John Hemings (also spelled Hemmings) (1776-1830+) was born into slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as part of the large mixed-race Hemings family. He trained to become a highly skilled carpenter and woodworker, making furniture and doing the fine woodwork of the interiors at Monticello and Poplar Forest.
Jefferson's sons by Sally Hemings: Beverly, Madison and Eston, were each apprenticed to John Hemmings at the age of 14 for training as fine carpenters. After decades of service, John Hemmings was freed in 1826 by Jefferson's will, together with two older Hemings' males who had long served Jefferson, and the much younger Madison and Eston.
Read more about John Hemings: Early Life and Education, Marriage and Family, Career
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“No such sermons have come to us here out of England, in late years, as those of this preacher,—sermons to kings, and sermons to peasants, and sermons to all intermediate classes. It is in vain that John Bull, or any of his cousins, turns a deaf ear, and pretends not to hear them: nature will not soon be weary of repeating them. There are words less obviously true, more for the ages to hear, perhaps, but none so impossible for this age not to hear.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)