James Hemings
| James Hemings | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1765 Guiney, Cumberland County, Virginia |
| Died | 1801 (aged 36) Baltimore, Maryland |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Chef de cuisine, cook |
| Parent(s) | Betty Hemings, John Wayles |
| Relatives | Sally Hemings, John Hemings, Mary Hemings, Madison Hemings, Eston Hemings, Frederick Madison Roberts, John Wayles Jefferson |
James Hemings (1765–1801) was an American mixed-race slave owned and freed by Thomas Jefferson. He was an older brother of Sally Hemings and a half-sibling of Jefferson's wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson because their father was John Wayles. As a young man, Hemings was selected by Jefferson to accompany him to Paris when the latter was appointed Minister to France. There Hemings was trained to be a French chef; independently, he took lessons to learn to speak the French language.
He returned to the United States with Jefferson, likely because of kinship ties with his large Hemings family. Jefferson continued to pay Hemings wages as his chef when he worked for the president in Philadelphia. Hemings negotiated with Jefferson for his freedom, which he gained in 1796, after training his brother Peter for three years to replace him as chef. Said to suffer from alcoholism, Hemings committed suicide at age 36.
James Hemings was born into slavery to Betty Hemings, who was the mixed-race daughter of Susannah, an enslaved African mother, and John Hemings, an English sea captain father. James was the second of her six children by her master John Wayles, who took Betty as a concubine after he was widowed for the third time. They had a relationship for 12 years, until his death, and he had a "shadow family" of six children with her. They were three-quarters European by ancestry. Betty had four older children by another man. Wayles died in 1773, leaving Betty and her 10 children to his daughter Martha Jefferson, half-sister to his children by Betty. Martha was then married to Thomas Jefferson, who also inherited them by marriage.
In 1784 Thomas Jefferson took James Hemings with him when he went to Paris as Minister of France, as he wanted the young man, then 19, trained as a chef. While they were in France, Jefferson paid Hemings a wage of four dollars per month. Hemings studied cooking and apprenticed to pastry chefs and other specialists. He paid personally to learn the language from a French tutor. He earned the role of chef de cuisine in Jefferson's kitchen on the Champs-Elysées. He served his creations to the European aristocrats, writers and scientists whom Jefferson invited to dinner.
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