's way of life depended on the labor of people he held in slavery.
MONTI_120212_037.JPG: Paradox of Liberty:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1776
The paradox of the American Revolution -- the fight for liberty in an era of pervasive slavery -- is one of the most troubling aspects of American history.
Thomas Jefferson helped to create a new nation based on individual freedom and self-government. His words in the Declaration of Independence expressed the aspirations of the new nation.
But the Declaration of Independence did not extend "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" to African Americans, Native Americans, indentured servants, or women. Twelve of the first eighteen American presidents owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and called slavery an "abominable crime," yet he was a lifelong slaveholder. Fearful of dividing the fragile new nation, Jefferson and other founders who opposed slavery did not insist of abolishing it. It took 87 more years -- and the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th Amendment -- to end slavery.
This exhibition uses Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's plantation in central Virgina, as a focal point for examining the dilemma of slavery in the United States as well as the lives of Monticello's enslaved people.
MONTI_120212_041.JPG: A Solution to Slavery?
Jefferson Proposes -- Diffusion
In 1819-20, the question of slavery's expansion into Missouri and other western territories was a matter of fierce political debate. Jefferson and other southerners favored the "diffusion" of slaves in the west, believing that the spread of enslaved people over a larger geographic area would improve their situation and lead more swiftly to emancipation.
MONTI_120212_044.JPG: A Solution to Slavery?
Jefferson Proposes -- Colonization
Jefferson, along with many other Americans, combined plans for emancipation with colonization -- moving freed slaves outside the US. "I have seen no proposition so expedient ... as that of emancipation of those [slaves] born after a given date, and of their education and expatriation at a proper age," Jefferson wrote in 1814. He eventually decided that Africa was the best destination.
MONTI_120212_046.JPG: Jefferson's Antislavery Actions
"You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery; and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object."
-- Thomas Jefferson to Brissot de Warville, February 11, 1788
Early in his public life, Jefferson was one of the first statesmen anywhere to take action to end slavery. In 1778, he introduced a Virginia law prohibiting the importation of enslaved Africans. In 1784, he proposed a ban on slavery in the Northwest Territory, new lands ceded by the British in 1783. In Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1785, he proposed a plan of gradual emancipation. After 1785, as tensions over slavery grew, he continued to believe in the injustice of slavery but remained publicly silent.
MONTI_120212_050.JPG: African Slavery in Colonial British North America:
Directly or indirectly, the economies of all 13 British colonies in North America depended on slavery. By the 1620s, the labor-intensive cultivation of tobacco for European markets was established in Virginia, with white indentured servants performing most of the heavy labor. Before 1660 only a fraction of Virginia planters held slaves. By 1675, slavery was well established, and by 1700 slaves had almost entirely replaced indentured servants. With plentiful land and slave labor available to grow a lucrative crop, southern planters prospered, and family-based tobacco plantations became the economic and social norm.
MONTI_120212_053.JPG: Africans in British North America:
Among the first documented Africans in British North America were approximately 20 men and women who arrived at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. They were captives, likely from the kingdom of Ngondo in present-day Angola. Privateers had seized them from a slave ship bound for Mexico and traded them in Virginia. The Africans worked the tobacco fields in Jamestown alongside white indentured servants, but it is not clear if they were considered slaves.
By 1700 there were 27,800 enslaved Africans in British North America. In 1740, there were 150,000. By 1770, the number of slaves had grown to 462,000, about one-fifth of the total colonial population.
MONTI_120212_056.JPG: The Chesapeake and the Atlantic World:
The economy of the Chesapeake region was based on growing tobacco with slave labor, exporting it to Britain, and acquiring British goods in return. Elite colonial Americans were enthusiastic consumers of imported goods that signaled wealth, gentility, and status: carved hardwood furniture, Chinese porcelain, silk waistcoats, creamware teapots, silver spoons, books, works of art, and exotic foodstuffs such as tea, spices, and sugar. Along with goods, colonial elites acquired British cultural knowledge, such as familiarity with classical architecture, dining and tea-drinking rituals, and the art of polite conversation.
MONTI_120212_067.JPG: George Morland
Slave Trade (Execrable Human Traffick, or The Affectionate Slaves), ca 1788
Morland's painting may have been inspired by a 1788 poem telling the story of a noble African family torn apart by the slave trade. It offers a powerful visual statement in support of the anti-slavery cause that eventually led to the end of the Atlantic slave trade in the United States and Great Britain.
MONTI_120212_074.JPG: Bilboes (shackles) for a child and an adult, iron, 19th century
Typically found on slave ships, the hoops went around the ankles, to hold the captive in place, and a bar locked the hoops together.
MONTI_120212_077.JPG: Bill of slave for a "negro girl slave named Clary," 1806. Robert S. Jardine, a merchant in Madison County, Virginia, purchased Clary for 50 pounds "current money."
MONTI_120212_084.JPG: By 1700, Virginia was at the northern edge of a group of slave societies extending south into the Carolinas, Georgia, and through the islands of the Caribbean to Brazil.
MONTI_120212_087.JPG: A Society Dependent on Slavery:
Slavery made the world Thomas Jefferson knew. The colonial society into which he was born -- in 1743 in what became Albemarle County, Virginia -- would not have existed without it. Enslaved people tilled his father's tobacco fields, cured the tobacco and packed it for shipment, cooked and served the family's meals, cared for Thomas Jefferson and his siblings, and accompanied him to the College of William and Mary. The profits from slave-based agriculture made his parents' household and lifestyle, and his education and exposure to the colonial capital of Williamsburg, possible. Though Jefferson came to abhor slavery, his livelihood depended on it.
"... be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand Assembly that all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother."
-- Virginia Slavery Act, 1662
MONTI_120212_091.JPG: The World of Peter, Jane, and Thomas Jefferson:
Thomas Jefferson inherited his father's plantation, slaves, and livelihood. Peter Jefferson was a planter, surveyor, county justice, member of the colonial Virginia legislature, and a loyal citizen of the British Empire. Jefferson's mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, belonged to one of the colony's most prominent families.
The intellectual and material character of his parents' household at Shadwell shaped Thomas Jefferson in childhood and young adulthood. Peter and Jane Jefferson owned booked, scientific and drafting instruments, fashionable furniture and table wares, over 7,200 acres of land, and 60 slaves. At Shadwell, the young Jefferson learned the customs of an elite, slaveholding society while developing a great curiosity about the wider world.
MONTI_120212_095.JPG: Inkwell in the shape of Voltaire's head, ceramic, late 1700s.
Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) criticized slavery and advocated religious freedom and tolerance.
MONTI_120212_104.JPG: Spectacles designed by Jefferson, silver, made by John McAllister, Philadelphia, ca 1806
The elliptical lenses correct for age-related farsightedness.
MONTI_120212_113.JPG: Fountain pen, silver and gold, ca 1824
Jefferson wrote around 19,000 letters and was a record-keeper like few others before or since. For most of his life, he maintained books recording the weather, his expenditures, and his building, gardening, and plantation activities.
MONTI_120212_116.JPG: Thomas Jefferson: Man of the Enlightenment:
Revolving book stand, attributed to the Monticello Joinery, walnut, ca 1780-1810.
Jefferson's rotating stand enabled him to keep five books open at once, satisfying his self-described "canine appetite" for reading.
MONTI_120212_125.JPG: Micrometer with case, brass, made by Alexis-Marie de Rochon, Paris, ca 1780.
A micrometer is a telescope for measuring the distances and sizes of objects, especially celestial bodies. Benjamin Franklin owned this instrument; a mutual friend gave it to Jefferson. Like Franklin, Jefferson was a man of science in addition to his other occupations and owned many instruments for observing the natural world.
MONTI_120212_134.JPG: Jefferson's Education:
Jefferson drew upon education in law and Enlightenment philosophy when he wrote the Declaration of Independence (1776) and A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), two treatises that grappled with liberty and slavery.
At the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, colonial Virginia's capital, he studied mathematics, natural philosophy (science), and political philosophy with Scottish scholar William Small. Through Small, Jefferson was exposed to the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment, who believed rational thought and useful knowledge guaranteed the progress of humanity. Later, as a law student under prominent jurist George Wythe, Jefferson absorbed the most important legal principles of the day.
MONTI_120212_138.JPG: The Declaration of Independence:
In the Declaration, Jefferson eloquently announced the creation of the new American nation. He presented Americans as a self-governing people committed to the principles of liberty and equality in the face of British tyranny. "All men are created equal," Jefferson wrote, and the importance of this ideal necessitated that "a people... advance from the subordination in which they have hitherto remained" in order to "institute new government." The founders' vision did not include one-fifth of the American population: enslaved men, women, and children who labored in nearly every one of the "Free and Independent States".
MONTI_120212_141.JPG: Settlement in the Virginia Piedmont:
Around 1720, after English immigrants had claimed the land along Virginia's navigable rivers and within the coastal plain, colonial settlement spread west toward the Blue Ridge. In the 1730s, Thomas Jefferson's father, Peter, became one of the first settlers in what later became Albemarle County. There he established the tobacco plantation that he called Shadwell and his son would call Monticello. Through Peter Jefferson and other early settlers, the slave-based plantation culture of the Tidewater region extended ever westward and became further entrenched in colonial American life, as the Atlantic slave trade expanded.
MONTI_120212_143.JPG: Enlightenment Influence:
Racism in Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781:
In his only published book, Jefferson recorded his views on race. Like many other 18th-century thinkers, Jefferson suspected blacks were inferior to whites. He wrote, "I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."
MONTI_120212_146.JPG: Enlightenment, Freedom, and Slavery:
Enlightenment philosophy strongly influenced Jefferson's ideas about two seemingly opposing issues: American freedom and American slavery. Enlightenment thinkers argued that liberty was a natural human right and that reason and scientific knowledge -- not the state or the church -- were responsible for human progress. But Enlightenment reason also provided a rationale for slavery, based on a hierarchy of races.
MONTI_120212_149.JPG: Enlightenment Influence:
A Summary View of the Rights of British America:
Drawing upon Enlightenment criticism of unlawful authority, Jefferson wrote this essay for the Virginia delegation to the First Continental Congress. He accused King George III of imposing illegal control over Virginia's political decisions, including its desire to restrict or outlaw slavery. Jefferson wrote, "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies."
MONTI_120212_153.JPG: The Enlightenment and the American Revolution:
Jefferson and other members of the founding generation were deeply influenced by the 18th-century European intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. Enlightenment philosophy stressed that liberty and equality were natural human rights.
Colonial Americans argued that King George III and Parliament had denied them the basic rights of British citizens. Despite the pervasiveness of slavery in their society, the revolutionary generation envisioned a new American government that secured the rights and freedoms of its citizens. However, most white Americans did not envision black people as full citizens of the new republic.
MONTI_120212_155.JPG: The Enslaved Families of Monticello:
"Lafayette remarked that he thought that the slaves ought to be free; that no man could rightly hold ownership in his brother man..."
-- Israel (Gillette) Jefferson, 1873, recalling the 1824 visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to Monticello
The Monticello plantation was a complex community dependent on the labor of many people -- especially its enslaved field hands, artisans, and domestic workers. Enslaved people worked from sunrise to sunset six days a week, with only Sundays off. They also had the usual holidays for slaves in Virginia: Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun (seven weeks after Easter).
Several extended families lived in slavery at Monticello for three or more generations. Among them were the families of Elizabeth Hemings and her children: Edward and Jane Gillette; George and Ursula Granger; David and Isabel Hern; and James and Cate Hubbard. Like others across the South, Monticello's enslaved families resisted slavery's dehumanizing effects by striving tirelessly to maintain family bonds, protect and nurture their children, and create rich social, cultural, and spiritual lives that flourished independent of Jefferson.
The fragmentary objects in this exhibition belonged to enslaved people at Monticello. While many possessions of Jefferson and his family have passed down through the generations and remain intact, the items owned by enslaved workers and craftsmen have only been recovered through archaeology.
MONTI_120212_164.JPG: The Hubbard Brothers
Though their family lived at Jefferson's Poplar Forest plantation, brothers James and Philip Hubbard were brought to Monticello in their early teens to work in the nailery. In later years, both were runaways, but for different reasons.
In 1805, with money he had saved, James purchased forged "free papers" and new clothing. He set out on foot for Washington but was apprehended outside the city, when his papers were spotted as forgeries. Like most Virginia slaves, without access to education, he didn't recognize what poor forgeries they were. He left again six years later, remaining at large for over a year, and was sold by Jefferson.
Philip Hubbard also ran away: from Poplar Forest to Monticello to ask Jefferson to intervene with an overseer so he and his wife could live together.
MONTI_120212_166.JPG: The Monticello Nailery:
In the Nailery, enslaved boys worked from sunup to sundown six days a week, swinging their hammers over a hot forge as many as 20,000 times a day. In 1806, an overseer reported that most nailers made between eight and ten pounds of nails a day.
MONTI_120212_174.JPG: The Nailery:
"Made wrought nails and cut nails, to shingle and lath. Sold them out of the shop. Got iron rods from Philadelphia by water; boated them up from Richmond to Milton... wagoned from there."
-- Isaac (Granger) Jefferson, Recollections as reported by Charles Campbell, 1840s
In 1794, Jefferson began a nail-making operation on Mulberry Row to increase plantation revenue. Nails could be made with minimal training and required little capital outlay. Iron nailrod was shipped from Philadelphia and hammered into several sizes of nails by enslaved boys. In 1796, Jefferson purchased a nail-cutting shear, and using this, in addition to forging, the nailboys cut smaller lath nails from sheet iron.
MONTI_120212_190.JPG: Mulberry Row
Mulberry Row -- a 1,300-foot-long section of the road encircling the Monticello house -- was the hub of the plantation. Over time, it included more than 20 workshops, dwellings, and storage buildings where enslaved people, indentured servants, and free black and white workmen lived and worked as weavers, spinners, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, nail-makers, carpenters, sawyers, charcoal-burners, stablemen, joiners, or domestic servants.
Mulberry Row changed over time -- structures were built, removed, and re-purposed -- to accommodate Jefferson's changing plans for Monticello.
MONTI_120212_193.JPG: Making Hard Decisions: Running Away
When David Hern Jr. was serving as a wagoner, he drove his wagon between Monticello and Washington, D.C., by himself many times. During that time, he could have tried to run away from slavery and be free, but he did not.
MONTI_120212_201.JPG: The Granger Family
Jefferson purchased George and Ursula Granger and their sons in 1773 because Ursula Granger was a "favorite housewoman" of his wife. Ursula supervised the kitchen, smokehouse, and washhouse from 1773 through the 1790s. George Granger, Sr. was the Monticello farm foreman and, later, overseer. The Grangers' three sons were trusted and skilled artisans and laborers.
George, Ursula, and their son George died within months of one another in 1799 and 1800. The youngest son, Isaac, using the surname Jefferson, survived into the 1840s as a free man in Petersburg, Virginia, and his recollections of life at Monticello were recorded.
MONTI_120212_208.JPG: The Hern Family
The story of David and Isabel Hern illustrates the strength of the African American family within an institution that constantly threatened family unity. Although slave marriage was illegal in Virginia, enduring unions were the norm at Monticello. The Herns, whose marriage lasted until Isabel's death in 1819, had 12 children. Sons Moses and James married "abroad" (off the Monticello plantation) and persuaded Jefferson to buy their wives so they could live together.
David Hern was a skilled woodworker and wheelwright. Jefferson considered him one of the "best hands" to blast rock. After Jefferson's death, David Hern and his 34 surviving children and grandchildren were sold.
Autonomy of Male Slaves
David Hern Jr., a wagoner, made regular solo trips to transport goods between Monticello and Washington during Jefferson's presidency. He was able to visit his wife, Frances Gillette Hern, an apprentice cook in the White House kitchen. Other male slaves, including Elizabeth Hemings's sons Robert and Martin, periodically traveled and worked away from Monticello. Even with this level of autonomy, family bonds led enslaved men to keep returning to Monticello.
MONTI_120212_222.JPG: "We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."
-- Thomas Jefferson to John Homes, April 22, 1820
MONTI_120212_226.JPG: Thomas Jefferson at Monticello
In the 1750s, Peter Jefferson established a tobacco farm on the slopes of a small mountain across the Rivanna River from Shadwell. Thomas Jefferson called this mountain Monticello and made it the center of his world. In 1770, after the mountain was leveled for construction of the main house, Thomas Jefferson moved into a two-room dwelling there. His bride, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, joined him two years later.
For the next 40 years, free and enslaved workers built and rebuilt his now-famous house. For more than 60 years, his enslaved laborers produced his cash crops of tobacco and wheat.
MONTI_120212_229.JPG: Entrepreneurs and Consumers:
At Monticello and across the South, slaves continued working after their regular hours to improve living conditions for their families. They could earn money by selling garden produce, poultry, eggs, and crafts produced on their own time. They used the money to buy goods from local merchants. Archeologists find imported ceramics and other tablewares at virtually every site occupied by enslaved African Americans.
MONTI_120212_231.JPG: Talent and Training:
A skilled work force made the Monticello plantation run. At various times, Jefferson hired gardeners, a brewer, masons, smiths, joiners, carriage builders, charcoal burners, and weavers to teach their trades to enslaved men and women. From the age of ten, boys began work in a nail-making shop. Girls started work in a textile shop. Based on their performance, at age 16 they would learn a trade or go to work in the fields.
MONTI_120212_234.JPG: Living on the Monticello Plantation
At any one time, about 130 enslaved men, women, and children lived and worked at Monticello. Jefferson initially acquired most of his slaves through inheritance from his father and father-in-law. The Monticello plantation comprised 5,000 acres divided into four farms: the Monticello home farm, Shadwell, Tufton, and Lego. Farm laborers lived near the fields where they worked. House servants and artisans lived in log dwellings on the mountaintop along Mulberry Row or in rooms under the south terrace of the main house.
MONTI_120212_237.JPG: Treatment
Stating that it was his "first wish" that his slaves be "well treated," Jefferson struggled to balance humane treatment with a need for profit. He tried to minimize the then-common use of harsh physical punishment and used financial incentives rather than force to encourage his artisans. He instructed his overseers not to whip slaves, but his wishes were often ignored during his frequent absences from home.
MONTI_120212_240.JPG: From Tobacco to Wheat
Jefferson raised tobacco for sale to European markets until the early 1790s. Then, market forces and an interest in agricultural reform led him to institute a more diversified operation, with wheat as the main crop. The new system involved a greater variety of tasks, which gave enslaved workers additional skills and increased autonomy, enabling them to negotiate small improvements in conditions for their families.
MONTI_120212_248.JPG: The Fossett Family
Joseph Fossett was a son of Mary Hemings Bell (daughter of Elizabeth Hemings). Bell lived in Charlottesville as a free person after Jefferson sold her to her white common-law husband, though he was unwilling to sell Joseph and his sister Betsy. Fossett's efficiency as a nail-maker and house servant led to his training as a blacksmith at age 16. As head blacksmith during Jefferson's retirement, Joseph Fossett worked at an anvil in the blacksmith's shop.
During Jefferson's presidency, Fossett's wife, Edith Hern, lived in Washington to learn French cooking. Three of the Fossetts' ten children were born in the White House. In 1806, Jefferson reported that Joseph Fossett had run away from Monticello, failing to realize he was running to his wife in Washington. When Jefferson retired, the Fossetts became head cook and blacksmith at Monticello. Jefferson freed Joseph Fossett in his will, but Edith and seven of their children were sold.
MONTI_120212_250.JPG: The Joinery:
"John Hemmings was a carpenter. He was a first-rate workman, a very extra workman. He could make anything that was wanted in woodwork."
-- Monticello Overseer Edmund Bacon
Jefferson established a Joinery on Mulberry Row to produce the distinctive architectural woodwork for his house. Here joiners (highly skilled carpenters) made doors, windows, and decorative finish work, such as cornices, mantels, balustrades, and railings. Beginning in the 1770s, Jefferson engaged a series of white joiners, including James Dinsmore and John Neilson, who trained slave apprentices. John Hemmings succeeded Dinsmore as head joiner in 1809, making fine furniture for Jefferson, including cabinets, chairs, and tables.
The Joinery:
The woodworking and furniture-making shop at Monticello is called the Joinery because the furniture made there was held together with wooden joints rather than nails. John Hemmings cut pieces of wood to fit together exactly like puzzle pieces.
MONTI_120212_254.JPG: Arm chair, probably made by John Hemmings, mahogany, ca. 1817.
Elizabeth Hemings's youngest son, John, was a highly skilled woodworker, eventually running the Monticello Joinery (cabinet shop). This chair, probably made in the Monticello Joinery, is a copy of French chairs used in the Monticello house. Jefferson may have commissioned this chair for use at Poplar Forest, where John Hemmings created interior woodwork and for which he made other furniture.
Note: John Hemmings, who could read and write, often spelled his name with a double m, while other family members used a single m.
MONTI_120212_260.JPG: Headstone for Priscilla Hemmings (ca 1776-1830), carved by John Hemmings.
Thesed
is placed at the head
of my dear affectionat[e]
wife Priscilla Hemmings
Departed this life on Fri
day the 7th of May 1830 eag 54
Priscilla Hemmings (ca 1776-1830) was a nursemaid to Jefferson's grandchildren and a favorite of the family. She and her husband, John Hemmings, lived several miles apart until 1809, when her owners, Jefferson's daughter and son-in-law, moved to Monticello. This headstone was found on the Monticello grounds in the 1960s. The site of her grave, likely an undiscovered graveyard on the Monticello plantation, is not known.
MONTI_120212_279.JPG: The Hemings Family
As many as 70 members of the Hemings family lived in slavery at Monticello over five generations. Elizabeth Hemings and her children arrived at Monticello around 1774 as part of Jefferson's inheritance from his father-in-law, John Wayles, who was likely the father of six of the children. Members of the family eventually occupied the most important positions in Monticello's labor force. They helped build the Monticello house, ran the household, made furniture, cooked Jefferson's meals, cared for his children and grandchildren, attended him in his final moments, and dug his grave. Elizabeth's daughter Sally Hemings was likely the mother of four of his children. The nine people Jefferson freed in his lifetime and will were all members of the Hemings family.
Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings (1773-1835) -- daughter of Elizabeth Hemings and (probably) Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles -- came to Monticello with her mother and siblings in the mid-1770s. At age 14 she accompanied Jefferson's daughter Mary to Paris as a lady's maid. Hemings's son recalled that her later duties at Monticello were "to take care of [Jefferson's] Chamber and wardrobe, look after us children, and do light work such as sewing, etc."
Her name has been linked with Jefferson's since 1802 when a newspaper reported that Jefferson kept a "concubine" named Sally. Their relationship has been the subject of debate ever since. Documentary and genetic evidence leads most historians now to believe that, years after his wife's death, Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings's children. Her two older children, Beverly and Harriet, were allowed to leave Monticello in 1822, and the younger two, Madison and Eston, were freed in Jefferson's will. After Jefferson's death, Sally Hemings lived out her life in unofficial freedom in Charlottesville.
MONTI_120212_283.JPG: Hemings and Jefferson: What the DNA Says
In 1998 Dr. Eugene Foster and a team of geneticists tested DNA samples from male-line descendants of Field Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's uncle) and of Eston Hemings (Sally Hemings's son). (The surviving children from Thomas Jefferson's marriage were female, so their descendants could not be tested in this way.)
The test results show a genetic link between the Jefferson and Hemings descendants: A man with the Jefferson Y chromosome fathered Eston Hemings (born 1808). While there were other adult males with the Jefferson Y chromosome living in Virginia at that time, most historians now believe that the documentary and genetic evidence, considered together, strongly support the conclusion that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings's children.
MONTI_120212_295.JPG: The Monticello House
Jefferson designed one of the most architecturally significant residences in America. The first Monticello was a two-story, eight-room house that revealed his knowledge of classical architecture. In 1796, inspired by neoclassical buildings he had seen while serving as American minister to France, Jefferson began transforming Monticello into a three-story, 21-room brick structure. Inside and out, Jefferson's free and enslaved workmen made his design a reality. Jefferson filled his house with furnishings and collections reflecting his education, broad interests, and status. He employed labor-saving technology for efficiency and maximized light and heat for optimal comfort.
MONTI_120212_299.JPG: Chessmen, ivory, French, ca. 1770–90.
The red pieces represent Africans, and the white pieces represent Frenchmen. Jefferson, an avid chess player, acquired this set while living in Paris as American minister to France.
MONTI_120212_308.JPG: Bronze medal, 1825.
Awarded to Jefferson by the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Ghent, Belgium.
MONTI_120212_318.JPG: Vegetable dish with cover, silver, French, 1786–87.
James Hemings accompanied Jefferson to Paris in 1784 and learned the art of French cooking. At Monticello, he received his freedom after training his brother Peter. Jefferson favored French cuisine and particularly enjoyed vegetables. From 1789 until Jefferson's death, the enslaved cooks at Monticello were chefs in the French manner.
MONTI_120212_334.JPG: The Gillette Family
Though Jefferson referred to them simply as Ned and Jenny, their son Israel stated in 1873 that his parents' names were Edward and Jane Gillette. Both farm laborers, they had 12 children and lived on the Monticello home farm. Jefferson said he had "most perfect confidence" in Edward Gillette.
The Gillette children learned a variety of valuable skills, including barrel-making, shoemaking, caring for horses, and cooking. The family used expertise and entrepreneurship to improve their situation, selling fish, chickens, eggs, garden produce, and wooden pails to the Jefferson family. Israel Gillette remembered Jefferson's death as "an affair of great moment and uncertainty to us slaves." In 1827, Edward, Jane, nine of their children, and 12 grandchildren were sold.
Edward and Jane's Children:
Barnaby Gillette, a cooper, made flour barrels that Jefferson sold to the tenants of his gristmill. In 1813, Jefferson offered Gillette an incentive: the price of one barrel for every 31 he made. He could thus earn more money than most other Monticello slaves, up to $40 a year. His brothers, Gill, Israel, and James Gillette worked in the stable and drove Jefferson's carriage made by his enslaved tradesmen.
MONTI_120212_336.JPG: Debt and Dispersal:
"His death was an affair fo great moment and uncertainty for us slaves, for Mr. Jefferson provided for the freedom of 7 servants only... All the rest of us were sold from the auction block...."
-- Israel (Gillette) Jefferson, 1873
When Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, he left a debt of $107,000, over a million dollars in today's money. Despite his efforts, the plantation was unprofitable, and his expenses were heavy. He died believing a public lottery would raise the money to keep his daughter, her family, and the enslaved workers at Monticello.
Beginning six months later, his executors were forced to sell the land, house, household contents, and 130 men, women, and children. Families who had served the Jeffersons for nearly 60 years stood on the auction block on a cold January day in 1827. Only seven people were spared: the five whom Jefferson freed in his will -- Burwell Colbert, Joseph Fossett, John Hemmings, Madison Hemings, and Eston Hemings -- and two whose informal emancipation he had recommended -- Sally Hemings and Wormley Hughes.
MONTI_120212_344.JPG: The Family of Wormley and Ursula Granger Hughes
The first child ever born in the White House was the son of Wormley and Ursula Hughes.
Wormley Hughes (grandson of Elizabeth Hemings) was head gardener and head stableman at Monticello. His wife, Ursula (granddaughter of George and Ursula Granger), worked in the kitchen (with some training at the White House) and in the fields.
Wormley Hughes was freed after Jefferson's death, but the rest of his family was sold. The Hugheses persuaded Thomas Jefferson Randolph (Jefferson's grandson) to purchase Ursula and her youngest children, as well as Ursula's parents and some of her brothers. The Hughes family stayed together.
MONTI_120212_349.JPG: Wormley and Ursula's sons George and Robert Hughes were, respectively, head man and blacksmith at Thomas Jefferson Randolph's Edgehill plantation. After the Civil War, the Hughes brothers -- along with Lewis Hern, a great-grandson of David and Isabel Hern -- founded Union Run Baptist Church, which thrives today in the same location in Keswick, Virginia, near Monticello. Robert Hughes was its first minister and officiated at many marriages of descendants of the Monticello enslaved community.
The Hughes brothers and Hern purchased land shortly after the War. Interviews with Hern descendants reveal the significance of land ownership in creating a sanctuary for freed people, the family emphasis on the importance of education and the difficulties surmounted to obtain it, and how Hughes and Hern descendants still retain their land and remain close.
The voice of Fountain Hughes, Wormley's great-grandson, is preserved in a 1949 interview, one of just a dozen surviving sound recordings of ex-slaves. Hughes speaks tellingly of the trials of black Virginians during and after the Civil War.
MONTI_120212_351.JPG: Struggle and Survival:
Monticello slaves and their descendants were untiring in their efforts to make Jefferson's ideals of liberty and equality a reality. Their life stories reveal the flourishing of the human spirit within a deeply unjust and dehumanizing institution. Presenting history from the perspective of enslaved individuals can help all Americans understand the struggle of African Americans to gain full citizenship in a country that continues to grapple with issues of race.
MONTI_120212_353.JPG: Seeing Slavery at Monticello:
Studying slavery at Monticello reveals enslaved people as individuals -- their names, family connections, values, and achievements. The details of their lives add to our understanding of history, and our understanding of race relations today. We cannot have a clear view of Jefferson or the founding of our nation if we leave slavery out of the story.
MONTI_120212_355.JPG: The Color Line:
Monticello's mixed-race inhabitants had the continual challenge of living in a border zone between black and white. When some chose to cross the color line and identify themselves as white, painful family division followed. Sally Hemings's descendants made their marks in both worlds. One of her grandsons commanded a white regiment in the Civil War; a great-grandson became the first black member of the California legislature.
MONTI_120212_379.JPG: Sally Hemings's Children
In the Hemings family, the story of descent from Jefferson has been passed from generation to generation. Because of their mixed-race heritage, Hemings descendants have had to deal constantly with the issues of ambiguous racial identity.
All four of Sally Hemings's known surviving children became free. Beverly Hemings (born 1798) and her sister Harriet (born 1801) were allowed to leave Monticello in 1822 and passed into white society. Their descendants have not been located.
Younger brothers Madison (1805-77) and Eston Hemings (1808-56) remained at Monticello until Jefferson's death; both were freed in his will. Both married free women of color and moved west. Madison Hemings remained in the black community, while his brother Eston chose to cross the color line and live as white.
MONTI_120212_384.JPG: Sally Hemings's Children
In the Hemings family, the story of descent from Jefferson has been passed from generation to generation. Because of their mixed-race heritage, Hemings descendants have had to deal constantly with the issues of ambiguous racial identity.
All four of Sally Hemings's known surviving children became free. Beverly Hemings (born 1798) and her sister Harriet (born 1801) were allowed to leave Monticello in 1822 and passed into white society. Their descendants have not been located.
Younger brothers Madison (1805-77) and Eston Hemings (1808-56) remained at Monticello until Jefferson's death; both were freed in his will. Both married free women of color and moved west. Madison Hemings remained in the black community, while his brother Eston chose to cross the color line and live as white.
Madison Hemings (1805-77) worked as a carpenter. He married a free woman of color, Mary Hughes McCoy. In the late 1830s, he and his wife moved to southern Ohio, where they raised their family and eventually owned a 66-acre farm in a community of free people of color from Virginia.
While most of their children remained in Ohio, their youngest daughter, Ellen Wayles Hemings (1856-1940), moved with her husband, Alfred Jackson Roberts, to southern California in 1884. Their son Frederick Madison Roberts (1879-1952) -- an educator, business leader, and editor of the Los Angeles New Age -- became the first black member of the California legislature.
Eston Hemings (1808-56) married Julia Ann Isaacs, a free woman of color, and moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, in the late 1830s. He led a successful dance band there and was also a carpenter. In 1852, the family made a momentous decision, moving to Madison, Wisconsin, where they used the surname Jefferson and lived as white. Eston's grandsons had successful careers as lawyer, physician, and engineer.
In the 1940s, Eston Jefferson's descendants altered the family story to hide their connection to slavery. Descendants interviewed for the Getting Word project grew up without knowing of their African American ancestry.
MONTI_120212_392.JPG: The Hemings Family and the Civil War:
At least eight descendants of Elizabeth Hemings (and two men who married into the family) served in the Civil War. Four were in black regiments, and four in white -- all on the Union side.
MONTI_120212_395.JPG: Eight descendants of Elizabeth Hemings served in the Civil War, four in black regiments and four in white -- all on the Union side.
Black Regiments:
Peter Fossett was a captain in the Cincinnati Black Brigade in 1862, when it was formed as part of the defense of Cincinnati from Confederate invasion.
George Edmondson, Elizabeth Heming's great-great-grandson through Brown Colbert, served a year in the 127th (Pennsylvania) United States Colored Infantry, seeing action during the siege of Petersburg and Richmond.
John Freeman Shorter -- Elizabeth Hemings's great-great-grandson through Brown Colbert's sister Melinda Colbert Freeman -- served in one of the two famous black Massachusetts regiments, the 55th. He was wounded at the Battle of Honey Hill, was commissioned lieutenant in 1864, but had to wait to be recognized until the War Department allowed black commissioned officers in 1865. He died soon after.
James Monroe Trotter and William H. Dupree married sisters, Elizabeth Hemings's great-great-granddaughters Virginia and Maria Elizabeth Isaacs. Trotter and Dupree were commissioned lieutenants who had to wait a year for their shoulder straps. Trotter and Shorter were prime movers in the protest against unequal pay for black soldiers.
White Regiments:
These four were all grandsons of Sally Hemings.
Madison Hemings's sons William Beverly Hemings and Thomas Eston Hemings both served in white Ohio infantry regiments, the 73rd and the 175th. Both were living as black when they enlisted in 1864. William B Hemings spent much of the war in a hospital, and Thomas E Hemings died in a Confederate prison camp, possibly Andersonville.
Eston Hemings's sons John Wayles Jefferson and Beverly Jefferson served in white Wisconsin regiments. Beverly Jefferson was a three-months man in the 1st Wisconsin. In 1861, his brother began his military career as a major of the famous Eagle regiment, the 8th Wisconsin. He served throughout the war, rising to lieutenant-colonel, and was for a time in command of the whole regiment. After the war, he became one of the wealthiest cotton brokers in Memphis, Tennessee.
MONTI_120212_403.JPG: Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation:
Jefferson's debt forced his heirs to sell Monticello after his death. In 1831, local physician James Turner Barclay bought the house and some surrounding land. In 1834, Barclay sold the estate to Uriah Levy (1792-1862), a Jewish U.S. naval officer who admired Jefferson's views on religious freedom. Commodore Levy and his nephew Congressman Jefferson Monroe Levy (1852-1924), who acquired Monticello in 1879, devoted themselves to Monticello's preservation.
Levy family ownership continued until 1923, when the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Foundation acquired Monticello. A non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Monticello (a United Nations World Heritage site) and education about Jefferson, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation owns and operates Monticello today. Since the 1950s, staff archaeologists, historians, and curators have been engaged in research about the plantation and its communities.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
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2012 photos: Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired.
Trips this year:
three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA),
a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean,
another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and
my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc).
Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else..
Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
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