John Wayles Jefferson
| John Wayles Jefferson | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
May 8, 1835 Charlottesville, Virginia |
| Died | July 12, 1892 (aged 57) |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Soldier, hotelier, cotton broker, journalist |
| Parent(s) | Eston Hemings, Julia Ann Isaacs |
| Relatives | Betty Hemings, Sally Hemings, Beverly Hemings, Madison Hemings, Harriet Hemings, Frederick Madison Roberts, Martha Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, John Wayles |
John Wayles Jefferson, born John Wayles Hemings (May 8, 1835 – July 12, 1892), was a successful businessman before and after the American Civil War, in which he served in the Union Army and was promoted to the rank of colonel. Jefferson owned a successful hotel in Madison, Wisconsin, in the 1850s; after the Civil War he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he achieved wealth as a cotton broker. Jefferson is believed to be a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States; his paternal grandmother was Sarah (Sally) Hemings, the president's mixed-race slave and half-sister to his late wife.
Jefferson was the eldest son of Eston Hemings (1808–56), a former slave freed in Jefferson's will, who was seven-eighths European in ancestry and "white" under Virginia law, and Julia Ann (née Isaacs) Hemings (1814–1889), a free woman of color who was of three-quarters European descent. The Hemings moved from Charlottesville, Virginia to Chillicothe, Ohio in 1836. They moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1852, taking the surname Jefferson, and entered the white community, where they were well accepted.
John's father, Eston Hemings, was born a slave at Monticello in 1808, the youngest of Sally Hemings’ six mixed-race children. They are widely understood to have been the children of President Thomas Jefferson, Hemings' master. As they were seven-eighths European in ancestry, under Virginia law at the time they were legally white. But they were born into slavery under the slave law principle of partus sequitur ventrem, by which children of slave mothers took the status of the mother. Sally Hemings was three-quarters white and a half-sister of Jefferson's late wife, Martha Wayles Skelton.
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