VIRGINIA –The historic Monticello property located in Virginia was a Thomas Jefferson’s plantation estate that is considered an important part of the US history. Today, this site is considered a national landmark studied by students across the States and worldwide. There was plenty of evidence and documentation regarding the Virginia plantation but none of it ever mentioned the recently discovered secrets on the property. Thanks to archaeologists and great efforts put into this discovery, we now know more about Jefferson’s life, property, and secret children than ever before. This discovery has left historians shocked with the recently revealed truth about President Thomas Jefferson.
CARRYING A MYSTERY
Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States. His primary home before he moved to the White House in 1801 was the famous Monticello plantation located in Virginia, more precisely in Charlottesville. The construction of the Monticello estate began 1768 and today this property is considered a national landmark whose Italian name translates into “Little Mountain.”
The Monticello estate has earned such an important place in US history that you can find the picture of the main house engraved on the back of the US nickel. Despite all the available documentation about the property, the Monticello plantation carried a mystery that was discovered only recently.
THE MYSTERY OF MONTICELLO
Thomas Jefferson inherited a piece of land in Charlottesville from his father. At the age of 26, he began building the Monticello estate that featured a large plantation stretching across 5000 acres. At the time, the plantation was mainly used as a site for cultivating tobacco and wheat. However, just like any other plantation in the US back in the day, the President’s plantation had ties with one of the darkest aspects of the American history – slavery.
Though he campaigned against it politically, exploration of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate revealed strong ties to slavery. But In 2017, there was another groundbreaking discovery that would shed light on this mystery.
Sally Hemings was one of the many slaves who worked on Thomas Jefferson’s plantation. Even though this woman was a slave, her life seemed to have intertwined with Jefferson’s in a very unusual way. For this reason, historians were interested in the figure known as Sally Hemings for more than a century.
There wasn’t much evidence that proved Sally Hemings was more than a victim of slavery. However, a discovery that took place almost 200 years after her death has provided new information regarding her life and all the connected events that formed the mystery of the Monticello estate.
THE LIFE OF HEMINGS
Sally Hemings had a son named Madison, who claimed that his mother was, in fact, the half-sister of then-President’s wife, Martha, who is pictured below. Born in 1773, Sally Hemings was the daughter of John Wayles, a planter and slave trader, as well as father of Jefferson’s wife. Sally’s mother was a woman born into slavery, known as Betty Hemings.
The law at the time dictated that all children of enslaved mothers automatically became slaves and were obliged to work on plantations after reaching a certain age. While Sally was just an infant, her mother, siblings and herself were taken to Jefferson’s Monticello estate where they were considered slaves belonging to Martha, who inherited them from her father.
Sally had a total of six siblings and she was the youngest one. She was 25 years younger than her half-sister and President’s wife Martha Jefferson. The Hemings siblings grew up together at the Monticello plantation where they were forced to work as slaves and domestic servants.
According to the law at the time, children were positioned at the top of the slave hierarchy and they were not required to do any physical work on the plantation. That is why Sally, along with her brothers and sisters, became a domestic servant. Little did she know that years later she would become a matter of national interest.
FINDING THE CLUES
Sally Hemings wasn’t a slave her whole life. She was enslaved from birth until Jefferson’s death in 1826, after which she got to live her last 9 years of life freely. Despite all the historical documentation, there weren’t many details regarding Sally’s time spent as a slave at the Monticello estate. Thanks to archaeological discoveries, several important clues were discovered that allowed us to better understand the life of this not-so-ordinary woman.
