Mary Hemings - Other Events

Other Events

In 1780, after Jefferson was elected governor of Virginia, he moved his family and a number of his slaves, including Mary Hemings and Betty Brown, to Williamsburg, then the capital of Virginia. The following year he relocated his household to the new capital of Richmond. With the American Revolutionary War underway, when Benedict Arnold's forces raided Richmond searching (unsuccessfully) for Jefferson, they took Mary Hemings and other Jefferson slaves as prisoners of war. They were freed from the British later that year by General Washington's forces during the siege of Yorktown.

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