SALLY HEMINGS Biography - Socialites, celebrities and People in the fashion industry

 
 

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SALLY HEMINGS

Name: Sally Hemings                                                               
                                                                                   
Sally Hemings (Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, circa 1773-                   
Charlottesville, Virginia, 1835) was an American slave owned by Thomas Jefferson. 
She is said to have been, by blood, the half-sister of Jefferson's deceased wife   
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. Jefferson was alleged during his                 
administration to have fathered several children with slaves; more recently DNA   
tests indicate that a male in Jefferson's line, possibly (but not conclusively)   
Thomas Jefferson himself, was the father of several of Sally Hemings's children.   
                                                                                   
Hemings's mother, Betty Hemings, was the daughter of the English Captain Hemings   
and a black slave woman brought from Africa. Along with other members of her       
family, she was owned by Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles, who died in       
1773, leaving nearly all members of the Hemings family to his daughter Martha     
Jefferson, wife of Thomas Jefferson. Most historians accept that Martha and       
Sally were half-sisters, both fathered by John Wayles.[citation needed] Martha     
Jefferson died in 1782, leaving Sally to Thomas. The Hemings family was at the     
top of the slave "hierarchy" at Monticello.                                       
                                                                                   
In 1784, Thomas Jefferson took up residence in Paris as the American envoy to     
France. In 1787, Jefferson sent for his daughter, nine-year-old Maria (Polly)     
Jefferson, to come live with him. He asked that Isabel, an older woman, be sent   
as a companion for Polly, but because Isabel was pregnant, the teen-aged Sally     
Hemings accompanied her instead. Hemings almost looked white in appearance and     
had "straight hair down her back." Polly and Hemings were met in London by         
John and Abigail Adams, with Abigail later noting that Hemings was "wanting more   
care" than Polly.