num_pages: 798
description: This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the familys dispersal after Jeffersons death in 1826.In the mid-1700s the English captain of a trading ship that made runs between England and the Virginia colony fathered a child by an enslaved woman living near Williamsburg. The woman whose name is unknown and who is believed to have been born in Africa was owned by the Eppeses a prominent Virginia family. The captain whose surname was Hemings and the woman had a daughter. They named her Elizabeth.So begins The Hemingses of Monticello Annette Gordon-Reeds riveting history of the Hemings family whose story comes to vivid life in this brilliantly researched and deeply moving work. Gordon-Reed author of the highly acclaimed historiography Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy unearths startling new information about the Hemingses Jefferson and his white family. Although the book presents the most detailed and richly drawn portrait ever written of Sarah Hemings better known by her nickname Sally who bore seven children by Jefferson over the course of their thirty-eight-year liaison The Hemingses of Monticello tells more than the story of her life with Jefferson and their children. The Hemingses as a whole take their rightful place in the narrative of the familys extraordinary engagement with one of historys most important figures.Not only do we meet Elizabeth Hemingsthe family matriarch and mother to twelve children six by John Wayles a poor English immigrant who rose to great wealth in the Virginia colonybut we follow the Hemings family as they become the property of Jefferson through his marriage to Martha Wayles. The Hemings-Wayles children siblings to Martha played pivotal roles in the life at Jeffersons estate.We follow the Hemingses to Paris where James Hemings trained as a chef in one of the most prestigious kitchens in France and where Sally arrived as a fourteen-year-old chaperone for Jeffersons daughter Polly; to Philadelphia where James Hemings acted as the major domo to the newly appointed secretary of state; to Charlottesville where Mary Hemings lived with her partner a prosperous white merchant who left her and their children a home and property; to Richmond where Robert Hemings engineered a plan for his freedom; and finally to Monticello that iconic home on the mountain from where most of Jeffersons slaves many of them Hemings family members were sold at auction six months after his death in 1826.As The Hemingses of Monticello makes vividly clear Monticello can no longer be known only as the home of a remarkable American leader the author of the Declaration of Independence; nor can the story of the Hemingses whose close blood ties to our third president have been expunged from history until very recently be left out of the telling of Americas story. With its empathetic and insightful consideration of human beings acting in almost unimaginably difficult and complicated family circumstances The Hemingses of Monticello is history as great literature. It is a remarkable achievement.
language: English
title: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
publisher: W. W. Norton  Company