Madison Hemings

Madison Hemings
1870 federal census of Ross County, Ohio; enumerator broke protocol to note of Madison Hemings, "This man is the son of Thomas Jefferson."
Born	Madison Hemings (1805-01-19)January 19, 1805 Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.
Died	November 28, 1877(1877-11-28) (aged 72) Ross County, Ohio
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	Fine woodworker; farmer
Known for	Son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
Spouse	Mary Hughes McCoy ​ ​ (m. 1831; died 1876)​
Children	10
Parent(s)	Sally Hemings Thomas Jefferson
Relatives	Beverly Hemings (brother), Harriet Hemings (sister), Eston Hemings (brother), Betty Hemings (grandmother)

Madison Hemings (January 19, 1805 – November 28, 1877) was the son of the mixed-race enslaved woman Sally Hemings and, according to most Jefferson scholars, her enslaver, President Thomas Jefferson. He was the third of her four children to survive to adulthood.^[1] Born into slavery, according to partus sequitur ventrem, Hemings grew up on Jefferson's Monticello plantation, where his mother was also enslaved. After some light duties as a young boy, Hemings became a carpenter and fine woodwork apprentice at around age 14 and worked in the joiner's shop until he was about 21. He learned to play the violin and was able to earn money by growing cabbages. Jefferson died in 1826, after which Sally Hemings was "given her time" by Jefferson's surviving daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph.

The historical question of whether Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children is the subject of the Jefferson–Hemings controversy. At the age of 68, Hemings claimed the connection in an 1873 Ohio newspaper interview, titled, "Life Among the Lowly," which attracted national and international attention. Following renewed historical analysis in the late 20th century, and a 1998 DNA study (completed in 1999 and published as a report in 2000)^[2] that found a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Sally Hemings' youngest son, Eston Hemings, the Monticello Foundation asserted that Jefferson fathered Eston and likely her other five children as well.^[3]

After Hemings and his younger brother Eston were freed, they each worked and married free women of color; they lived with their families and mother Sally in Charlottesville until her death in 1835. Both brothers moved with their young families to Chillicothe, Ohio to live in a free state. Hemings and his wife Mary lived there the remainder of their lives; he worked as a farmer and highly skilled carpenter. Among their ten children were two sons who served the Union Army in the Civil War: one in the United States Colored Troops and one who enlisted as a white man in the regular army.

Among Madison and Mary Hemings' grandchildren was Frederick Madison Roberts, the first African American elected to office on the West Coast. He served in the California legislature for nearly two decades. In 2010, their descendant Shay Banks-Young, who identifies as African American, together with one Wayles and one Hemings descendant, who each identify as European American, received the international "Search for Common Ground" award for work among the Jefferson descendants and the public to bridge gaps and heal "the legacy of slavery." They founded "The Monticello Community" for descendants of all the people who lived and worked there in Jefferson's lifetime.