The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

by Gordon-Reed, Annette

  When the statehouse at Jamestown burned again in 1698, Governor Francis Nicholson suggested, and the assembly approved, the transfer of the capital from Jamestown to Middle Plantation with the new name Williamsburg. One additional impetus for the move was “Middle Plantation’s exemption from mosquitoes,” which had plagued the settlers in Jamestown, an almost sea level swamp whose miasma took the lives of scores of immigrants before they figured out that it was not the healthiest place to settle. Unlike other parts of “Eastern Virginia,” Williamsburg with its higher elevation and different climate was said to be “wholly free from the pests.”18

  The Williamsburg that Wayles encountered in the 1740s would certainly have been primitive by the standards of London. Even when Jefferson arrived there in the 1760s, the dirt roads tended toward dustiness or muddiness, depending upon the season. Most of the housing stock in the town was made of wood and painted white, although numerous buildings—the courthouse, prison, and some churches, as well as the residences of a few prominent people—were made of brick. All in all, the town was said to have made a “handsome appearance” and was considered by some a good place to live. It boasted a thriving merchant class and a vibrant commercial district, and a number of upper-class families made their homes there.19

  William Gooch, already thirteen years into his twenty-two-year tenure as the governor of the colony, was well liked and respected by the inhabitants. The functions of government worked well for that period with the General Assembly, a legislature consisting of the House of Burgesses, comprising representatives elected from each county, and the Virginia council—twelve men from prominent families appointed by the king. True to its role as the seat of government, Williamsburg thrived on the presence of government officials and lawyers. Though the resident population of the town was around two thousand, it could rise to twice that whenever members of the assembly arrived to do business and when the courts were in session during the spring and the fall. Court days, especially, were times of great activity and importance, settling the affairs of individuals and reinforcing within the community at large a particular conception of the rule of law and order in that emerging society.20

  Except for the symbols of royalty that were part of the day-to-day scene in Virginia—having a royal governor and references to a “king”—much about this world would seem familiar. The town had a college, the symbol of the will to and respect for education, a courthouse at which lawyers and litigants gathered before magistrates to provide for the orderly settlement of disputes, a governmental structure made up of an executive, a legislature, and courts—these are things that exist in the modern world. In fact, we pride ourselves on our present-day connection to these institutions and ideas, suggesting that they have helped create the best that we are today. There were, however, other features of the Williamsburg of John Wayles’s day that seem to belong to a different world.

  The most striking aspect of Williamsburg that a traveler from modern times would note is that it was home to large numbers of enslaved people of African origin. Though the laws of Anglo-Virginians dominated, the face of Africa was as prevalent as the face of Europe. Afro-Virginians made up fully half of the town’s population, along with a small handful of free, often mixed-race men, women, and their families. These people, enslaved and free, performed a variety of tasks that put them on display as integral parts of the community. Walking through the streets of Williamsburg, Wayles encountered black people who were coopers, carpenters, blacksmiths, agricultural workers, and household slaves going to the market. Some of those blacks were born in America and spoke English as their native tongue. A good number of others had come from Africa, bearing the facial markings of their particular ethnic group, still speaking their native language to their fellows who knew it, while at the same time learning to speak the language of their Euro-American captors.

  On court days, as an observer and participant, Wayles saw Afro-Virginians as the subjects of contract disputes between businessmen, as items of property fought over in contests over wills, on rare occasions as petitioners for their freedom, and as defendants in criminal actions that for whatever reason could not be handled by the plantation justice of an individual master. He knew that these people were the objects of law, but also outside of it in every way that counted.

  Wayles could stand in Market Square and observe, or even participate in, public auctions of enslaved black people—some newly arrived from Africa or the West Indies, others who would be sold as “Virginia-born.” Perhaps he walked past homes where sales of blacks were carried out. In March of 1744 “at Mr. Vope’s door in Williamsburg,” a “young Negro wench perfectly well qualified for all sorts of Housework” was to go on sale. At the same event a “young Negro Fellow who under[stood] driving a chariot, and [was] most careful handling horses,” was to be offered for sale along with the horses for him to handle. In 1745 “a Parcel of Negroes, being about 16 Men, Women and Children,” were to be sold by John Brodie “at John Taylor’s house in Williamsburg.” These scenes played themselves out on a daily basis.21

  In short, John Wayles had come to a world that held out the promise of enormous wealth and prestige for a few whites and was for blacks something of a living hell. No man in his position could have been more fortunate. He lived in the midst of, participated in, and benefited from what would become the largest forced migration in history—one that created a slave society that lasted another century and a quarter and a racial hierarchy that has yet to be fully undone.

  John Wayles was thirty-one when he married Martha Eppes, the same age as Peter Jefferson when he married Thomas’s mother. Both men evidently wanted to establish themselves before they took on the important role of husband. Wayles was already a member of the establishment by the time he married, for he had been admitted to practice in the county courts in April of 1741, just a few years after his arrival in the colony.22 This fits very much with his son-in-law Thomas Jefferson’s description of him as an amiable man who flourished in his law practice, not because of his intellectual command of the law, but because of his hard work and appealing personality. Having Philip Ludwell in his corner was actually the main thing. We see some of Wayles’s disposition and the way in which he gained acceptance in his surrounding community in the letters of Maria Byrd to William Byrd III in which she refers to Wayles’s efforts to find suitable speakers for their church. In a 1760 letter Byrd wrote, “Mr. Wayles is extremely kind in doing what he can in that respect, he has engaged Parson Masson already and designs likewise to get Parson Duglish, he says to make us laugh.”23 Byrd also noted that attendance at church had been falling off and that Wayles and “Co. Harrison” and “Will Randolph” were making efforts to get “Parson Kenney” to come to preach. Wayles’s and Byrd’s interactions at church were apparently commonplace. In the preceding year she reported that during the “very last Sermon Sunday Wayles comes to our pew before Church began & says Madam I give you joy of Mr. Byrd’s being made Governor of Pittsburgh.”24

  Though Wayles’s supreme act of reinvention has become the quintessential American story, he effected this transformation long before Americans started glorifying such feats. The preference for leaders born in log cabins, or from otherwise humble origins, came into vogue during the age of Andrew Jackson, who ushered in the era of the common man. With the support of a prominent mentor and the sheer force of his personal will, Wayles made a place for himself in Virginian society that he could never have made in Lancaster.

  Will alone is not enough. One must have the opportunity to exercise it. Virginia’s burgeoning commitment to slavery, driven by the tobacco economy, created the environment that gave Wayles the chance to make his fortune. He was very much involved in all parts of the institution, from its most public aspects to its more hidden and private ones. Regarding the public face of slavery, not only did Wayles own slaves himself to work on his farms, but he also served as a broker who helped others buy slaves. He acted as a plaintiff’s attorney in a case that divided sla
ves among several members of a slave-owning family. He served as executor for a number of estates in which slaves were sold to pay debts. Numerous ads in the Virginia Gazette of the 1760s track his activities along these lines. His name appears most often for domestic sales of slaves in which he and other lawyers represented clients who wanted to sell their human property.25

  Advertisements for sales of newly arriving Africans list two names—Wayles and Richard Randolph—and near the end of Wayles’s life, the two were agents for John Powell & Co., an outfit that regularly imported slaves directly from Africa. Even though Virginia was dependent upon slaves, slave traders were generally looked down upon in society. Although southern slave owners went into the market to buy slaves, they wanted to draw a firm distinction between acquiring slaves in that manner and taking them by force from the shores of Africa. Obviously, if there had been no slave trade from Africa, there could have been no sales of Africans in Virginia. Despite that reality, the trade was portrayed as a singularly awful business. Whatever stigma may have attached to slave trading, the commissions that agents could earn on these types of transactions were large enough to overcome any sense of shame, if that was ever really an issue.

  Being the agent on consignment arrangements also carried a built-in hazard that was not merely psychological. “Selling agents” like Wayles and Randolph “were expected to guarantee payment from the buyers of slaves consigned.”26 They would be on the hook should anything go wrong and were therefore exposed to potentially catastrophic liability. That very thing happened in the years just before Wayles’s death. He and Richard Randolph secured a loan from Farrell & Jones, a British merchant house with which they had dealings that enabled them to play their designated role in one of these transactions, bringing slaves over on a ship called the Prince of Wales. Indeed, the firm had suggested the two men as agents on the deal. When Wayles died in 1773, in the midst of a deep depression in Virginia, none of the money for the slave sales—almost seven thousand pounds sterling—had been sent to John Powell & Co.

  Most of the buyers that Wayles and Randolph had lined up had bought the enslaved people—who numbered 400 when the ship set sail, but only 280 by the time it arrived—on credit during a period when economic times were flush. They expected to be able to pay Powell in tobacco. When that market collapsed in the early 1770s, their tobacco became nearly worthless as payment for the slaves, and many farmers did not want to ship their crop when the price was so low. At that point Farrell & Jones stepped in to pay the amount and then sought repayment from Randolph, as the surviving “partner” of Wayles. Randolph’s inability to meet the obligation set in motion a lawsuit that continued long after his death. Farrell & Jones came after both men’s estates for indemnification, eventually obtaining a smaller judgment from Randolph’s. But these contretemps all took place after Wayles’s death. In life Wayles benefited enormously from every aspect of the institution of slavery.27

  Wayles’s appointment as Farrell & Jones’ agent in February of 1763 further cemented his place in his adopted society.28 To say that he was an agent does not adequately convey a sense of the role he played in the Virginia society of his time for it suggests an individual arranging deals between eager planters and willing British houses. That was part of it, but an agent had another role, one that may be more suggestive of Wayles’s capacities and personality: he was a debt collector. That was no small task, for debt was a way of life in Virginia. Over the course of Wayles’s career in the colony, planter indebtedness to British merchants grew to such enormous heights that some scholars have suggested it as a chief catalyst for the Virginia colonists’ decision to break away from the British Empire. Whether it was the chief reason or not, the terms of repayment of debts incurred during the pre-Revolutionary period were without question a sore point for the colonists and remained so well after the birth of the United States.

  John Wayles was at the center of this commercial maelstrom. It was his job to make sure that planters paid their creditors. How did he do this? Wayles did not just sit at the Forest and issue dunning letters. He went out to meet the planters at their homes and at other venues—catching up with them during court day—to ask them face-to-face, “When are you going to pay Farrell & Jones?” We get a glimpse of Wayles at work in a letter to the firm in which he describes his efforts on their behalf.29 The document is worth considering in some detail for the insight it provides about the character of the man who fathered Elizabeth Hemings’s children and about the world in which he moved.

  In this letter Wayles ticks off the names of debtors, one by one, offering sometimes acerbic assessments of their personalities, along with evidence of his implacability in the face of their evasions. Thomas Mann Randolph, whose son would one day marry one of Wayles’s white granddaughters, had “gone to some Springs on the Frontiers to spend the Summer,” thus escaping a Wayles collection visit. Wayles was not letting the matter rest. He went on, “But as he [Randolph] has altered his Port I shall endevor to make Lidderdale pay the Debt.” Of Carter Harrison, “Next month I shall go up Country and make it my business to settle Carter Harrisons Affair as you desire. You are not to be Surprized at his selling his tobacco this Year & disapointing the Ships, because the Man is Acting in Character.”30

  The estate of Benjamin Harrison owed money. When a family member was addressed about the debt and promised to “discharge it soon,” Wayles showed benevolence, promising, “I shall Apply to him Differently.” How did he originally plan to apply to him? Another member of the Harrison family proved more problematic: “As to Nat. Harrison, I have wrote more Letters & made more Personal Applications for so small a Sum, then I ever did to any other Gentleman. This family is somehow or other so connected with your other Friends, that, where the debt is not in danger, indulgences are unavoidable, They require more then other People, & therefore on that Score are less desirable correspondents.”31

  Wayles goes on and on in this vein. He suggests that one planter, Robert Ruffin, acting as a surety for Archibald Cary’s debt to Farrell & Jones, tricked him into taking some bonds as his payment for the obligation. Wayles took the bonds “without having time in the Hurry of Court to examine the Obligors, the Securitys, & c.” It turned out that the obligors on the bonds were “people…[who] lived on the Borders of Carolina.” He estimated that “it would take 7 years to Collect” on them and then at a reduced rate. The attempt to return the bonds, Wayles complained, “Occationed me much Vexation, besides two Rides up to his House before I could meet with him to Re-deliver the Bonds.” Wayles persisted so tenaciously that Ruffin agreed to take them back only when Wayles promised “not to distress him” further until he had heard something directly from Farrell & Jones. “So much for gratitude,” Wayles said. Later when he tried to get Ruffin to buy some tobacco, he (Ruffin) “had not Spirit to Risque a shilling.” Wayles final assessment of the planter?—“a skin flint in every sence of the word.”32

  This was hardly a job for just any man. Imagine his son-in-law Jefferson in that role! Wayles must have been incredibly aggressive and assertive to endure in his position, hounding and no doubt provoking the enmity of some members of a planter class, many of whom were mired deeply in debt. Some of these men were from the oldest and most powerful families in the colony and, as Wayles suggested, were all connected to one another by blood or friendship. They were inclined to help one another out against their common antagonists, Wayles and people like him. They would not have seen Wayles as their kind.

  Take the example of Richard Hanson as a comparison. After the American Revolution, Hanson acted as a Farrell & Jones postwar “John Wayles,” with responsibility for collecting Virginia’s prewar debts to the firm. Hanson, an old business partner of Wayles’s, was a much reviled figure. Granted, the new Americans may have seen Hanson as a symbol of the country from which they had just won independence. And here he came reminding them that that was not the end of the story. Fair or not, debt collectors, in any era, seldom engender warm feelings. Jeffer
son said that Hanson’s form “haunted [him] nightly.”33 Wayles must have haunted a few planters’ dreams in his time, too.

  Wayles’s letter hinted at one point that he knew that others looked down on the way he spent his time. He wrote of the arrival of “Mr. John Morton Jerdon [Jordan] & his very Pretty wife” into the colony. Jordan was a partner in Jordan and Maxwell, a tobacco house in England. After noting that Jordan’s “retinue is little inferior to any Lord’s,” Wayles suggested that Jordan was above haranguing individuals to pay their debts. “I believe that he will not Medle with Baker [a local banker] as he had said he should not dirty his fingers with trade. However that will not throw me off my Guard. Baker is a Capital Object with me & takes up much of my Attention” (emphasis added).34 Strictly speaking, Jordan was involved in trade, too, but in his mind (at least as presented by Wayles) at a different, “higher,” “cleaner” level. Wayles himself was heavily involved in trade—the tobacco trade and the African slave trade, as dirty a one as ever existed. And he proudly differentiates himself from Jordan as a man without a “retinue,” let alone a “Lord’s” retinue, saying in effect, “Unlike Jordan, I will ride up to the man’s house myself and get the job done. Whatever it takes, I will do.”

  The record shows that this was the way Wayles approached his business operations. He would do whatever it took. Philip Ludwell must have spotted this capacity in the young man from Lancaster. This is not to say that he would have done anything illegal, but legality aside, one has to have great fortitude to build wealth, as opposed to inheriting it or marrying into it. It helps to be given a stake by a patron, but maintaining one’s position and building on it takes effort and commitment. And John Wayles knew how to spot opportunities for building wealth, and he seems never to have hesitated. We see this in another of Wayles’s business ventures. Above all else, land was a valued commodity in the colony. The chance to own property was what had impelled thousands of immigrants across the Atlantic to face death and all sorts of hardships. Wayles pursued land as tenaciously and cleverly as he did Farrell & Jones’s debtors. The Virginia Land Patent Books from the 1740s and 1750s show how Wayles operated in this arena. He worked Virginia’s land patent system to great advantage, amassing thousands of acres over the course of about ten years.