In June 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter from Paris asking his daughters to join him in France. When they arrived, they were accompanied by a teenage girl who was enslaved and named Sally Hemings. Over the next two decades, she gave birth to six children widely believed to be Jefferson’s, and she became the central figure in one of the most contentious debates in American history. Historians do not know exactly when Sally Hemings was born.
Records from the eighteenth century often noted the births and baptisms of free people, but for enslaved people such documentation was far less reliable. Still, her birth is generally estimated to have occurred around 1773 in Charles City County in the English colony of Virginia. At that time, Thomas Jefferson was thirty years old, and the Boston Tea Party, a pivotal event leading to the American Revolution, took place in December of that year. Sally grew up against this backdrop of war, but her formative years were spent in the quieter rhythms of Virginia plantation life.
Sally’s mother was Elizabeth Hemings, an enslaved woman owned by John Wayles, a Virginia planter. Elizabeth was believed to have been born to a West African mother and an English father. Elizabeth had six children with Wayles, and Sally was one of them. This meant Sally, through her mother and grandmother, had West African ancestry, while three of her four grandparents were of European descent.
Under the racial classifications of the time, she was considered a “quadroon,” and contemporary accounts frequently described her as very light-skinned and attractive. Sally never knew her father. John Wayles died in May 1773, likely before she was born. He left behind significant debts, and much of his property was sold to settle them.
As part of the estate settlement, his son-in-law inherited Elizabeth Hemings and her six children by Wayles. That son-in-law was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had begun courting Wayles’s daughter Martha in 1770, and the couple married in 1772. At the time, Jefferson was a young Virginia lawyer and planter, not yet the national figure he would become through the Revolution.
But this family connection marked the beginning of a relationship that would become one of the most controversial stories in American history. When Sally and her family came under Jefferson’s ownership, he had recently built his famous mansion, Monticello, in Albemarle County, Virginia. Sally largely grew up there. Jefferson and his wife Martha were very close, sharing interests in music, literature, and horseback riding.
They had six children, but most died in infancy, with only two daughters, Martha and Mary (known as Polly), surviving to adulthood. Little is known about Sally’s early life, but it is clear that she and her siblings occupied the upper tier of the enslaved community at Monticello because they were Martha Wayles’s half-siblings. They worked in the main house, and Sally developed close ties with Martha and Polly as they grew up together due to their similar ages. The routine of plantation life was soon disrupted by larger events.
The American Revolutionary War began in 1775, and a year later Jefferson emerged as a leading figure in the national cause when he drafted the Declaration of Independence for the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In 1779 he was elected governor of Virginia, leading the state through the darkest years of the Revolution. By the early 1780s, Jefferson’s wife Martha was weakened by repeated pregnancies and a bout of smallpox. Jefferson was reported to be deeply distressed by her declining health.
She died on September 6, 1782, at the age of thirty-three. Before her death, she asked Jefferson not to remarry, likely influenced by her own painful experiences with stepmothers and her desire to protect her daughters. Jefferson honored her request for the rest of his life and never remarried, at least not officially. In 1784, after the Revolutionary War ended, Jefferson was appointed U.
S. minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin. Three years later, he arranged for his daughters to join him in Paris. In the summer of 1787, they arrived accompanied by Sally Hemings and her older brother James.
Although slavery was not recognized in France, and Sally could have claimed her freedom under French law, she remained in Jefferson’s household and worked as a maid for his daughter Martha. During her time in Paris, she likely accompanied Martha to formal social events and began learning French. Scholars are unsure exactly where she resided, whether at Jefferson’s residence, the Hôtel de Langeac, or the convent at Penthemont where Martha and Polly were educated. It is generally believed that the relationship between Jefferson and Sally began during their years in Paris, amid the uncertain atmosphere that preceded the French Revolution.
Sally was about fifteen years old then, while Jefferson was in his mid-forties. The nature of their relationship remains debated, but the power imbalance was clear: Jefferson was a wealthy, middle-aged diplomat, while Sally was a teenage girl enslaved in his household. She had little say in the relationship and could not meaningfully consent. Some historians argue that genuine affection may have developed over the years, but the true nature of their feelings cannot be known.
Whatever the case, the relationship continued until the French Revolution broke out in 1789. By then, Sally was about sixteen and stood at a crossroads as Jefferson prepared to leave France. One path led to freedom in Europe, the other back across the Atlantic to a life of enslavement. France was very far from home, however, and her mother, siblings, and extended family were all at Monticello.
According to the memoirs of her son Madison Hemings, Sally only agreed to return after Jefferson promised that any children they had would eventually be freed. It was a decision that would shape her life and those of generations to come. The relationship between Sally and Thomas has been disputed for two centuries. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most historians dismissed or doubted the idea that Jefferson fathered children by an enslaved woman.
While having children with enslaved women was not uncommon among white slaveholders in the South, it was unusual that Jefferson managed his relationship with Sally so openly and for so many years. After they returned to the United States, Sally is believed to have had six children with Jefferson. Their first daughter, Harriet, was born in 1795 and died two years later. A second daughter, possibly named Thenia, died in infancy.
Of the four who survived childhood, three were sons: William Beverley, born in 1798; James Madison, born in 1805; and Eston, born in 1808. A fourth child, another daughter also named Harriet, was born in 1801. Three of Sally’s presumed children with Jefferson were born during his presidency from 1801 to 1809. The first public claims about the relationship emerged during that time.
Rumors had circulated since the 1790s, but in 1802, journalist James T. Callender, a former ally turned political opponent, alleged that Jefferson had taken one of his enslaved women as a concubine and fathered several children by her. The story spread quickly through the press and became a rallying point for Jefferson’s critics. Jefferson himself never publicly responded to the accusations.
In the 1850s, his eldest grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, denied the claims, asserting that Sally’s children were fathered by Jefferson’s nephew, Peter Carr. However, a substantial body of documentary evidence, along with DNA studies conducted on Sally’s descendants in 1998, now strongly indicates that Thomas Jefferson was the father of her children. One uncommon detail that supports this conclusion concerns Jefferson’s farm book, a ledger he kept to record business matters at his Virginia plantation. In it, he noted the births and deaths of the enslaved people on his property.
Critically, he recorded the fathers of children born to enslaved women, but this information was omitted from the entries concerning the children presumed to be his with Sally. Despite the evidence, acceptance of Jefferson’s paternity only became widespread in the second half of the twentieth century, as the civil rights movement in the United States intensified discussion of this aspect of presidential history. Still, a few critics continue to question the connection. They point out that DNA testing can identify the Jefferson male line but cannot distinguish between different Jefferson men themselves, leading some to suggest alternatives such as Jefferson’s younger brother Randolph.
Others have speculated that Sally Hemings may have had relationships with other men. Most historians, however, conclude that the combined documentary and genetic evidence strongly supports the view that Jefferson fathered Sally’s children, even if absolute certainty remains impossible. Sally’s story may not be entirely unique in presidential history. Some have speculated that four or five other presidents fathered children by enslaved women they owned.
William Henry Harrison, who served only one month as president before his death in 1841, may have had several children with an enslaved woman named Dilsie. However, none of these other cases can be confirmed. Jefferson’s relationship with Sally stood apart because it lasted for decades and produced six children. Life at Monticello for Sally in the 1790s was different from that of most enslaved people.
A 2017 study suggested she lived in a room adjacent to Thomas’s quarters. She never married and became, in effect, a substitute wife to Thomas, who likewise never remarried. The Hemings children lived in and around the main house and were treated with greater consideration than the majority of the enslaved population at Monticello, just as Sally and her siblings had been decades earlier. The relationship between Thomas and Sally was likely intermittent between 1797 and 1809, as Thomas served as vice president and then as the third president of the United States.
While he did not hide the relationship at Monticello, he observed certain limits: while he lived in Washington, she remained in Virginia, and there is no evidence she ever visited the White House during his presidency. After leaving office, Jefferson returned to Monticello to spend his remaining years surrounded by books, architecture, and science. As for Sally and her children, the future was less certain. Virginia law prohibited enslaved people from marrying as free people did, although many enslaved couples formed stable common-law unions.
This did not apply to Sally Hemings; the prevailing impression is that she was considered a concubine or a figurative wife to Jefferson for many years. Jefferson lived to the advanced age of 83 and died in 1826. At his death, Sally remained legally enslaved, although he manumitted some of her children in his will. Despite his political success and inherited wealth, Jefferson was a poor businessman and died deeply in debt.
His daughter Martha sold much of his property to pay his creditors. This meant most of the enslaved people at Monticello were sold at public auction, but Sally was not among them. Martha, who was also Sally’s half-niece, allowed her to live as a free woman afterward. Sally spent her final years in Charlottesville with two of her sons and their families.
She died there in 1835 at around the age of sixty-two. Two of Sally’s children died in infancy. Harriet was allowed to leave Monticello in 1822, and Jefferson gave her fifty dollars at her departure. Although she was still legally enslaved at the time, he did not attempt to bring her back.
It is unclear what became of her, as she wrote to her brothers occasionally for a few years but then largely disappeared from historical records. In 1812, when William Beverley Hemings was fourteen, he was trained by his uncle, the skilled carpenter John Hemings. Although Jefferson never formally freed him, Beverley was allowed to leave Monticello in his youth and build an independent life. Legally he remained enslaved, but in practice he gained his freedom without formal manumission.
He chose to identify as a white man in his youth, which highlights how light-skinned Sally and Thomas’s children were. Jefferson formally freed both Eston and Madison Hemings in his last will and testament. After their mother’s death in 1835, the two brothers moved with their families to Ohio, a free state experiencing significant settlement in the first half of the nineteenth century. Eston’s family later moved to Wisconsin in the early 1850s, where he died in 1856.
One of his sons, John, became a prominent officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. Madison and his family continued to live in Ohio until his death in 1873. That same year, he published an article in an Ohio newspaper claiming that he and his siblings were the illegitimate children of the third president of the United States. The 1998 DNA analysis provided strong evidence linking Sally Hemings’s descendants to the Jefferson family.
Her descendants live across different parts of the United States today. Sally’s story is not exceptional simply because it happened. Millions of Americans have some ancestor connected to the relationship between plantation owners and enslaved people. What makes her story distinctive is that it survived.
For generations, efforts were made to deny it, ignore it, or erase it. In the end, the truth proved harder to bury than those who lived it.