George Washington is often called “The Father of Our Country,” referring to his role in founding what is now the United States of America. He did not have biological children, though he did have step-children. Thomas Jefferson, also one of the founders of the United States, had several children by his wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, of whom only two lived to adulthood, Martha, called Patsy as a child, and Mary, called Polly as a child and later called Maria. He did not remarry after Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson’s death. He did, however, as DNA tests have confirmed, have several children by Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved persons, during a thirty-eight year relationship. She was his deceased wife’s half-sister, by their father John Wayles.

Starting in Thomas Jefferson’s and Sally Hemings’ own lifetimes, and continuing up to the present, much has been written about their relationship, some of it quite vitriolic, calling both of them all kinds of names, speculating about the nature of their relationship, or denying there was any relationship. Before the current level of certainty that DNA testing has provided, conclusions were more often opinions, meant to either hold up Thomas Jefferson as a paragon of virtue who never had sex with anyone in his life before or after his marriage to Martha, or attempts to destroy all thoughts of morality, civility, or decency on his part. Similarly, Sally Hemings has been portrayed as either a complete victim of Thomas Jefferson’s desire for sex-on-demand from her, or a woman of no education, little intellect, and no scruples about having sex with any white man available at any time, including some of Jefferson’s relatives. None of these extremes was true of either Jefferson or Hemings. They were persons of their time and circumstances, and we do not have written records of their thoughts or behavior concerning each other, except the current DNA proof that Jefferson was the father of all her children, seven in all, four of whom lived to adulthood and freedom.

So, Thomas Jefferson would be considered, by today’s terminology, a birth father, in that he was the unmarried father of Sally Hemings’ children. Although he was charged with this in the press during his life and since, he was never legally charged. There would have been no such legal charge, in any event, because he owned Sally Hemings and her family, so she had no legal rights. In Virginia at that time, it did not matter whether it was a consensual relationship or not. It was also the case then that legally wed wives had no right to refuse to have sex with their husbands. The concept of marital rape did not exist until the late twentieth century. There is no evidence that Thomas Jefferson forced himself upon Sally Hemings, and no evidence that theirs was not a long-term, consensual, monogamous relationship, and no written evidence of exactly what it was. We cannot judge their behavior then based on our ideas now, nor on the prescribed appropriate behavior of adult men and women in the nineteenth or early to mid-twentieth centuries. While we certainly do not believe that the system of slavery in Virginia, or any part of the United States at that time, was just or decent, nor that it should have continued, the fact is, it did exist, it was legal, and although Jefferson himself thought slavery ought to end, he couldn’t see how that could happen in his lifetime. Virginia began to pass more onerous laws as the country became established, though it was still preferable to most enslaved people to the deep south, such as Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, etc., both for the climate, the types of crops, and the treatment of enslaved persons.

Over the past several years, I have read several books concerning Thomas Jefferson and his family, including his family of origin, his wife’s extended family, and the Hemings family. I first became interested when I read that his daughter, Maria, had married an Epps, and that her husband’s mother, also Martha Wayles Jefferson’s half-sister, was an Epps descendant. Being an Epps descendant myself, I wanted to know the connection. It’s complicated, and redundant, but I am distantly related to Jefferson’s wife (and that half-sister) and therefore to Jefferson’s children and descendants, those by his wife Martha. That led to learning more about this extended family, who tended to marry cousins a lot, a very common thing in Virginia in those days. I still have to consult a chart to figure out how they’re all related. Jefferson himself thought marrying within the family was a good thing, not just to consolidate the wealth (it often ended up consolidating the debts!), but so that people could continue to be close to each other.

One of the first books I read was Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, by Fawn Brodie, originally published in 1974. The author, a professor at UCLA, did a great deal of research and thoroughly documented Jefferson’s life. She was the first to really explore, in a rational and positive way, the relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, treating her as a whole person. By now, most interested people know that Jefferson spent five years in Paris, and that he took with him, at the beginning, Sally Hemings’ brother James, so that he could be trained as a French chef. Jefferson loved all things French. He also brought his older daughter, Martha, called Patsy at the time, and enrolled her in a French convent school. The younger daughter, Maria, called Polly then, stayed behind with her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Francis Epps, as did the youngest sister, Lucy, born a few months before Jefferson’s wife, Martha, died. Then Lucy died, as did the Eppses’ child, also called Lucy. Both died of whooping cough. Polly was nine years old.

Jefferson decided to have her sent to France to join him, and requested that a particular woman accompany her on the ship, and she would go to John and Abigail Adams’ home in London first. The woman he had requested was giving birth about then, so the Eppses decided to send Sally instead, because she had Been Polly’s companion and maid most of their lives. She was fourteen at the time. Abigail Adams was expecting an older woman, and thinking Sally Hemings to be sixteen, not 14, thought her to be very immature. She and the ship’s captain (what business was it of his?) thought she ought to be sent right back on the return ship. However, Jefferson sent his servant, Adrien Petit, to get both Polly and Sally, and brought them to his home in Paris. Polly was soon enrolled at the same boarding school as daughter Martha, and they came home on weekends, leaving Sally without too much responsibility. She and her brother, James, got to spend time together; both learned French. James hired a tutor for himself. Jefferson wanted to make sure Sally got vaccinated for smallpox and paid a very large amount for her to get the very best treatment available at the time. During the next two years, Sally took care of Jefferson’s home, served as a companion and lady’s maid to the daughters, even going to balls, appropriately dressed in fine silk and velvet, with Martha. By the time Jefferson was returning to the United States, she was almost seventeen, as was Martha.

By this time, apparently, Sally and Jefferson had begun their relationship. She and her brother knew that they could stay in France and be free, although, it turns out, France had a lot of rules and restrictions for black people, and didn’t want too many. According to Sally Hemings’ son, Madison Hemings, in his memoirs, Sally became pregnant not long before they left France, and she had made an agreement with Jefferson that if she returned to America with him, her children would all be free at the age of twenty-one. Her brother also bargained with Jefferson that when his training was completed, he would be free. To his credit, Jefferson honored both agreements. According to Madison, his mother’s child did not live long, but she and Jefferson continued their relationship and she had six more children, four of whom lived to adulthood—William Beverly, Harriet, James Madison, and John Eston. All were given their freedom, the first two by leaving (with permission, even though they were listed as runaways), and the two youngest when Jefferson died and by agreement, at which time Sally left to live with them.

The Hemings family, including Sally’s mother, Elizabeth (partner of John Wayles after his three wives had each died), Sally’s siblings, and other relatives, all came to live at Monticello after John Wayles died and Thomas Jefferson inherited them as property, along with John Wayles’ considerable debts. They worked in the house and in the farm shops, not in the fields. They always had their last name of Hemings. Most enslaved people at that time were not credited with last names. They also had outside jobs at times, for which they were paid, and sold produce to the Jeffersons. Sally did not work away from Monticello, but took care of Jefferson’s personal quarters. These facts do not negate that they were enslaved, but they were treated as somehow special.

One must remember that Sally and her siblings were three-fourths white, which did also make a difference in those days, in many ways. It still does at times. It also meant that Sally’s children were only one-eighth African ancestry, so it’s no wonder they were very light-skinned and strongly resembled Thomas Jefferson. Many people are one-eighth African ancestry and have no idea they are. DNA tests have revealed that, too.

After reading Fawn Brodie’s book, I read Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, by Annette Gordon-Reed, who had become a leading Jefferson scholar after reading Brodie’s book as a young teenager. Then I read The Hemingses of Monticello, also by Gordon-Reed. I also read Jefferson’s Daughters, by Catherine Kerrison, which included Sally’s daughter, Harriet. All of these books are well-written and present different ideas about the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, with what little documentation there is. The final documentation is, of course, the DNA tests of their descendants. It has taken a long time for the white Jefferson descendants to accept the truth—that he was a man of his time and culture, and he was also a whole person, who had a thirty-eight year relationship with Sally Hemings. He could not have married her, in that time and those places; he could not openly admit to the relationship, aside from the fact that would have ruined him as a leader and politician, and he could not free her, or she would have been required to leave the state of Virginia, according to their laws. He was a birth father who got to watch his children grow up, who saw that they were trained in honorable trades, and arranged for them to be free. Sally Hemings got to raise her children and see them receive their freedom, a wonderful dream come true for her in her time. No one got everything they might have dreamed about, but they did the best they could under their circumstances.

Even in our lifetime, many parents have had to make choices that were not easy, and for many birth parents, those decisions (not always choices, actually) have not been easy, but they have done the best they could under their circumstances. I recommend these books!