Existing comment:
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. |