While in France, Hemings was also legally free. The city itself was home to over half a million people (close to the entire population of Virginia at the time), 1,000 of whom were free black residents. Paris in the 1780s was at the apex of its grandeur, a global center of politics, culture and the arts. Within ten weeks, Hemings was transported from the plantations of Virginia to what Jefferson described as “the vaunted scene of Europe!” Courtesy of Bibliothèque Nationale de France Engraving of the Grille de Chaillot showing the L’Hôtel de Langeac on the left Map of L’Hôtel de Langeacġ787When Sally Hemings was 14, she was chosen by Jefferson’s sister-in-law to accompany his daughter Maria to Paris, France, as a domestic servant and maid in Jefferson’s household. Sally and James Hemings lived in L’Hôtel de Langeac, Jefferson’s primary residence in Paris. Courtesy of the Getty Museum Elevation of L’Hôtel de Langeac by Jean-F.T. A View of Paris from the Pont Neuf by Nicolas Jean-Baptiste Raguenet. “my best regards to Sally.” Details from two 1790 letters (in French) from Marie Jacinthe de Botidoux to her former schoolmate in Paris, Martha Jefferson (Randolph), sending her “regards to Miss Sally.” Courtesy the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Archaeologists found this ceramic jar with a French label at a slave dwelling site on Mulberry Row. She did not negotiate for, or ever receive, legal freedom in Virginia. Over the next 32 years Hemings raised four children-Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston-and prepared them for their eventual emancipation. In Paris, where she was free, the 16-year-old agreed to return to enslavement at Monticello in exchange for “extraordinary privileges” for herself and freedom for her unborn children. Unlike countless enslaved women, Sally Hemings was able to negotiate with her owner. ” Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed, 2017 Whatever we may feel about it today, this was important to her.

“Though enslaved, Sally Hemings helped shape her life and the lives of her children, who got an almost 50-year head start on emancipation, escaping the system that had engulfed their ancestors and millions of others. Regardless of their white paternity, children born to enslaved women inherited their mothers’ status as slaves.

Mixed-race children were present at Monticello, in the surrounding county, across Virginia, and throughout the United States. At least two of her sisters bore children fathered by white men. Sally Hemings was the child of an enslaved woman and her owner, as were five of her siblings. Female slaves had no legal right to refuse unwanted sexual advances. Like countless enslaved women, Sally Hemings bore children fathered by her owner. See where Sally Hemings lived at Monticello.

The hemingses