Sally Hemings

A brief biography, plus links to other Hemings resources on this site, from your About Guide to Women's History. Includes a page with the birthdates of Hemings' children compared to dates of Jefferson's presence at Monticello.

A chart showing the birthdates of six children of Sally Hemings along with dates that Thomas Jefferson was known to be at Monticello.

The Hemings/Jefferson controversy, seen through the perspective of women's history and gender issues.

A women's history perspective on Sally Hemings' relationship to Thomas Jefferson would have us look at questions relating to the different roles men and women were expected to occupy.

The Hemings/Jefferson story illustrates the principle that history is an attempt to reconstruct a story from the evidence available. The evidence is never complete, and rarely presented without bias of some sort.

The story of Jefferson and Hemings is a scandal, in most histories, primarily because of what the historian thinks that it says about the character of Thomas Jefferson. Only in recent years has the story also included speculation about Sally Hemings: her feelings, her thoughts, her motivations, her decisions, the kind of life she would have been leading.

Jefferson's life and ideas have generated more books than most other Presidents -- or individuals, for that matter. Here's an extensive bibliographic reference for Jefferson.

From PBS, coverage of the controversy over Jefferson and his slave and mistress Sally Hemings and their deescendents, including opinions pro and con.

Historian Joe Ellis addresses questions about Jefferson, including the Sally Hemings affair.

Includes comments by this historian on the Hemings matter.

Julian Bond in an interview on Jefferson, including his views on the accusations about a relationship with Sally Hemings.

January 2000: report from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, with the conclusion that Jefferson was almost certainly the father of Hemings' children, though not of Thomas Woodson.

Biography, well-footnoted, of Sally Hemings, from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association.

A reproduction and transcription of the Callendar accusation originally printed in 1802. (There's a misprint on the page, stating 1818.)

An argument by David Mayer against the conclusion that Sally Heming's children were fathered by Thomas Jefferson: "the allegation is not at all plausible." From a site promoting the teaching of history from a conservative perspective (site includes blog for "no left turn").