Sally Hemings: the Negro Slave who produced Presidential Babies?

Sally Hemings the daughter of one Elizabeth Hemings . Elizabeth was the daughter of an English sea captain and an enslaved African woman. She had twelve children, six of whom were likely fathered by one of her masters, John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson's father-in-law.

Upon Wayles's death, Hemings was brought to Monticello , Jefferson's estate , with her children and she lived there until the end of her life.
Elizabeth Hemings's exact birthplace is not known, and very little is known about her parents. Her mother was described as a "fullblooded African" woman; some historians believe she may have been a woman in the records named Parthena. Her father was described as an English sea captain. The story of Elizabeth Hemings's infancy survives through her grandson, Madison Hemings...

Sally Hemings shared the same father with Thomas Jeffersons wife. Sally remained a house slave to her father and later was handed over to Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson was at Monticello at the likely conception times of Sally Hemings's six known children. There are no records suggesting that she was elsewhere at these times, or records of any births at times that would exclude Jefferson paternity.

There are no indications in contemporary accounts by people familiar with Monticello that Sally Hemings's children had different fathers.

Sally Hemings's children were light-skinned, and three of them (daughter Harriet and sons Beverly and Eston) lived as members of white society as adults.

According to contemporary accounts, some of Sally Hemings's children strongly resembled Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings's children: Beverly and Harriet were allowed to leave Monticello in 1822; Madison and Eston were released in Jefferson's 1826 will. Jefferson gave freedom to no other nuclear slave family.

Thomas Jefferson did not free Sally Hemings. She was permitted to leave Monticello by his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph not long after Jefferson's death in 1826, and went to live with her sons Madison and Eston in Charlottesville.

Several people close to Thomas Jefferson or the Monticello community believed that he was the father of Sally Hemings's children.

Eston Hemings changed his name to Eston Hemings Jefferson in 1852.

Madison Hemings stated in 1873 that he and his siblings Beverly, Harriet, and Eston were Thomas Jefferson's children.

The descendants of Madison Hemings who have lived as African-Americans have passed a family history of descent from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings down through the generations.

Eston Hemings's descendants, who have lived as whites, have passed down a family history of being related to Thomas Jefferson. In the 1940s, family members changed this history to state that an uncle of Jefferson's, rather than Jefferson himself, was their ancestor

Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings, and that he was likely the father of all six of Sally Hemings's children listed in Monticello records—Harriet (born 1795; died in infancy); Beverly (born 1798); an unnamed daughter (born 1799; died in infancy); Harriet (born 1801); Madison (born 1805); and Eston (born 1808).

( *Note..there are no known pictures of Sally Heming . The image here is an estimate by historians as to what she may have looked like. As explained below, Sally was the daughter of a biracial mother and a white father. All children born to slave women were to remain in slavery and were often the slaves of their own fathers)