Harriet Hemings
| Harriet Hemings | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 1801 Monticello, Albemarle County, Virginia |
| Died | Unknown Unknown |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Hattie |
| Occupation | Textile Worker |
| Known for | Being Thomas Jefferson's daughter |
| Home town | Monticello |
| Parent(s) | Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson |
| Relatives | Beverly Hemings, Madison Hemings, Eston Hemings, James Hemings, Frederick Madison Roberts, Mary Hemings, John Hemings, Betty Hemings, John Wayles Jefferson, Walter Beverly Pearson |
Harriet Hemings (May 1801 – 1870) was born into slavery at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, in the first year of his presidency. Most historians believe her father is Jefferson, who is believed by many historians to have constantly and frequently raped his mixed-race slave Sally Hemings, half-sister to his late wife. Harriet is one of Sally Hemings' four children who survived to adulthood.
While Jefferson did not legally free Harriet, in 1822 when she was 21, he aided her "escape". He saw that she was put in a stage coach and given $50 for her journey. Her brother Madison Hemings later said she had gone to Washington, DC, to join their older brother Beverley Hemings, who had similarly left Monticello earlier that year. Both entered into white society and married white partners of good circumstances. Seven-eighths European in ancestry, all the Hemings children were legally Black under "the one drop rule". Although some of them were very fair in appearance, the Hemings followed the status of their enslaved mother. Jefferson freed the two youngest brothers in his will of 1826, so they were legally free.
Beverly and Harriet stayed in touch with their brother Madison Hemings for some time, and then Harriet stopped writing. According to his 1873 account, both siblings had children.
In 1773 Jefferson and his wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson had inherited Sally Hemings, her mother Betty Hemings and ten siblings from the estate of her father John Wayles, along with more than 100 other slaves. The widower Wayles had had a 12-year relationship with Betty Hemings and six mixed-race children with her. They were three-quarters European and Sally was the youngest. They were half siblings to Jefferson's wife. As the historians Philip D. Morgan and Joshua D. Rothman have written, there were numerous interracial relationships in the Wayles-Hemings-Jefferson families, Albemarle County and Virginia, often with multiple generations repeating the pattern.
Harriet is believed to be the daughter of Sally Hemings and the widower Thomas Jefferson. It is widely believed that Jefferson and Hemings had a 38-year secret relationship beginning in Paris several years after the early death of his wife. Hemings was said to have a child born in 1790 after she returned from Paris, but it died as an infant. Hemings' first daughter who was recorded, was born in 1795. She was named Harriet but she died in infancy. This name was prominent among women in Jefferson's family. It was customary to name the next child of the same sex after one who had died. Harriet's surviving siblings were her older brother William Beverley, called Beverley; and younger brothers James Madison and Thomas Eston Hemings. Like the other Hemings children, Harriet had light duties as a child, which she spent mostly with her mother. At the age of 14, she was started in training to learn weaving and later worked at the cotton factory on the plantation.
...
Wikipedia