Mary Hemings Bell

Last updated
Mary Hemings Bell
Born
Mary Hemings

1753
Charles City County, Virginia
Diedafter 1834
Charlottesville, Virginia
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Domestic servant; free homemaker
Children6
Parent Elizabeth Hemings
Relatives Joseph Fossett (son)
Peter Fossett (grandson)
Sally Hemings (younger sister), Hemings family

Mary Hemings Bell (1753-after 1834) was born into slavery, most likely in Charles City County, Virginia, as the oldest child of Elizabeth Hemings, a mixed-race slave held by John Wayles. After the death of Wayles in 1773, Elizabeth, Mary, and her family were inherited by Thomas Jefferson, the husband of Martha Wayles Skelton, a daughter of Wayles, and all moved to Monticello.

Contents

While Jefferson was in France, Hemings was hired out to Thomas Bell, a wealthy white merchant in Charlottesville, Virginia. She became his common-law wife and they had two children together. Bell purchased her and the children from Jefferson in 1792 and informally freed them. Mary Hemings Bell was the first Hemings to gain freedom. The couple lived together all their lives. (They were prohibited from marriage by Virginia law at the time.)

In 2007 Mary Hemings Bell was recognized as a Patriot of the Daughters of the American Revolution, because she had been taken as a prisoner of war during the American Revolution. By this honor, all her female descendants are eligible to join the DAR.

Early life

Mary, the daughter of Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings, was born into slavery. [1] [lower-alpha 1] Betty was the biracial daughter of an enslaved African woman and, an English sea captain whose surname was Hemings. [1] Mary was the first of Elizabeth's twelve children. [4] [2] Hemings lived at John Wayles' plantation until his son-in-law, Thomas Jefferson, received her as part of a division of Wayles' estate on January 14, 1774. [2] [3] [lower-alpha 2]

She was a "valued household servant" and seamstress. [2] Like her mother and sisters, she worked in the household where she took care of Martha Jefferson and her children, sewed, and cleaned. The overseer did not have control or responsibility for managing the work of the female members of the Hemings family. [3]

Family

Mary Hemings had six children, some of whom were freed and some of whom were separated from her when they were sold. [2]

Initial children

She initially had four children:

With Thomas Bell

During Jefferson's stay in Paris as U.S. minister to France, his overseer hired out Mary Hemings (with her two younger children) to Thomas Bell in Charlottesville. Mary Hemings became partner to Thomas Bell and they had two children:

After his return and at Mary's request, Jefferson sold Mary and her two younger children to Bell in 1792. Bell informally freed the three of them that year, acknowledging the children as his. [16] [17] [lower-alpha 3] Hemings then took Bell's name. [18]

Thomas and Mary Bell lived the remainder of their lives together and Thomas Bell became a good friend of Jefferson. Mary Hemings Bell was the first of Betty's children to gain freedom. [19] When Thomas Bell died in 1800, he left Mary and their Bell children a sizable estate, treating them as free in his will. The property included lots on Charlottesville's Main Street. He depended on his neighbors and friends to carry out his wishes, which they did. [20] Hemings lived in a house on Main Street. [2] Although free, Mary Hemings remained in close communication with her enslaved family at Monticello and gave gifts to her children and others. She was remembered by them many years after her death. [21] As an elderly man, her grandson Peter Fossett recalled how when he was a child, his free grandmother Mary gave him a suit of blue nankeen cloth and a red leather hat and shoes, grand compared to the attire of children of field slaves. [22] She finished her days in Charlottesville. Her grave site remains unknown.

American Revolutionary War

In 1780, after Jefferson was elected as the governor of Virginia during the American Revolutionary War, he moved his family to the state capitol of Williamsburg, taking along with them a number of slaves, including Hemings. The following year, Jefferson relocated his household to the new capital of Richmond. When British forces led by Benedict Arnold raided Richmond searching for Jefferson, they took Mary Hemings and other slaves owned by him as prisoners of war. After the 1781 siege of Yorktown, Hemings was released from British captivity and returned to being enslaved by Jefferson. [23] In 2007, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) declared Hemings to be a "Patriot of the Revolution" by virtue of her status as a prisoner of war, which automatically qualified Hemings' female descendants as eligible to join the DAR; Hemings was the first slave to be honored as such. [24]

Descendants

One of Mary's most notable descendants was William Monroe Trotter, who became a prominent Boston newspaper publisher, human rights activist, and a founder of the Niagara Movement, precursor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Trotter was graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1895; in his junior year he became the first man of color to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key there. [25] Trotter was a contemporary of fellow Harvard alumnus W. E. B. Du Bois. In 1896, Trotter earned a master's degree from Harvard, planning a career in international banking. But despite his outstanding credentials, racism thwarted his efforts to find work in that field.

Notes

  1. ↑ Her father is unknown. There is a theory that she was born to a white man and another that her father was a man of African descent. [2] The father(s) of Betty's children, like that of other slaves, is difficult to determine, although it is clear that some of the men where white, which could have been white laborers, overseers, or the owner of the plantation. The children of enslaved women were slaves. [3]
  2. ↑ The 135 slaves, which included Betty Hemings and her ten children, that Jefferson acquired from Wayles's estate made him the second largest slaveowner in Albemarle County with a total of 187 slaves. The number fluctuated approximately 200 slaves until 1784 when he began to give away or sell slaves. By 1794 he had divested himself of 161 individuals. [3]
  3. 1 2 3 Jefferson told his superintendent to "dispose of Mary according to her desire, with such of her younger children as she chose." Jefferson kept Mary's slightly older children, Joseph Fossett, age 12, and Betsy, then age nine, at Monticello, splitting up the family. They were likely cared for by aunts and a grandmother, [16] [17] while Mary provided personal items and clothes, finer than that of other slaves of Monticello, and kept in contact with Thomas and Betsy. [2]
  4. ↑ Fossett had also arranged to buy his son Peter's freedom at a particular time. But in 1833, John Jones, the boy's master, reneged on a previous agreement to sell Peter to Fossett. According to Peter Fossett's memoir, published in The New York World, 30 January 1898, he had learned to read and write by then. Peter made and gave his sister Isabel, also still enslaved, a "free pass" that enabled her to travel; she escaped to Boston and freedom. Peter escaped twice but was captured, and in 1850 was sold. Friends of his father bought him and freed him, and Peter was finally able to join his father and the rest of the family in Cincinnati. He became a minister. [9]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Lucia C. Stanton, Chapter: "Elizabeth Hemings and Her Family", Free Some Day: The African American Families of Monticello, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, accessed 13 August 2011
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Mary Hemings Bell". www.monticello.org. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Stanton, Lucia Cinder. "The Slaves' Story - Jefferson's "family" - Jefferson's Blood - FRONTLINE". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
  4. ↑ "Elizabeth Hemings". www.monticello.org. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
  5. 1 2 Lucia Stanton, Free Some Day, p. 132
  6. ↑ Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., p. 424
  7. ↑ Gordon Reed, Annette (2009). Hemingses of Monticello. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 126–127. ISBN   9780393070033.
  8. ↑ "Joseph Fossett" Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine , Monticello Explorer, accessed 16 February 2011
  9. ↑ Rev. Peter Fossett, "Once the Slave of Thomas Jefferson", Jefferson's Blood, PBS, Frontline, 2000, accessed 20 March 2011
  10. 1 2 3 4 Edna Bolling Jacques, "The Hemmings Family in Buckingham County, Virginia", 2002, Official Website, accessed 13 February 2011
  11. ↑ Laura B. Randolph, "THE THOMAS JEFFERSON/SALLY HEMINGS CONTROVERSY: Did Jefferson Also Father Children By Sally Hemings' Sister?", Ebony, February 1999, accessed 16 February 2011
  12. ↑ Lucia C. Stanton, Free Some Day pp. 103-104
  13. ↑ "Betsy Hemmings: Loved by a Family, but What of Her Own?", Plantation & Slavery/Life after Monticello, Monticello, 14 February 2011
  14. ↑ Rothman, Joshua D. (2003-12-04). Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861. Univ of North Carolina Press. p. 53. ISBN   978-0-8078-6312-1.
  15. ↑ "Jesse Scott". www.monticello.org. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
  16. 1 2 Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, p. 484
  17. 1 2 Slavery at Monticello, Lucia Stanton, p. 18
  18. ↑ Kennedy, Randall (2012-09-12). Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 46. ISBN   978-0-307-82457-8.
  19. ↑ "Mary Hemings", Monticello Explorer, accessed 16 February 2011
  20. ↑ Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 410
  21. ↑ Free Some Day, Lucia Stanton, p. 132
  22. ↑ Lucia Stanton, Free Some Day, p. 151
  23. ↑ Memoir of A Monticello Slave, Isaac Jefferson, pp. 19-23
  24. ↑ American Spirit Magazine, Daughters of the American Revolution, January–February 2009, p. 4
  25. ↑ Stephen R. Fox, The Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter, pp. 17-19

Sources

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