The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (117 page)

19.
TJ to John Wayles Eppes, Sept. 18, 1812. HM5841, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.

20.
Life, Letters, and Journal of George Ticknor
, 2 vols. (Boston, 1909), 1:34–36.

21.
"Elijah Fletcher’s Account of a Visit to Monticello," May 8, 1811,
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series
, ed. J. Jefferson Looney et al., vol. 3 (Princeton, 2006), 610.

22.
See Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge’s memories of trips to the Poplar Forest, written in 1856 and printed in Randall,
Life,
3:343–44. For an example of regards sent through Randolph to a member of the Hemings family, see Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson Randolph, Sept. 13, [1816?], Family Letters Project: "Aunt Priscilla begs to be remembered to the young ladies—and that they will inform John H of her well doing and constant recollection."

23.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 245.

24.
Ellen Wayles Coolidge to Joseph Coolidge, Oct. 24, 1858, Family Letters Project; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 101.

25.
TJ to Joel Yancey, Sept. 13, 1816; Nov. 10, 1818; June 25, 1819, MHi.

26.
Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson Randolph, July 18, 1819; Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Randolph, Sept. 27, [1816?], Family Letters Project.

27.
TJ to Francis Eppes, Feb. 17, 1825,
Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson
, 451; codicil to TJ’s will, MSS 5145, Special Collections, ViU. See also photograph in the second insert.

28.
Gutman,
Black Family in Slavery and Freedom,
87–95; Morgan,
Slave Counterpoint
, 554.

29.
Ellen Wayles Randolph to Martha Jefferson, Sep. 27, [1816?], Family Letters Project. Randolph first speaks of Burwell Colbert’s child who had been ill. "Critty’s child is pretty much as it was, if there is any change it is for the worse, but Aunt Bet [Betty Brown] who keep it at her house and nurses it, desired me to ask you to tell Burwell, that it is just as…he left it."

30.
Ellen Wayles Randolph to Virginia Randolph, Aug. 31, 1819, Family Letters Project.

31.
Cornelia J. Randolph to Virginia J. Randolph, Oct. 25, 1815, Family Letters Project.

32.
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, "The Last Days of Jefferson," Special Collections, ViU; Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 352–53, quoting the
Frederick Town Herald
.

33.
Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson Randolph, July 28, 1819, Family Letters Project.

34.
Ibid.

35.
Ibid.

36.
See Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 156, discussing Colbert’s height.

37.
Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson Randolph, July 28, 1819, Family Letters Project.

38.
TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, quoted in J. Jefferson Looney, "‘I Never Saw Any Body More Uneasy Than Grandpapa’: Thomas Jefferson as Seen by His Family" (paper presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Worcester, Mass.).

39.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 6:469; Virginia Randolph Trist to Ellen Randolph Coolidge, Randall,
Life
, 540.

40.
TJ to James Madison, Oct. 18, 1825, in Smith,
Republic of Letters,
3:1942–43.

41.
Virginia Randolph Trist to Ellen Randolph Coolidge, Oct. 16, 1825, Family Letters Project; Malone,
Jefferson
, 6:469–70.

1.
TJ to James Madison, Sept. 24, 1814, Smith,
Republic of Letters,
3:1745; E. Millicent Sowerby, ed.,
Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson
, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1952–59).

2.
Steven Harold Hochman, "Thomas Jefferson: A Personal Financial Biography" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1987), 231–32, quoted in Sloan,
Principle and Interest
, 360.

3.
TJ to Madison, Sept. 6, 1789,
Papers
, 15:392. See
MB
, xviii–xix, for James A. Bear and Lucia Stanton’s discussion of Jefferson’s problematic approach to financial record keeping.

4.
Sloan,
Principle and Interest
, 11.

5.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 3:3; Catherine Allgor,
Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government
(Charlottesville, 2000), 24.

6.
Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 573; TJ to John Adams, June 10, 1815, LOC, 36303.

7.
Cornelia J. Randolph to Ellen Wayles Randolph, Aug. 3, 1826, Family Letters Project; Sloan,
Principle and Interest
, 221–22.

8.
Sloan,
Principle and Interest
, 222.

9.
Martha Jefferson to TJ, Aug. 17, 1819,
Family Letters
, 430. See also Ellen W. Randolph to Martha Jefferson, Aug. 24, 1819, Family Letters Project, describing TJ’s reaction to the news about Nicholas and her own extremely ironic criticism of Nicholas’s failure to be realistic about his financial situation. Wilson C. Nicholas to TJ, Aug. 5, 1819, LOC 38530; Malone,
Jefferson
, 3:314; Sloan,
Principle and Interest
, 219.

10.
Morgan, "‘To Get Quit of Negroes,’" 403–29.

11.
See, generally, Self and Stein, "Collaboration of Thomas Jefferson and John Hemings," 231–48.

12.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 134–35; TJ to Charles Willson Peale, Aug. 20, 1811, LOC, 34408; Sloan,
Principle and Interest
, 11.

13.
Auguste Levasseur,
Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825; or, Journal of a Voyage to the United States,
trans. John D. Godman (Philadelphia, 1829); Malone,
Jefferson
, 3:403.

14.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 3:404; Peter Fossett in the New York
World
, Jan. 30, 1830, quoted in Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 97.

15.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 101.

16.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 27–28.

17.
Ibid., 15; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 148, "Life among the Lowly,"
Pike County (Ohio) Republican
, March 13, 1873.

18.
Levasseur,
Lafayette in America
, 217–20.

19.
Ibid., 219.

20.
McLaughlin,
Jefferson and Monticello
, 379.

21.
Daniel Webster is quoted in Randall,
Life,
3:505, as writing in 1824 that Jefferson’s "general appearance indicates an extraordinary degree of health, vivacity, and spirit"; Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 247–48; Randall,
Life
, 3:538.

22.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 245; Gordon James and James A. Bear Jr., "A Medical History of Thomas Jefferson" (unpublished manuscript), p. 119, Special Collections Research Report, Jefferson Library, Charlottesville; see also "Dunglison’s Memorandum," ibid., 547. Jefferson told his final doctor that he attributed his impaired health to his trip to the springs.

23.
Martha Jefferson Randolph to Ellen Randolph Coolidge, April 25, 1826, Family Letters Project.

24.
Sloan,
Principle and Interest
, 222;
The Letters of Lafayette and Jefferson
, ed. Gilbert Chinard (Baltimore, 1929), 428.

25.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 3:473–77.

26.
Burstein,
Jefferson’s Secrets
, 271–74; Randall,
Life
, 3:543.

27.
Codicil to TJ’s will, see photograph in the second insert.

28.
See Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 26–29, discussing Harriet Hemings’s departure from Monticello.

29.
Randall,
Life
, 3:544.

30.
Ibid., 541.

31.
Ibid., 545.

32.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 142–43. The only known account of Jefferson’s funeral was provided by Andrew K. Smith, who upon seeing a notice of Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s death wrote to the Washington
Republican
recounting his memories of the event. Apparently Jeff Randolph and his father were unable to curb their mutual enmity, even as the family mourned Jefferson’s death. A contingent from Charlottesville was supposed to proceed up to the mountain from the courthouse, but there was a dispute about who had the right to be where in the procession. Smith and others grew exasperated and could wait no longer, so they headed to Monticello. They arrived to find that Jefferson’s coffin had been taken out of the house and placed on "narrow planks" over the grave. Randolph père and fils knew that the large procession, including students from the university and citizens from the area, was on its way, but each thought it was the other’s duty to tell the minister. So they said nothing while the minister performed the ceremony for the "thirty or forty" people in attendance. Jefferson was buried, and as the assembled dispersed and started down the mountain, they ran into almost fifteen hundred would-be funeral attendees coming up. Those in the crowd were both disappointed and angry at not having been able to pay their last respects. Smith said that an explanation of the mixup was printed the next day in a Charlottesville newspaper. Family Letters Project.

1.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 141.

2.
Advertisement for auction at Monticello, Special Collections, ViU; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 141.

3.
Lucia Stanton, "Monticello to Main Street," 102.

4.
Ibid.

5.
Albemarle County Deed Book, 32:412, Deed of Emancipation, Jan. 20, 1827.

6.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 250; Martha Jefferson Randolph’s will, Family Letters Project. See Randall,
Life
, 3:562, recounting his conversation about the informal freeing of Wormley Hughes.

7.
William Waller Hening, comp.,
The Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619
, 13 vols. (Richmond, Va., 1809–23), 10:39; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 156; Morris;
Southern Slavery and the Law
, 394.

8.
Martha Jefferson Randolph’s will, Family Letters Project.

9.
Gordon-Reed,
SH and TJ
, 209; Ervin L. Jordan Jr., "A Just and True Account: Two 1833 Parish Censuses of Albemarle County Free Blacks,"
Magazine of Albemarle County History
53 (1995): 137, 136, 129.