The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (101 page)

15.
See, e.g.,
MB
, 507, for March 30 reference to Betty Brown; 508, for April 5 reference to James Hemings.

16.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:354–60; Emory Evans, "Executive Leadership I Virginia," in
Sovereign States in an Age of Uncertainty
, ed. Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville, 1981).

17.
MB
, entry for April 15, 1781, "Our daughter Lucy Elizabeth died about 10. o’clock A.M. this day."

18.
Henry S. Randall,
The Life of Thomas Jefferson
, 3 vols. (1858; reprint, New York, 1972), 1:338–39.

19.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 170 n. 78.

20.
TJ to William Gordon, July 16, 1788,
Papers
, 8:364.

21.
Ibid.

22.
Pybus, "Jefferson’s Faulty Math," 243–64.

23.
George Wythe to TJ, Dec. 31, 1781,
Papers
, 6:144. Wythe offered to help TJ recover "other servants belonging to [TJ]," if he would send him "a description" of them.

24.
MB
, 519, "Our daughter Lucy Elizabeth (second of that name) born at one o’clock A.M."

25.
TJ to James Monroe, May 20, 1782,
Papers
, 6:186.

26.
Randall,
Life
, 1:382.

27.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:396.

28.
McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello
, 188.

29.
See photograph in first insert. Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 128–29.

30.
Lucia Stanton and Dianne Swann Wright, "Bonds of Memory: Identity and the Hemings Family," in
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture
, ed. Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf (Charlottesville, 1999), 173.

31.
Hamilton W. Pierson,
Jefferson at Monticello: The Private Life of Thomas Jefferson
, from
Entirely New Materials
,
with Numerous Facsimiles
(1862), 106–7.

32.
Ibid.

33.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 252.

34.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 168.

35.
See "The Room in which Martha Jefferson died," wiki.Monticello.org, for a discussion of the problems with Martha Randolph’s recollections of what happened when Jefferson was led from the room when his wife died. In Martha’s account, her aunt Martha Carr led Jefferson with "great difficulty…into his library." The library in the first Monticello was upstairs. The author of the article posits that it seems unlikely that Martha Carr led "a full-grown man on the verge of collapse up an extremely narrow stairwell." Martha recalled that her father had been working in a nearby room as her mother lay bedridden for five months. It seems more likely that Martha Jefferson was in what is now Jefferson’s bedroom downstairs, and the room where he worked while she was ill was one over from the room that became Jefferson’s library in the second Monticello. Martha Randolph’s memory blended the layout of the first Monticello with that of the second.

36.
Randall,
Life
, 1:382.

37.
Andrew Burstein,
Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello
(New York, 2005), 160–72.

38.
Ronald Hoffman, in collaboration with Sally D. Mason,
Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Family Saga, 1500–1872
(Chapel Hill, 2000), 371–72, discussing the toll that six pregnancies during ten years of marriage took on Mary Carroll, the wife of the Maryland senator and planter Charles Carroll, the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence.

39.
TJ,
Autobiography
, in
Writings
(New York, 1984), 46.

1.
TJ to Elizabeth Blair Thompson, Jan. 19, 1787,
Papers
, 11:56–58.

2.
Jefferson himself characterized his time in Paris as an escape in an indirect way that muted the pain of his wife’s loss. "An unfortunate change in my domestic situation by the loss of a tender connection who joined me in esteeming you, occasioned me to wish a change of scene and to accept an appointment which brought me to this place and will keep me here some time." TJ to Geismar, March 3, 1785,
Papers
, 8:10. Jefferson confided to his sister-in-law, "This miserable kind of existence is really too burthensome to be borne, and were it not for the infidelity of deserting the sacred charge left me, I could not wish it’s [
sic
] continuance a moment. For what could it be wished? All my plans of comfort and happiness reversed by a single event and nothing answering in prospect before me but a gloom unbrightened with one chearful expectation." Only the prospect of caring for his daughters offered any respite from his torment. TJ to Elizabeth Eppes, October 3?, 1782,
Papers
, 6:198.

3.
Thomas Jefferson,
Autobiography
, in
Writings
(New York, 1984), 46. At the time of the second appointment, Jefferson was facing an inquiry about his conduct as governor, recuperating from a nasty fall from his horse, and concerned about his wife’s always precarious health. He had sequestered himself (Edmund Randolph’s critical characterization) at his Bedford estate, vowing never to return to public life. TJ to Edmund Randolph, Sept. 16, 1781,
Papers
, 6:117; Edmund Randolph to TJ, Oct. 9, 1781, ibid., 128.

4.
Jefferson’s memorandum books and his letters offer the surest way to track his movements and those of members of the Hemings family who traveled with him.
MB
, 522–54, details his travels during the two-year period after his wife’s death as he awaited word that he was to proceed to France. See also Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 107–8.

5.
James A. Bear Jr.,
The Hemings Family of Monticello
(Ivy, Va., 1980), 7.

6.
TJ to Daniel Hylton, July 1, 1792,
Papers
, 24:145; TJ to Martha Randolph, Aug. 8, 1790, ibid., 17:327.

7.
MB
, 536 n. 82.

8.
MB
, 542, entries for Feb. 1, 3, 10, and 13.

9.
TJ to William Short, May 7, 1784,
Papers
, 7:229.

10.
William Short to TJ, May 14, 1784,
Papers
, 7:253, 255.

11.
Ibid., 256.

12.
Ibid., 256–57.

13.
Thomas D. Morris,
Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860
(Chapel Hill, 1996), 338–40. Morris notes that Virginia was the first to pass a statute to require slaves to carry passes. "A magistrate could order twenty lashes inflicted on a slave who was off ‘his masters ground without a certificate from his master, mistress, or overseer.’" There were no penalties to the master for violating, but the law sent the message that all white members of society had a duty to help control the blacks within their midst. Virginia’s large black population gave white Virginians (and South Carolinians) a special interest in keeping tabs on black people.

14.
Ibid., 339.

15.
George Green Shackelford,
Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759–1848
(Lexington, Ky., 1993), 3; Malone,
Jefferson
, 1:433.

16.
William Short to TJ, May 14 [15], 1784,
Papers
, 7:256.

17.
TJ to David Humphreys, June 21, 1784,
Papers
, 7:311.

18.
See
MB
, 553, entry for June 30, 1784; TJ to Nicholas Lewis, July 1, 1784,
Papers
, 7:356.

19.
MB
, 554 n. 61, entry for July 5, 1784: "Sailed from Boston at 4. o’clock A.M. in the Ceres Capt. St. Barbe."

20.
MB
, 555, Jefferson’s diary of the voyage.

21.
MB
, 556, entries for July 27, 28, 1784 (see also n. 63); TJ to James Monroe, Nov. 11, 1784,
Papers
, 7:508 ("I therefore went ashore at Portsmouth where I was detained three or four days by a fever which had seized my daughter two days before we landed"); Martha Jefferson to Eliza House Trist, [after Aug. 24, 1785], ibid., 8:436–37.

22.
MB
, 556, entry for Aug. 1, 1784.

23.
TJ to James Monroe, Nov. 11, 1784,
Papers
, 7:508.

24.
MB
, 557, entry for Aug. 3, 1784.

25.
Martha Jefferson to Eliza Trist, [after Aug. 24, 1785],
Papers
, 8:437;
MB
, 557, entry for Aug. 6, 1784.

26.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 2:5, 8; Edward Dumbauld, "Where Did Jefferson Live in Paris,"
WMQ
, 2d ser., 23 (1943): 64–68.

27.
MB
, 559, entry for Aug. 20, 1784; 630 n. 33, entry for June 26, 1784; 567 n. 13.

28.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 2:6–7; Marie Kimball,
Jefferson: The Scene of Europe, 1784 to 1789
(New York, 1950). Humphrey’s fraternal relations with TJ broke down under the weight of Humphrey’s very conservative Federalist political views that made him anathema to the by then President Jefferson, who recalled him from a diplomatic post overseas in 1801.

29.
MB
. 571 n. 26. See also Malone,
Jefferson
, 2:8, 131.

30.
MB
, 554 n. 60. See also
Papers
, 8:269–73.

31.
MB
, 567 n. 11.

32.
TJ to James Monroe, March 18, 1785,
Papers
, 8:43.

33.
MB
, 569, entry for Dec. 1, 1784.

34.
James Currie to TJ, Nov. 20, 1784,
Papers
, 7:539; Elizabeth Wayles Eppes to TJ, Oct. 13, 1784, ibid., 441; Francis Eppes to TJ, Oct. 14, 1784, ibid., 441–42. The SJL indicates that Jefferson learned of his daughter’s death when the Currie letter arrived in Jan., brought to him by Lafayette. The Eppes letters did not reach him until May. See also (p. 539) Julian Boyd’s highlights on Currie’s horrifically insensitive letter, in which he comments on the weather, on a history of ballooning that TJ wrote to him about, and on politics and then, at the end, mentions that TJ’s daughter died of whooping cough; TJ to Francis Eppes, Jan. 13, 1785, ibid., 601–2. The SJL refers to this letter, which has not been found, but the entry describing what was in the letter indicates that he told his brother-in-law of his "wishes to have Polly brought were not [his] return not very distant." See also Malone,
Jefferson
, 2:12–13.

35.
TJ to Francis Eppes, May 11, 1785,
Papers
, 8:141. TJ writes to his in-laws, "I must have Polly," and inquires whether there is "any woman in Virg. [who] could be hired to come." Elizabeth Eppes wrote to TJ on July 30, 1786, indicating that she was resigned to the fact that Polly should be sent to him.
Papers
, 15:629. TJ to Elizabeth Eppes, Dec. 14, 1786, ibid., 594. He wrote that same day to Francis Eppes, telling him to "address her [Polly] to Mrs. Adams who will receive her and advise me of her arrival." Ibid.