Existing comment:
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. |