The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (116 page)

BOOK: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
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16.
Ibid.

17.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 133.

18.
Ibid.; Pierson,
Jefferson at Monticello
, 109.

19.
Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson,"
WMQ
, 3d ser., 8 (1951): 579; Robert L. Self and Susan R. Stein, "The Collaboration of Thomas Jefferson and John Hemings: Furniture Attributed to the Monticello Joinery,"
Winterthur Portfolio
33, no. 4 ("Race and Ethnicity in American Material Life") (1998): 231–48.

20.
TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, May 19, 1793,
Papers
, 26:65; directions for Watson, ca. Oct. 22–25, 1793, ibid., 27:267.

21.
McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello
, 86–87, 311; TJ to Thomas Munro, March 14, 1815,
Farm Book
, 460.

22.
James Oldham to TJ, Nov. 26, 1804, MHi.

23.
Ibid.

24.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 116.

25.
Ibid.

26.
James Oldham to TJ, July 16 and 23, 1805; TJ to Oldham July 20, 1805, MHi.

27.
TJ to James Oldham, July 20, 1805, MHi.

28.
Thomas Mann Randolph to TJ, May 30, 1803, ViU.

29.
TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, June 8, 1803, LOC, 22821.

30.
James Oldham to TJ, July 30, 1805, MHi.

31.
MB
, 1315.

32.
See Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 544 n. 57. Brodie’s biography contains the greatest number of reproductions of the satirical verse about SH and TJ, in chaps. 25 and 26. See also "John Quincy Adams, Apostate,"
Journal of the Early American Republic
11, no. 2 (1991): 165.

33.
Abigail Adams to TJ, Oct. 25, 1804,
Letters of Mrs. Adams,
2:257; TJ to Benjamin Rush, Jan. 16, 1811, LOC, 34176.

35.
Jack Shepherd,
Cannibals of the Heart: A Personal Biography of Louisa Catherine and John Quincy Adams
(New York, 1980), 114, 115.

36.
Louisa Catherine Adams to John Quincy Adams, June 11, 1807, Adams Family Papers, MHi. I thank Mary T. Claffey of
The Adams Papers
for helping me find this quote after I had lost the reference.

37.
Writings of John Quincy Adams
, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford, 7 vols. (New York, 1913–17), 3:289. I thank Professor Lynn Parsons of the State University of New York (Brockport) for calling this passage to my attention. See also Linda K. Kerber and Walter John Morris, "Politics and Literature: The Adams Family and the
Port Folio
,"
WMQ
, 3d ser., 23 (1966): 450–67.

28: "Measurably Happy": The Children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

1.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 247.

2.
Ibid., 248.

3.
I thank Beverly Gray, researcher for the Getting Word Project, of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, genealogist and expert on African American families in Ohio, for this information and insight.

4.
Stanton, "Monticello to Main Street," 100.

5.
TJ to Maria Jefferson Eppes, March 3, 1804, LOC, 23989.

6.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 195–96, 247.

7.
Ibid., 247; "Room in Which Martha Jefferson Died,"
Thomas Jefferson Wiki,
http://www.wiki.monticello.org.; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Ann Payne Cutts, Sept.

8.
8, 1804, noting, "Patsy and Nelly wrote to you last week. P. goes with us tomorrow on a visit to Montecello for a week," Dolley Madison Digital Edition, http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu. See also TJ to James Madison, Sept. 6, 1804, and James Madison to TJ, Sept. 8, 1804, Smith,
Republic of Letters
, 2:1344. 8. Malone,
Jefferson
, vol. 5, Appendix 1: "Descendants of Thomas Jefferson."

9.
The literature on Jefferson and the embargo is considerable and generally negative, though there are signs that a reconsideration is under way. The most conventional treatment of the subject can be found ibid., Malone, vol. 5, chap. 25, "The Lesser Evil: The Embargo," 469–90. For the more typically negative view, see Doron S. Ben-Atar,
The Origins of Jeffersonian Commercial Policy and Diplomacy
(New York, 1993).

10.
TJ to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1825, LOC, 38465.

11.
TJ to John Page, June 25, 1804, LOC, 24511.

12.
Boston Repertory
, May 31, 1805.

13.
The will of George Wythe, LOC, 27971. See also Julian Boyd, "The Murder of George Wythe,"
WMQ
, 3d ser., 12 (1955): 513.

14.
Lydia Broadnax to TJ, April 9, 1807,
Papers
(unpublished); TJ to George Jefferson, April 18, 1807, ibid. I thank Linda Monaco at the Papers of Thomas Jefferson for providing me with copies and transcriptions of these letters.
MB
, 1201.

15.
TJ to William Duval, June 22, 1806, LOC, 27941; July 17, 1806, LOC, 28061; William Duval to TJ, Dec. 10, 1806, LOC, 28553; George Wythe’s will, LOC, 27971–72.

16.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 199; Ellen Randolph Coolidge to Nicholas Trist, March 28, 1823, Family Letters Project.

17.
TJ to James Madison, June 22, 1817, Smith,
Republic of Letters
, 3:1786; Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 199–200; Thomas Eston Randolph to Nicholas Trist, June 30, 1826, Family Letters Project.

18.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 247.

19.
Ibid.

20.
Ibid.

21.
See, e.g., TJ to Joel Yancey, Sept. 16, 1816, and Oct. 14, 1820, MHi; codicil to TJ’s will, MSS 5145, Special Collections, ViU. See also photograph in the second insert.

22.
Pierson,
Jefferson at Monticello,
110;
Farm Book
, 130.

23.
TJ to Francis C. Gray, March 4, 1815, LOC, 36173.

24.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 248; Pierson,
Jefferson at Monticello
, 110.

25.
Susan Kern, "The Material World of the Jeffersons at Shadwell,"
WMQ
, 3d ser., 62, no. 2 (2005), at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/wm/62.2/kern.html, 24.

26.
Farm Book
, 128; TJ to Joel Yancey, Sept. 13, 1816, MHi.

27.
Rhys Isaac, "Monticello Stories," in
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson
, 123–24.

28.
TJ to Francis C. Gray, March 4, 1815, LOC, 36173.

29.
Francis Gray to TJ, March 24, LOC, 36208. In this letter Gray explained to TJ that he asked the question because he was trying to interpret the Massachusetts law on the question of the definition of a "mulatto." He answered TJ’s algebra with equations of his own.

30.
Peter S. Onuf,
The Mind of Thomas Jefferson
(Charlottesville, 2006), 226–31.

31.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 247.

32.
Ibid., 151–52.

33.
Charles Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 572; Pierson,
Jefferson at Monticello
, 127; from Martha Jefferson Randolph and Thomas Mann Randolph to TJ, Jan. 31, 1801,
Papers
, 32:527; Memoirs of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, 4, Special Collections, ViU.

34.
The Autobiography of T. Jefferson Coolidge, 1831–1920
(Whitefish, Mont., 2007), Mary J. Randolph to Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge postscript by Nicholas P. Trist, Nov. 26, 1826.

35.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 14–16; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 101.

36.
Pierson,
Jefferson at Monticello
, 110; Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 568.

37.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 255.

29: Retirement for One, Not for All

1.
Pierson,
Jefferson at Monticello
, 125.

2.
Ibid.

3.
See Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 131, describing comments about Fossett’s cooking.

4.
Anne Cary Randolph, 1805–1808, Part A: Household Accounts, LOC.

5.
New York
World
, Jan. 30, 1898.

6.
TJ to John Adams, Jan. 21, 1812, LOC, 34560.

7.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 121.

8.
Martha Randolph to Ellen Randolph Coolidge, Nov. 16, 1825, Family Letters Project; TJ to Ellen R. Coolidge, Nov. 14, 1825,
The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson
, ed. Edwin M. Betts and James A. Bear Jr. (1966; reprint, Columbia, Mo., 1986), 461.

9.
MB
, 1265 n. 84, 1352.

10.
Cornelia Jefferson Randolph to Virginia Jefferson Randolph, Oct. 25, 1816, [Aug.?] 28, 1819, Family Letters Project; Pierson,
Jefferson at Monticello
, 109. Bacon confuses "Priscilla" Hemings’s name with Ursula, another enslaved woman at Monticello.

11.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 245.

12.
Ellen Wayles Randolph Harrison, quoted in Bear,
The Hemings Family of Monticello
, 17.

13.
John Hemmings to TJ, Nov. 29, 1821, MHi.

14.
The First Forty Years of Washington Society, Portrayed by the Family Letters of Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith (Margaret Bayard)
, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York, 1906), 71; McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello
, 20; Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 573; Pierson,
Jefferson at Monticello
, 86–87.

15.
For discussion of the architecture of Jefferson’s living quarters, see William L. Beiswanger, "Thomas Jefferson and Art of Living Out of Doors,"
Magazine Antiques
157 (2000): 595–605; McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello,
323–25.

16.
McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello
, 323–24.

17.
For a general look at the lives of the enslaved people at Monticello, see Barbara J. Heath,
Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest
(Charlottesville, 1999).

18.
Ellen Wayles Randolph to Martha Jefferson, Aug. 18, 1817, Aug. 24, 1819, Family Letters Project.

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