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A 16-year-old refused Jefferson
Sally in Paris
Sally Hemings had arrived in Europe two years earlier, at 14, as the maid of Jefferson's eight-year-old daughter Maria. She was Maria's aunt, the half sister of Jefferson's late wife Patty, and she was enslaved on his Virginia estate. In France there were no slaves, so nothing in law required her to return to America. She had learned French, and her older brother James was in Paris training as a chef.
Jefferson, then 44, took for granted that she would sail home with him. When she refused, he was stunned.
Return to Virginia
She went back anyway. Her son Madison Hemings recorded that Jefferson promised her extraordinary privileges and made a solemn pledge that her children would be freed at 21. In Virginia she remained a slave for the rest of her life. Jefferson's will freed her children by him, and Sally herself was granted an informal freedom rather than a legal one. She lived with two of her sons in Charlottesville until she died there in 1835, aged 62. The site of her grave is unknown.
Why did French soil matter for enslaved people?
French legal tradition held that anyone who set foot on French soil became free, a principle often traced back to the 16th century. Colonial slaveholders worked around it through royal edicts, such as those of 1716 and 1738, that allowed them to bring enslaved servants for limited, registered stays. In practice, enslaved people in Paris could petition the courts for their freedom, and some succeeded. France's own Caribbean colonies kept slavery in place until the National Convention first abolished it in 1794.
How did James Hemings eventually win his freedom?
James Hemings trained in Paris in French cooking, including time in the kitchen of a prominent Paris household, and he later cooked for Jefferson in the United States. In 1793 Jefferson agreed to free him on condition that he train a replacement. James taught his brother Peter to cook, and Jefferson signed his manumission papers in February 1796. James is generally described as the first American-trained chef to master French cuisine in Jefferson's circle.
How did Madison Hemings's memoir come to be written?
Madison Hemings gave his recollections in 1873 in an interview with a reporter for the Pike County Republican, a newspaper in Waverly, Ohio. He was then in his sixties and had been living in Ohio since leaving Virginia in the 1830s. The account described his mother, his grandmother Betty, and the years in Paris. It was published alongside a similar interview with his brother Israel.
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