I have made the arbitrary decision, based on the good opinion of Jefferson held by his friends (and in the few recorded instances, by his slaves also—though the ones who didn’t like him probably wouldn’t have felt able to say so), that he wasn’t the kind of man who would force or coerce sex with an unwilling fifteen-year-old girl.
I have also made the arbitrary decision that there was more to the relationship than a bargain for sexual favors in exchange for protection, privilege, and freedom for Sally’s children.
Jefferson kept Sally as his concubine despite the scandal in 1802 (their youngest two children were born in 1805 and 1808), and after he took Sally as his concubine in 1788, there is not even speculation that he was involved with any other woman, white or black. Their older surviving sons, Tom and Beverly, simply vanish from the Monticello records; according to their son Madison Hemings in an interview in March of 1873, their daughter Harriet (the second daughter of that name, born in 1801) “married a white man in good standing in Washington City.” Madison and Eston, presumably because their features were too African to allow them to “pass,” were freed in Jefferson’s will.
I have chosen to follow Fawn Brodie (and James Callendar) in portraying Young Tom as alive and present at Monticello at least up to 1800, rather than simply accepting Madison Hemings’s assertion that his eldest brother “died soon after” birth. Either way, Young Tom was probably gone from Monticello before Madison Hemings was born.
It must be remembered that Jefferson—and Sally—both grew up in a society in which it was acceptable (among men, anyway) and fairly commonplace—though by no means universal—for men to have mistresses, and for Southern slaveholders to have sexual relations with the women they legally owned. I think it should also be borne in mind that Sally had known Jefferson literally all her life, and that the Hemings family formed a sort of sub-caste at Monticello, somewhere between ordinary slaves and the sort of shadow-families that in French Louisiana would have been free and informally acknowledged.
One can only speculate as to why Jefferson did not free Sally in his will. Patsy Randolph—who left her husband shortly after Jefferson’s death in 1826—freed her, and took great care to solemnly assure her sons that Sally Hemings’s children had been fathered by Jefferson’s nephew Peter Carr. Sally went to live with her sons Madison and Eston in a house near Monticello, until her death in 1835.
Whether Sally knew anything about Gabriel Prosser’s attempted revolt or not—or what she would have chosen to do if she had known—I have not the slightest idea.
All writers of fiction about historical personages have to make choices about how to portray events and relationships for which there is little or no evidence. I have done my best to be true to the known facts, about Jefferson and Sally and about the world in which they lived. To those who feel I should have told the story otherwise—and to those who have been offended by my choices—I apologize.
I have used the word “concubine” in its original literal meaning, that of a servant or slave-woman who sleeps with the master on a regular or semiregular basis.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Real life is not tidy, and the story of any couple is the story of their families as well (and in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this included servants). I have dates for some; for others I do not. For others I have found several different birth and death dates, with as much as ten years’ variation for the same person. Fictional characters are marked with an asterisk*. Though many characters overlap from section to section, I have listed them by the section in which they primarily occur; and by the name under which they are primarily known in the book. A woman’s maiden name and alternate married names are in parentheses, alternate first names (either nicknames or real names for those dozen or so women all named Martha) are in brackets.
MARTHA
Anna Maria (Dandridge) Bassett 1739–1777—Favorite sister of Martha, married Burwell Bassett in 1757. Mother of Fanny Bassett Washington Lear, one of Martha’s many surrogate daughters.
Fanny (Bassett) Washington (Lear) 1767–1796—Martha’s favorite niece, successively married to George’s nephew (and secretary) Augustine Washington, then at his death to George’s secretary Tobias Lear.
Aaron Burr 1756–1836—The dark star of the Founding Fathers; briefly Washington’s aide-de-camp, then Colonel in the Continental Army, Senator from New York, Thomas Jefferson’s Vice President (and so far the only United States Vice President to serve while under indictment for murder), and would-be Emperor of Mexico.
Eleanor (Calvert) Custis (Stuart) 1758–1811—Jacky’s wife and mother of Martha’s four grandchildren. After Jacky’s death she married Dr. David Stuart of Alexandria, and had numerous (twelve in some accounts, sixteen in others) children by him.
Daniel Parke Custis 1710–1757—First husband of Martha Washington and father of her four children.
Jacky Custis 1754–1781—[John Parke Custis] Only child of Martha and Daniel Custis to survive to adulthood, father (by Eleanor Calvert) of Martha’s four grandchildren.
Patcy Custis 1756–1773—[Martha Parke Custis] Only daughter of Martha and Daniel Custis to survive childhood; suffered from seizures, and died of one at age seventeen.
Eliza (Custis) Law 1776–1832—Oldest daughter of Jacky and Eleanor Custis. Married Thomas Law in 1796.
Pattie (Custis) Peter b. 1777—[Martha Parke Custis] Second daughter of Jacky and Eleanor Custis. Married Thomas Peter in 1795.
Nelly (Custis) Lewis 1779–1852—[Eleanor Parke Custis] Third daughter of Jacky and Eleanor Custis. Semiadopted by Martha and George at Jacky’s death. Married George’s nephew Lawrence Lewis in 1799.
Wash Custis 1781–1857—[George Washington Parke Custis] Only son of Jacky and Eleanor Custis. Semiadopted by Martha and George at Jacky’s death. Married Mary Ann Fitzhugh; their daughter, Mary, married Robert E. Lee. (Thus most of the Washington family mementos ended up at Arlington.) Three of their sons were also generals in the Confederate Army.
Nan Dandridge—Daughter of Martha Dandridge Washington’s father, John Dandridge, by one of his slaves. She was employed in the Washington household at Mount Vernon and in 1780 gave birth to a child, William, by Jacky Custis.
“Citizen” Édouard Genêt 1763–1834—First minister sent by Revolutionary France to the U.S., he attempted to meddle in U.S. policy, commissioned American privateers to prey on British shipping, and tried to field, from the U.S., expeditions against France’s enemies. When, at Washington’s request, he was recalled, he defected to the U.S., married the daughter of the Governor of New York, and lived happily ever after.
Alexander Hamilton 1757–1804—[Hammy, Alec] Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury and much-loved surrogate son. Known for his financial brilliance, military and political ambition, wide-ranging amours, and verbal viciousness about his political opponents, a trait which eventually got him shot.
Uncle Hercules—The Washington family cook, trusted and much-favored slave who took the opportunity of being in the North to escape to freedom, waiting to do so until the Washingtons were on their way back to Mount Vernon for the final time in 1796.
Ona Judge b. 1778 (?)—[Oney] Martha’s beloved and trusted slave maidservant who escaped in Philadelphia to freedom in the North, to Martha’s speechless indignation.
Thomas Law—Married Eliza Custis in 1796. Was about twenty years older than she, an English India merchant who had at least three illegitimate sons by Indian women, one of whom he brought with him and sent to Harvard. He and Eliza were divorced in 1810.
Tobias Lear 1762 (?)–1816—George’s secretary and tutor to the Custis children. A New Hampshire man and Harvard graduate, he was introduced to Washington at the end of the Revolution. After the death of his first wife Pollie, he married Martha’s favorite niece Fanny (Bassett); upon Fanny’s death, he married another of Martha’s nieces, Fanny Henley. After Washington’s death, he organized the Presidential papers (and, it was rumored, selectively destroyed some that reflected badly on a quarrel between Washington and Thomas Jefferson): Jefferson appointed him First Consul to Saint-Domingue, and then Consul General to the Barbary States (where he made a great deal of money in bribes). Returning to the United States at the outbreak of the War of 1812, Lear, who suffered from headaches and depression, shot himself in 1816.
Pollie Lear 1770–1793—Tobias Lear’s childhood sweetheart from New Hampshire. After their marriage she acted as Martha’s secretary. She was one of the first casualties of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in the summer of 1793.
General Charles Lee 1731–1782—Continental general and soldier of fortune, he was one of Washington’s rivals for the position of Commander in Chief.
Lawrence Lewis—Son of George’s sister Betty; married Nelly Custis in 1799. A hypochondriac who later in life became dependent upon opiates.
James Monroe 1758–1831—Virginia planter, officer in the Continental Army, U.S. Senator, Governor of Virginia, fifth President of the United States. Was the third U.S. President to die on the Fourth of July.
Thomas Peter—Married Pattie Custis in 1795. Their house in Georgetown still stands.
Dr. David Stuart—Second husband of Jacky Custis’s widow Eleanor; father, by her, of many, many children.
George Washington 1732–1799—Virginia planter, Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the Revolution, and first President of the United States.
Martha (Dandridge) (Custis) Washington 1731–1802—[Patsie] First First Lady. Formerly married to Daniel Custis.
George Augustine Washington 1763–1793—[Augustine] Son of George’s brother Charles, George’s secretary and overseer of Mount Vernon, first husband of Martha’s niece Fanny. Died of tuberculosis.
George Steptoe Washington 1771–1809—[Steptoe] Son of George’s brother Sam, of Harewood Plantation. Married Lucy Payne, sister of Dolley Madison.
Harriot Washington b. 1777—Steptoe’s younger sister. At their father’s death, she was taken to live at Mount Vernon for a time, while her brothers were placed in boarding-school.
ABIGAIL
Abigail (Smith) Adams 1744–1818—Second First Lady, and mother of the sixth President of the U.S. Middle daughter of the minister of Weymouth, Massachusetts.
John Adams 1735–1826—Lawyer, member of the Continental Congress, Minister to France, and first U.S. Minister to England, second President of the United States.
Nabby (Adams) Smith 1765–1813—[Abigail] Daughter of John and Abigail Adams, married Colonel William Smith in England in 1786.
John Quincy Adams 1767–1848—[Johnny, Hercules] Oldest son of John and Abigail Adams, U.S. Minister to Berlin, helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent (which ended the War of 1812), sixth President of the United States, afterwards Representative from Massachusetts, and lawyer who defended the mutinous slaves of the slave-ship Amistad. In 1848 he suffered a stroke on the floor of the House of Representatives, and died in the Speaker’s Chamber shortly thereafter.
Charley Adams 1770–1800—Second son of John and Abigail Adams. He married the sister of his sister Nabby’s husband; died of acute alcoholism at the age of thirty.
Thomas Adams 1772–1832—Third son of John and Abigail Adams.
Jack Briesler—[John] Adams family servant. Married Abigail’s faithful maid, Esther Field.
Granny Susie (Susanna Boylston Adams) Hall 1709–1797—Married John Hall after the death of John Adams’s father in 1761. Lived long enough to see her son elected President; died about a month after his inauguration. Abigail described her as the mainstay of the entire family.
Peter Adams—John’s brother and next-door neighbor in Braintree. A third brother, Elihu, joined the Continental militia at the siege of Boston and died in camp.
Samuel Adams 1722–1803—John’s second cousin (both were great-grandsons of Joseph Adams of Braintree, Mass.); master propagandist, radical revolutionary, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and eventually, first Lieutenant-Governor and then Governor of Massachusetts.
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