The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (104 page)

36.
TJ,
Notes on the State of Virginia
, in
Writings
(New York, 1984), 288.

37.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 2:135.

38.
Abigail Adams to TJ, July 6, 1787,
Papers
, 11:551; Abigail Adams to TJ, July 10, 1787, and John Adams to TJ, July 10, 1787, ibid., 574. Adams sent this letter to TJ with an enclosure detailing the items bought for Polly Jefferson and SH. The items "For the Maid Servant [SH]" were as follows:
      12 yards. calico for 2 short Gowns & Coats
      4 yd. half Irish linen for Aprons
      3. pr Stockings
      2 yd linning
      1 Shawl handkerchief

39.
Harriet Jacobs,
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
, ed. Nell Irvin Painter (New York, 2000), 182, 184.

40.
Abigail Adams to TJ, July 6, 1787,
Papers
, 11:551

41.
Abigail Adams to TJ, July 2, 1787,
Papers
, 11:551, referring to Polly’s complaint that, after not having come for her himself, TJ had sent "a man she [could not] understand" to get her.

1.
TJ to Abigail Adams, July 16, 1787,
Papers
, 11:592.

2.
MB
, 681.

3.
See, e.g., ibid., 649, entry for Jan. 2, 1787; 655, entry for Feb. 28, 1787; 675, entry for July 12, 1787. There are numerous other references throughout the
MB
to money given the Hemingses.

4.
TJ to Abigail Adams, July 16, 1787,
Papers
, 11:592; TJ to Mary Jefferson Bolling, July 23, 1787, ibid., 612; TJ to Elizabeth Wayles Eppes, July 28, 1787, ibid., 634.

5.
TJ to Elizabeth Wayles Eppes, July 28, 1787,
Papers
, 11:634. TJ and Polly did not have much time alone together. She arrived at her father’s house on July 15. Her sister came and stayed with her for a week, and then they both went back to school. Jefferson told his sister-in-law that Polly was "established in the convent, perfectly happy." Although both Jefferson girls enjoyed their time in France, it seems doubtful, given all that she had been through and Adams’s description of her state of mind while in London, that Polly was not still in a period of adjustment after just two weeks in France.

6.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 109; "Brief Biography of Sally Hemings," Monticello.org. The
MB
lists SH among the household servants at the Hôtel de Langeac. See, e.g.,
MB
, 690, entry for Jan. 1, 1788; 718, entry for Nov. 3, 1788; 725, entry for Feb. 2, 1789. Perhaps because he believed he was at the end of his time in Paris, TJ stopped listing the names of each servant and the amount he or she was paid. He simply recorded the lump sum that he gave Petit to pay their salaries. The lump sum remained the same for the rest of his time in Paris, indicating that JH and SH continued to receive the same wages. See, generally,
MB
from March through Sept. 1789.

7.
TJ to Joel Yancey, Jan. 17, 1819,
Farm Book
, 43.

8.
Sue Peabody, "
There Are No Slaves,
" 15–16. The case, which the judges decided on the basis of customary law that favored freedom, sparked officials to call for the first regulations of slavery in mainland France.

9.
Francis Eppes to TJ, Aug. 31, 1786,
Papers
, 15:631; Martha Jefferson Carr, Jan. 2, 1787, ibid., 633.

10.
MB
, 408, entry for Sept. 27, 1775; 409, entry for Nov. 6, 1775 (TJ pays for lodging and nursing Robert Hemings during inoculation); 471, entry for Sept. 28, 1778.

11.
Michel Antoine,
Louis XV
(Paris, 1989), 991; Voltaire, "De la mort de Louis XV et de la fatalité (1774),"
Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire
, vol. 29,
Mélanges VIII (1773–1776)
, new ed. (Paris, 1879), 301, 299. "Que conclure de ce tableau, si vrai et si funeste? [What to conclude from this scene, so true and so disastrous?] Rois et princes nécessaires aux peuples, subissez l’inoculation si vous aimez la vie; encouragez-la chez vos sujets si vous voulez qu’ils vivent." After the death of Louis, "le seul roi de France qui soit mort de cette funeste maladie nommée
variole,
ou
petite vérole
," After all this, it was time for France to realize that all over the world, other societies had embraced inoculation as a way of protecting their people.

12.
Eugenia W. Herbert, "Smallpox Inoculation in Africa,"
Journal of African History
6 (1975): 539–59.

13.
Elizabeth A. Fenn,
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82
(New York, 2001).

14.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:99–100;
MB
, 388 n. 56, 524 n. 42.

15.
Genevieve Miller,
The Adoption of Inoculation for Smallpox in England and France
(Philadelphia, 1957), 23. TJ to Benjamin Rush, Jan. 16, 1811,
The Works of Thomas Jefferson
, ed. Paul Leicester Ford, 12 vols. (New York, 1904–05), 9:296. In 1806, ten years after Edward Jenner developed vaccination as an alternative to inoculation, by using the cowpox virus "vaccinia" instead of the live smallpox virus, TJ wrote excitedly to him, hailing his discovery and counting it, too, as a major advancement in human progress. TJ to G. C. Edward Jenner, May 14, 1806, LOC, 27806. He became a vaccinator himself, personally vaccinating slaves at Monticello.
     
In August of 1801, Jefferson had vaccinated (calling it inoculation) six enslaved people, including Joseph Fossett and Burwell Colbert. Fossett, then twenty-one, and Colbert, eighteen, became the source of protection for others at Monticello. After their eruptions appeared, Dr. William Wardlaw took the virus from them and vaccinated, among others, Jefferson’s grandchildren, Ellen and Cornelia, and other members of the enslaved community, including Critta Hemings and Wormley Hughes.
     
Jefferson kept up the program of vaccinations as cowpox virus became available when the disease broke out in the area. Age did not matter. Cornelia Randoph was approaching three when she was vaccinated. Beverley Hemings was four and his sister Harriet just a year old when Jefferson vaccinated them in 1802. There were two more rounds of vaccinations on the mountain. Jefferson vaccinated Beverley’s and Harriet’s younger siblings, Madison and Eston, in 1816. The final round was conducted five months before Jefferson died in 1826. There is great poignancy in this. According to the oral history of Eston Hemings’s family, he died of smallpox. What his father probably did not know when he vaccinated Eston is that, unlike inoculation, vaccination does not guarantee lifelong immunity to smallpox. In a small percentage of people it may not provide immunity at all, and the protection tends to wear off in everyone over time, so that booster shots are needed to maintain it. See "List of Inoculations,"
Papers
, 35:34–35 (forthcoming). TJ’s list of "Vaccinations," unpublished. I thank Barbara Oberg, the editor of
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
, for making these lists available to me.

16.
Kenneth Kiple, ed.,
The Cambridge World History of Human Disease
(Cambridge, 1993), 1011.

17.
Ibid. Mary J. Dobson,
Contours of Death and Disease in Early Modern England
(Cambridge, 1997), 270–71. See Charles Leach, "Hospital Rock,"
Hog River Journal
, Winter 2004, on the "Suttonian Method" in the American colonies. The Suttons’ influence also extended into Canada. They had trained "James Latham, a British Military surgeon," who "variolated 303 people, including prominent members of English and French families in Quebec City and, later, in Montreal, without fatality." John W. R. McIntyre and Stuart Houston, "Smallpox and Its Control in Canada,"
Canadian Medial Association Journal
161 (1999): 1543–47.

18.
Virginia Gazette
, Sept. 8, 1768, while discussing the events leading up to anti-inoculation riots in Norfolk that sparked a legal case that would involve TJ, referred to "the apparent success of Sutton," as if there were no need to explain to its readers who Sutton was and what he had done.

19.
Guenter Risse, "Medicine in the Age of Enlightenment," in
Medicine in Society: Historical Essays
, ed. Andrew Wear (Cambridge, 1992); Steve Lehrer,
Explorers of the Body
(Garden City, N.Y., 1979), chap. 8.

20.
Voltaire,
Lettres philosophiques
("Lettre XI. Sur l’insertion de la petite vérole),
Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire
, vol. 22,
Mélanges I
, new ed. (Paris, 1879), 445, chiding the French for their failure to adopt inoculation "est-ce que les Français n’aiment point la vie? est-ce que leurs femmes ne se soucient point de leur beauté?"

21.
David Van Zwanenberg, "The Suttons and the Business of Inoculation,"
Medical History

22.
22 (1978): 71–82. See also Hervé Bazin,
The Eradication of Smallpox: Edward Jenner and the First and Only Eradication of an Infectious Disease
(London, 2000), 17, saying that the Suttons’ "philanthropy" was not extensive. See, generally, Van Zwanenberg, "Suttons";
MB
, 685; J. M. Peebles,
Vaccination a Curse and a Menace to Personal Liberty, with Statistics Showing Its Danger and Criminality
(Los Angeles, 1913). There is merit to the view that the Suttons’ creative marketing ability and business sense were as much the reason for their fame as their true skill or creativity as innovators. They were good at recognizing what was best about various procedures surrounding inoculation, adopting them, and then aggressively promoting their newly refined method. This takes nothing from their achievements, but it is an old and familiar story; very often it is not the originator of an idea but the one who comes in and refines it and is willing to do what it takes to promote knowledge of the refined product who profits most. See, e.g., Miller,
Adoption of Inoculation
, 61 n. 53, debunking the claim that the Suttons were the first to use a lancet in inoculation. 22.
MB
, 685, entry for Nov. 7, 1787.

23.
Peebles,
Vaccination a Curse
, 16.

24.
Van Zwanenberg, "Suttons," 81–82 n. 17.

25.
R. Hingston Fox,
Dr. John Fothergill and His Friends: Chapters in Eighteenth Century Life
(London, 1919), 81.

26.
Van Zwanenberg, "Suttons," 76 n. 17, 77.

27.
Antoine,
Louis XV
, 991. But see Dorothy Porter and Ray Porter,
Patient’s Progress: Doctors and Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England
(Palo Alto, Calif., 1969), 128–29, describing Robert Sutton alone as King Louis’s doctor.

28.
MB
, 409, 471.

29.
Bazin,
Eradication of Small Pox
, 18 n. 18; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 110; Miller,
Adoption of Inoculation
, 230.

30.
Daniel Sutton,
The Inoculator; or, Sutton on the System of Inoculation Fully Set Forth in Plain & Familiar Language
(London, 1796).

31.
Fenn,
Pox Americana
, 36.

32.
Bazin,
Eradication of Small Pox
, 17.

33.
Papers
, 6:viii.

34.
Frank L. Dewey,
Thomas Jefferson: Lawyer
(Charlottesville, 1986), 19, 56. TJ had firsthand knowledge of the community stake in the process of inoculation. In 1768 he was involved in the criminal case arising out of the riot that had taken place in Norfolk, Va., when a doctor attempted to keep an inoculated person in a residence instead of the "pest houses" that were specifically set up to shelter people with dangerous diseases. The rioters burned their neighbor’s house to the ground. Jefferson was hired to prosecute the rioters and to defend those who had created the "nuisance" by performing the inoculation in an ordinary neighborhood setting. He won the case. Nine years later, while in the House of Burgesses, he served or a legislative committee that created and helped pass a law "allowing inoculation anywhere if a majority of the neighbors within two miles consented, and if the proper quarantine were maintained." Dewey devotes an entire chapter to TJ’s work on the case, citing it as an example where his position as a public figure merged with his private interest in science and progress.