Eston Hemings

Eston Hemings Jefferson was born to Sally Hemings, a mixed-race slave, on May 21, 1808 in Monticello, Virginia. DNA evidence in 1998 supported the widely accepted conclusion that he was the son of Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.

His mother was the youngest daughter of widowed planter John Wayles and his mixed race slave, Betty Hemings, and therefore, was three-quarters European in ancestry. She was also the step-sister of Jefferson’s cousin, and later wife, Martha Wayles.

Martha Wayles, who suffered from ill health and died young at the age of 33, made Jefferson promise never to marry again before she died. He later became involved in a relationship with his 16-year-old slave Sally Hemings, whom he had taken to Paris with him, along with her brother James Hemings.

Eston Hemings was the youngest of his mother’s six children, all of whom are considered to be fathered by Jefferson. Four of the siblings survived till adulthood, including his brothers Beverley and Madison, and his sister Harriet.

Even though he was born a slave, he was allowed to stay around the Jefferson household and was required to perform light duties like running errands. At the age of 14, he, like his older brothers Beverley and Madison, started learning woodwork from his uncle John Hemmings, who was the master carpenter at Monticello. Following in the footsteps of his father, who regularly played the violin when he was young, he and his brothers also learned to play the instrument at a young age.

Eston Hemings, and his elder brother, Madison, began working as woodworkers and carpenters in Charlottesville, Virginia after relocating there following their emancipation. Both of them married free women of color and lived in their house in Charlottesville with their mother till her death in 1835.

In 1832, Eston married Julia Ann Isaacs, the daughter of David Isaacs, a successful Jewish merchant from Germany, and Nancy West, the daughter of former slave Priscilla and her white master Thomas West. The couple had three children together, John Wayles Hemings, born in 1835; Anne Wayles Hemings, born in 1836; and Beverly Frederick Hemings, born in 1838.

Following their mother's death, Madison continued to live in their Charlottesville house, but Eston and his family moved to Chillicothe, a town in southwest Ohio, a free state, in 1837. The first two of his three children were born in Charlottesville, while the third was born in Chillicothe.

He used his musical skills to build a successful career as a musician there, playing the violin and fiddle. He also led a dance band which became popular throughout southern Ohio, reportedly due to his "personal appearance and gentlemanly manners".

Despite having a successful career, the Black Laws of the state denied him the right to vote or to hold office, while his children were excluded from public schools. His daughter Anna was introduced as the granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson while she attended Manual Labor School, at Albany, a village in Athens County, Ohio.

Despite the fact that Eston Hemings and his siblings were generally considered to be the children of President Thomas Jefferson, his oldest grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, had misled historian Henry Randall by providing false information. Presumably to deflect attention from his grandfather, he had stated that his uncle and Jefferson's nephew Peter Carr was the father of Sally Hemings' children.

After biographer Fawn Brodie published the book 'Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History' in 1974, one of Eston's descendants became curious about her lineage and contacted the author. Subsequently, a male member of the her family, John Weeks Jefferson, matched the Y-chromosome of the Thomas Jefferson male line in a DNA test done in 1998, thus conclusively refuting links to the Carr line.