Read The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Online
Authors: Annette Gordon-Reed
4.
Morgan,
Slave Counterpoint
(Chapel Hill, 1998), 81. "As early as the second decade of the eighteenth century, Virginia’s slave population began to grow from natural increase, an unprecedented event for any New World slave population." Morgan also notes (p. 87), "Whereas women in eighteenth-century England began childbearing in their midtwenties slave women in eighteenth-century North America tended to be in their late teens when they conceived their first child."
5.
Wayles’s will, cited above, n. 1.
6.
Farm Book
, 24.
7.
See Thomas D. Morris,
Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860
(Chapel Hill, 1996), 230–37, on the subject of exclusion of testimony of blacks.
8.
Robert F. Bennett, then senator from Utah, commenting on the strength of candidate George W. Bush, listed the possible catastrophic things that could derail Bush’s nomination. "Unless George W. steps in front of a bus, some woman comes forward, let’s say some black woman, comes forward with an illegitimate child that he fathered within the last 18 months, or some other scenario that you could be equally creative in thinking of, George W. Bush will be the nominee." Bennett’s remarks caused a furor, and he apologized for them.
New York Times,
Aug. 17, 1999, sec. A, p. 12, col. 1.
9.
Stewart E. Stark, "Estoppel in Property Law,"
Nebraska Law Review
77 (1980): 756, 759–69.
10.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich,
A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812
(New York, 1991).
11.
Joshua D. Rothman,
Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861
(Chapel Hill, 2003), 4.
12.
Ibid., 4–5.
13.
David W. Blight,
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
(Cambridge, Mass., 2001).
14.
Charles F. Robinson II,
Dangerous Liaisons: Sex and Love in the Segregated South
(Fayetteville, Ark., 2003), 49–50.
15.
Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s recollections, ViU:1874.
16.
Journal of John Hartwell Cocke, Jan. 26, 1853, in John Hartwell Cocke Papers, Box 188, Alderman Library, University of Virginia.
17.
See, generally, Philip J. Schwarz,
Slave Laws in Virginia
(Athens, Ga., 1996).
18.
Boston Repertory
, May 31, 1805; Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 566–82, 567–68; Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 245.
1.
Purdie & Dixon’s
Virginia Gazette
, March 12, 1767.
2.
Papers
, 3:532; Martha Jefferson’s Account Book, Feb. 27, 1772 (Account Book with Record of Cases Tried in Virginia Courts, 1768–69), LOC.
3.
Jefferson’s Family Bible, LVa.
4.
Thomas Jefferson,
Autobiography, in Writings
(New York, 1984), 7–8; Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:430, 21, 21–33; Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 41–45.
5.
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, 14–18.
6.
Merrill Peterson,
Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation
(New York, 1970), 9.
7.
Douglas L. Wilson, ed.,
Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book
(Princeton, 1989).
8.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 43.
9.
Kern, "Material World of the Jeffersons," 14.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Ibid.
12.
Henry S. Randall,
The Life of Thomas Jefferson
, 3 vols. (1858; reprint, New York, 1972), 1:33.
13.
TJ to William Fleming, March 20, 1764, "11. o’clock at night,"
Papers
, 1:16.
14.
Susan Kern, "The Jeffersons at Shadwell: The Social and Material World of a Virginia Plantation" (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 2005), 1:87–92, discussing the implications of Jane Jefferson’s history of childbearing.
TJ never referred to Jupiter as "Evans." However, his son’s name was John Jupiter Philip Ammon Evans. See Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 22. In several listings, including his 1801 record of vaccinations of enslaved people and some of his grandchildren, TJ did refer to Philip Evans as "Phil Ev." Evans was thus the family name during slavery. See
Papers
, 35:34.
15.
Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 577; Martha Jefferson Carr to TJ, March 27, 1787,
Papers
, 15:655.
16.
Thomas Worthington’s diary, entry for Jan. 25, 1802, LOC.
17.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 247.
18.
Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 577.
19.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 34.
20.
TJ to Giovanni Fabbroni, June 8, 1778,
Papers
, 2:196; Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:90; Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 15, 51.
21.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:129, 120; the indenture between Richard Corbin, Robert Carter Nicholas, John Wayles, and Benjamin Waller and Philippa Lee, wife of William Lee, dated Nov. 5, 1770, in Lee Family Papers, VHS.
22.
MB
, 34, 35.
23.
Purdie & Dixon’s
Virginia Gazette
, Feb. 22, 1770.
24.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:157–58.
25.
See, e.g.,
Farm Book
, 77. Betty Brown was listed along with her children. Thomas Jefferson Randolph identified his uncle Samuel Carr as the father of Brown’s children. If he was telling the truth, these were most probably her two youngest, born in the late 1790s. See Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 254.
26.
Howell v. Netherland,
1770 Va. Lexis 1: Jeff. 90, p. 2. Samuel Howell ran away with his younger brother. Wade Netherland placed a notice in the
Virginia Gazette
(Aug. 8, 1770) of Howell’s escape. After describing Howell as a "sensible fellow and good sawyer," he mentioned that "Samuel lately brought a suit in the General Court for his freedom, which was determined against him."
27.
See also Annette Gordon-Reed, "Logic and Experience: Slavery, Race and Thomas Jefferson’s Life in the Law," in
Slavery and the American South: Essays and Commentaries
, ed. Winthrop Jordan (Jackson, Miss., 2003), discussing
Howell v. Netherland
.
28.
Jefferson,
Autobiography
, 9;
MB
, 1:285.
29.
Gordon S. Wood,
The American Revolution: A History
(New York, 2003), 3–62.
30.
The Works of Samuel Johnson
, 16 vols. (Troy, N.Y., 1913), 14:93–144.
31.
Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan,
The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution
, rev. ed. (Amherst, Mass., 1989). See also Sylvia R. Frey,
Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age
(Princeton, 1991); Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds.,
Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution
(Charlottesville, 1983).
32.
Parent,
Foul Means
, 147.
33.
Benjamin Quarles,
The Negro in the American Revolution
(1961; reprint, Chapel Hill, 1996), vii; "Two Dawns of Freedom," in R. Jackson Wilson et al.,
The Pursuit of Liberty: A History of the American People
, vol. 1,
To 1877
(New York, 1984), 121–40.
34.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:169.
35.
See, generally, Allan Kulikoff,
Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800
(Chapel Hill, 1986), 300–312.
36.
Farm Book,
18;
MB
, 1:341.
37.
De Ende v. Wilkinson’s Administrator
, 1857 VA. Lex. 55, 2 Patton & H. 663.;
Synder v. Grandstaff
96 VA. 473 (1898).
38.
How Slaves May Be Emancipated
, Laws of Virginia, 1723, chap. 4.
39.
MB
, 329 n. 15;
Farm Book
, 9, 18, 15.
1.
This is a nod to Andrew Burstein,
The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist
(Charlottesville, 1996). The first chapter of the book is entitled "The Well Ordered Dreamworld," referring to Monticello. Rhys Isaac, "The First Monticello," in
Jeffersonian Legacies
, ed. Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville, 1993). The title of this chapter and the concept of there being two physical and social "Monticellos" are taken from Isaac’s essay. A chapter below, entitled "The Second Monticello," will complete the set.
2.
MB
, 30. See also n. 48.
3.
Rhys Isaac, "Monticello Old and New," in
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture
, ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville, 1999), 116–17.
4.
Malone and Jefferson: A Conversation with Anne Freudenberg
(Charlottesville, 1981).
5.
Jack McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder
(New York, 1988), 154–55.
6.
Ibid., 156–57.
7.
MB
, 212 n. 20; McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello,
153, 161.
8.
Farm Book
, 3. Betty Brown was listed as one of Jefferson’s "proper slaves" as of Jan. 1774, distinguishing them from the enslaved people who were to come into his possession as a result of the distribution of Wayles slaves upon his death. This indicates that John Wayles had given Brown to Martha before his death, most likely upon her wedding. See also Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 124.
9.
See, e.g.,
MB
, 263, 285, 297.
10.
Ira Berlin,
Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves
(Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 113–19.
11.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 105.
12.
See Kathleen M. Brown,
Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia
(Chapel Hill, 1996), chap. 4, discussing the early construction of slaveholder attitudes about women of African descent; Stephanie M. H. Camp,
Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South
(Chapel Hill, 2004), 64.