Thomas Jefferson’s Wife’s Family Secret Was DARKER Than You Thought

Subscribe to my channel    / @loveandsuccession   In September 1782, Thomas Jefferson's wife lay dying at Monticello. Around her bed stood the enslaved women of the Hemings family. Twenty years later a Georgia planter wrote that one of them was "half sister to his first wife." Jefferson's own memoir gave her father's family one line: he died "leaving three daughters." This is the story of what Martha Jefferson brought into her marriage from her father's house, told from the papers that recorded it. WHAT'S IN IT John Wayles's 1760 will, and the one woman it named in the same sentence as his eleven-year-old daughter A 1772 letter about a slave ship called the Prince of Wales, written three days before Martha gave birth The codicil that ordered "a female slave between twelve & fifteen" for an infant granddaughter A debt Jefferson was still paying in his second term as president The documents are clean. The relationships are contested. Where the record rests on one family's account, or on men writing to damage Jefferson, the video says so. Where a claim could not be sourced, the video says so instead of filling the gap. If you want more of these, the document first and the story second, subscribe. There are more files than you would think, and I keep opening them. Watch next: Why Aaron Burr Hid His Own Son For 44 Years    • Why Aaron Burr Hid His Own Son For 44 Years   Sources: Thomas Jefferson, Farm Book, p. 13 (and roll beginning p. 11), "Roll of the slaves of John Wayles which were allotted to T.J. in right of his wife," Jan. 14, 1774. Massachusetts Historical Society, Thomas Jefferson Papers. Will and codicils of John Wayles (1760, 1772, 1773), transcribed in Tyler's Quarterly (1925); Encyclopedia Virginia primary documents. John Wayles to Farell & Jones, Sept. 24, 1772; Jefferson to Farell & Jones, July 9, 1773; and the editorial note "The Debt to Farell & Jones and the Slave Ship the Prince of Wales." Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 15, via Founders Online. On the record: no member of the Jefferson or Wayles families ever acknowledged John Wayles's paternity of Betty Hemings's children; Jefferson's grandchildren attributed Sally Hemings's children to his nephews. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation concluded in 2000 that Jefferson most likely fathered her children. #AmericanHistory #FamilyHistory #ThomasJefferson