Mary Hemings - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

Mary Hemings had six children:

• Daniel Farley (1772-after 1827), Jefferson gave him to his sister),
• Molly Hemings (1777-after 1790), Jefferson gave her to his daughter Martha as a wedding gift), together with seven other slaves;
• Joseph Fossett (1780-1858), his father was William Fossett, a white workman at Monticello. He was freed by Jefferson in his 1826 will after decades of service; and
• Betsy Hemmings, b. 1783. Her descendants say their family oral tradition is that Betsy was fathered by the recently widowed Thomas Jefferson, whose wife died in 1782. The historian Lucia Stanton found documentation that Mary Hemings was one of the household slaves whom Jefferson took to Williamsburg and Richmond to care for the family when he was governor, from 1779-1781. Jefferson gave Betsy Hemmings at the age of 14, and 29 other slaves, to his daughter Mary Jefferson Eppes and her new husband John Wayles Eppes as a wedding gift. Betsy lived with the Eppes family for the rest of her life. Her descendants say she was his concubine from about age 21, when he was widowed, and through his second marriage.

During Jefferson's stay in Paris as US minister to France, his overseer hired out Mary Hemings (with her two younger children) to Thomas Bell in Charlottesville. The two became common-law partners and had two children together:

• Robert Washington Bell and
• Sally Jefferson Bell.

At Mary's request, after his return Jefferson sold Mary and her two younger children to Bell in 1792. Bell informally freed the three of them that year, acknowledging the children as his. (Jefferson told his superintendent to "dispose of Mary according to her desire, with such of her younger children as she chose." He kept Mary's slightly older children, Joseph Fossett, only 12, and Betsy, then age nine. They were likely cared for by aunts and grandmother.)

Thomas and Mary Bell lived the remainder of their lives together, and Thomas Bell became a good friend of Jefferson. Mary Hemings Bell was the first of Betty's children to gain freedom. When Thomas Bell died in 1800, he left Mary and their Bell children a sizable estate, treating them as free in his will. The property included lots on Charlottesville's Main Street. He depended on his neighbors and friends to carry out his wishes, which they did.

Mary Hemings finished her days in Charlottesville. Her grave site remains unknown.