page_title: John Hemings
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: John Hemings / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: View of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello from the front. Taken by James Maxwell.
context_page_description: John Hemmings was born into slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as a member of the large mixed-race Hemings family. He trained in the Monticello Joinery and became a highly skilled carpenter and woodworker, making furniture and crafting the fine woodwork of the interiors at Monticello and Poplar Forest.
  Hemmings also served as the master joiner to apprentices Beverley, Madison and Eston Hemings, Jefferson's sons by Sally Hemings.
  After decades of service, John Hemmings was freed in 1826 by Jefferson's will and given the tools to the joinery. He remained at Monticello until about 1831 and died in 1833.
context_section_description: In the Monticello Joinery, Thomas Jefferson hired white joiners to train and work side by side with enslaved joiners. John Hemmings received his first instructions at 17 years of age in 1793, when Thomas Jefferson wrote to his son-in-law Tom Randolph and asked Randolph to make sure Hemmings received training from the house joiner David Watson to fashion wheels and work with wood. The Monticello Joinery was well-stocked, as Jefferson was intensely engaged in refashioning his properties, and always had projects to complete. Hemmings therefore had the benefit of both materials and experience. Hemmings later worked as principal assistant to James Dinsmore, another Monticello joiner.
  At the Monticello Joinery, Hemmings contributed to both the improvements Jefferson made to Monticello and the construction of Poplar Forest.
  At Monticello, Jefferson asked Hemings and Dinsmore to build 'porticles,' or small enclosures, at the south side of the building with louvered blinds that enclosed his living quarters and blocked outside views into his bedroom and study.  Hemmings fashioned one of the porticles into an aviary, likely for Jefferson's mockingbirds. Hemmings independently completed the Chinese railing, Venetian blinds, cellar sashes, bedchamber closet, and window shutters at Monticello.
  Jefferson began construction of his octagonal house Poplar Forest in 1806 and finished around 1809. At Poplar Forest, Hemmings created the classical trim on the interior and completed work on the roof, including the decorative railing. He also installed a large central skylight and repaired it after a storm in 1819, installed plaster ornaments made by sculptor William Coffee, and made repairs to the house after a roof leak in 1819 and a fire in 1825. Hemmings took Jefferson's sons Beverley, Madison, and Eston Hemings to Poplar Forest to teach them the basics of carpentry and joining.
  In 1809, Hemmings assumed responsibility for the Monticello joinery. At this time, most of the exterior of Monticello was finished, but the interior was not yet complete, and most of the furniture was decades old. The joinery changed focus and began creating furniture, both for Monticello and for Jefferson's second home at Poplar Forest. The Monticello Joinery was responsible for desks, chairs, and tables, often created from Jefferson's own designs. Hemmings likely made much of the furniture and other woodwork created in the Monticello joinery after 1809, but only eight works are positively attributed to him through records: a "Campeachy" (campeche) chair, boxes made to hold books Jefferson sold to Congress, a desk for Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge, a bedstead, a chess table, Pembroke tables, a hanging cabinet, and a dressing table. The boxes were destroyed, the desk was lost in a shipwreck, the Pembroke tables likely were destroyed in a fire at Poplar Forest, and the bedstead and dressing table remain unlocated. The hanging cabinet, made of walnut and poplar and meant to house the doll clothes of Jefferson' granddaughter Septimia Anne Randolph, was bequeathed to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1957.
  The mahogany Campeachy chair that Hemmings fashioned for Jefferson between 1809 and 1819 was sold to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1970. Hemmings created this chair for Jefferson after Jefferson, wanting a chair in this style made popular in New Orleans and unable to procure one, described the chair's design to Hemmings. Jefferson finally received a chair in 1818, after Hemmings had made his own version, but Hemmings quickly created at least two more chairs later with the actual chair as a model. At least one attributed to Hemmings still exists.
  Hemmings considered the writing desk he made for Ellen Randolph Coolidge as his masterpiece, and both he and Jefferson were devastated to learn that it had been lost in a shipwreck on its way to her. Among the other Hemmings projects lost to time is a four-person landau carriage that Hemmings fashioned in 1814 for an aging Thomas Jefferson, who became tired of making his thrice-yearl
caption: Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. The green 'porticle' Hemmings crafted is visible on the right-hand side of the house.
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