Sally Hemings
Sally Hemings (* around 1773, † 1835 ) was a slave of Thomas Jefferson , the 3rd President of the United States , with whom he had a relationship.
Life
Sally Hemings was originally a slave to Martha Wayles , Jefferson's wife, and was her half-sister. After the death of Martha and Jefferson in 1784 , he moved to Paris as an American diplomat, and sent for his nine-year-old daughter Mary (1778-1804). She was accompanied on her trip by Sally Hemings. Jefferson returned to the United States in 1789 and lived on Monticello until his death in 1826 . The claim that Jefferson had a relationship with his slave girl and even had children was made in 1802, during Jefferson's lifetime, by the pamphleteer James T. Callender with defamatory intent. It has been the subject of heated debate for many years. A DNA analysis by three independent laboratories, published in the journal Nature in 1996 , shows that one of Sally Hemings 'children in the male line is descended from Thomas Jefferson's grandfather, suggesting that Jefferson himself was Hemings' father. Children was. These were the only three slaves (besides Sally Hemings herself) Thomas Jefferson ever released. The number of children Jefferson fathered with Hemings varies between four and six in the literature.
Members of the Hemings family played a major role at Jefferson's Monticello estate. Sally Heming's brother James Hemings , for example, was head chef at Jefferson and also accompanied him to Paris.
literature
- Annette Gordon-Reed : Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville 1998.
- Annette Gordon-Reed: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family . WW Norton & Co., New York 2008.
- Ronald D. Barley: The President and His Slave (2020)
Web links
- www.monticello.org:
- Interview with Alan Pell Crawford, author of Twilight at Monticello (2008)
- Interview with Annette Gordon-Reed, author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1999)
- Encyclopedia Virginia: Sally Hemings (1773-1835)
Individual evidence
- ^ Willi Paul Adams : Thomas Jefferson 1801–1809 , in: C. Mauch (Ed.): Die American Presidents , Munich 2009.
- ↑ Bernd Stöver : United States of America: History and Culture. Munich 2012; Eric T. Hansen : Planet America. An American explains his country. Cologne 2012.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hemings, Sally |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American slave; Thomas Jefferson's lover |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1773 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1835 |