Vulgar History - American Revolution, part 3： Sally Hemings (pt 1⧸2)

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00:00:24.480 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast.

00:00:29.540 My name is Anne Foster and I want to introduce myself because, you know, I try to think about

00:00:34.920 this every time I do an episode. Someone is listening to this podcast for the first time

00:00:38.420 and I'm pretty sure that whenever I do somebody that's better known, like when I cover a more

00:00:43.200 famous historical person, there's a few more new people are interested or might come and join the

00:00:49.200 show and I want to let those people know what they're in for, basically. And one of the reasons

00:00:56.320 I want to do that is, and one of the reasons I know that that happens is that sometimes,

00:00:59.820 you know, I see the comments people leave on Spotify and other places. And sometimes it's

00:01:03.860 people who expect the show to be a certain thing. And when it's not, they express their displeasure

00:01:08.640 in the form of comments that I see and generally don't publish. So I want to just let everybody

00:01:15.400 know what they're in for, because today we're talking about Sally Hemings, who is, as I

00:01:20.460 understand it. Pretty well known in the US as a person, as a part of American history.

00:01:27.480 And so welcome new people who haven't listened to this podcast before. I'm going to break it

00:01:32.320 down for you. So first of all, the show is called Vulgar History. And the reason it's called Vulgar

00:01:37.100 History is because before I was doing this podcast, I was writing historical essays about

00:01:42.460 people. And the whole vibe of these essays is what I bring to this podcast as well, which is

00:01:47.120 I research something and then I rephrase it in a way that's conversational, that's casual.

00:01:54.400 And that is a way that I find I can understand things better. When I understand a story well

00:01:59.820 enough that I can explain it in a casual way, that means I know that I understand it

00:02:03.580 well enough. And I have found through the success of this podcast that people are into that.

00:02:09.360 And so when I was writing these essays, they were very conversational and they had swear

00:02:13.240 words in them and stuff. I got a comment at one point from somebody who never know,

00:02:16.760 will never know because I'm sure they don't follow me anymore. Um, how they helped me figure

00:02:21.840 out this brand because they left a comment being like, you know, I like your essays,

00:02:24.920 but I wish you didn't use so much vulgar language. And then I called this podcast vulgar history.

00:02:30.720 So people know that I'm going to use vulgar language. And I want to just briefly define

00:02:34.500 Oxford dictionary. There's a couple of different meanings of vulgar. And the first meaning of the

00:02:41.120 word means characteristic of or belonging to the masses. So it didn't used to mean the way the

00:02:48.180 context that the word vulgar has now. What it originally meant is this is the way that normal

00:02:53.620 everyday people talk. This is not special. You know, it's not the way that people who go to

00:02:59.120 university talk like in oldie times. People who, you know, the priests or like the kings, like the

00:03:05.520 vulgar tongue is what it was called. It's like the way that everyday people talk and it was looked

00:03:09.660 down upon as a less important or a less, um, acceptable way to talk, but it was how people

00:03:17.620 talk. So, and eventually most people talk this way when you listen to even today's, you know,

00:03:23.820 wealthy billionaires or whatever, they try to be like, Hey guys, how are you? Like they're talking

00:03:28.720 in a way to try to appeal to the vulgar tongue. They want to be like, I'm just like you. So

00:03:33.820 that's one meaning of the word vulgar. It means the way that just people talk when they're talking

00:03:38.460 to each other when they're not doing a presentation when they're not being fancy and that's what this

00:03:42.080 podcast is i'm just talking to you like i i met up for a friend and we're over some cocktails and

00:03:48.360 i'm just like telling you some stuff i've been researching that's the vibe i'm gonna talk

00:03:52.560 casually i'm gonna say like a lot one might say i say like a normal amount i'm gonna say um

00:03:59.160 i'm going to interrupt myself i'm gonna go off on tangents because that's the whole that's what

00:04:04.760 this podcast is. It's casual talking. So if that's not your thing, if you want to just hear somebody

00:04:09.280 read and list off facts from a prepared script, there's lots of podcasts like that. And, or you

00:04:15.140 could read an encyclopedia. You could read a lot of biographies of people. If you want to listen,

00:04:21.220 listen to an audio book version of a biography of people. That's not what the show is.

00:04:26.040 Now, in recent times, the word vulgar is more generally understood to mean explicit and

00:04:31.860 offensive reference to sex or bodily functions, coarse and rude. Example of vulgar joke. And you

00:04:38.200 know what? The show is that also. I make jokes. I make some racy jokes. I talk about body parts.

00:04:45.360 And I'm going to do that as well. And also vulgar is currently understood to mean

00:04:49.080 lacking sophistication or good taste, unrefined, which this podcast also is. So I like the name

00:04:56.400 vulgar history. Like I first chose it just to troll this person who said a silly thing to one 0.91

00:05:01.360 of my essays. And then also I like that it's all three meanings. Like this is, this is history for

00:05:06.560 the masses. This is history for just the average person. Um, and I'm also going to make explicit

00:05:11.840 jokes and I'm also going to be lacking sophistication. And that's what the show is

00:05:16.840 bringing to you. So point number one is that point number two is at the top of every episode.

00:05:22.900 And this is why I say it. So people know what they're in for as well. This is a feminist women's

00:05:27.860 history comedy podcast. And from the beginning, I defined the show in that way. So people know

00:05:34.800 it's not a super academic podcast that is going to uphold the way that history has so often been

00:05:43.640 taught. So for instance, feminist, the way I define myself, I like to define myself by that

00:05:49.480 word because for a long time I didn't. And I know that right now it's like maybe not a popular way

00:05:56.300 to define yourself. So I especially like to use it now because some people are just like, oh,

00:05:59.560 I'm not a feminist. You know, that's like man hating. And like, yeah, it is for me. Technically 1.00

00:06:05.280 it's not, but for me, I, so many stories about history that people have been taught over the

00:06:11.300 last, let's say a hundred years, the way that history is written down, like not just history

00:06:15.540 is written by the victors, but it's also like, look at these great men, quote unquote, look at

00:06:20.280 the great things they did. And a lot of them did shitty things and they were not actually great,

00:06:27.100 but in order to make them seem great, you have to bypass a lot of the shitty things they did 0.61

00:06:32.840 and the other people who were negatively affected by the things they did. So I'm looking at stories

00:06:37.920 on this podcast in a way that basically shit talks the patriarchy. And that also means 0.99

00:06:44.000 looking at and elevating the stories of marginalized people in all kinds of different

00:06:49.880 ways, like poor people, um, people of color, uh, queer people, like looking at the stories of

00:06:56.000 people who are not the like white cishet, um, quote unquote, great men of history, but also

00:07:02.740 like the patriarchy includes like white supremacy and like colonization and stuff. And this podcast

00:07:07.820 is looking at stories, not from that point of view, not from the point of view that those things

00:07:12.600 were good or inevitable. This is also so feminist women's history, which basically is overlaps with

00:07:19.560 what I just said. But you know, I'm going to be talking shit about the quote unquote, great men 0.98

00:07:23.020 of history. And it's a comedy podcast. And I say that because I'm going to be making jokes. I'm 0.99

00:07:27.560 going to be having long asides. There's going to be tangents. As a thought occurs to me in the

00:07:33.140 middle of a story, I might start talking about like, for instance, the 1976 British miniseries

00:07:37.640 I, Claudius. It's, I call it a comedy podcast. And you know, there's lots of people who find

00:07:42.020 lots of things I do funny. And then there's also people who think that it's going to be like the

00:07:46.540 sort of podcast that comedians do where it's just like joke, joke, joke. It's more like, especially

00:07:50.860 if you listen to a lot of episodes, like you'll see the kind of recurring inside jokes we have.

00:07:55.720 But anyway, I'm saying all that for people who are new to this podcast. So you can opt out at

00:07:59.960 this point if that's not the sort of podcast you want to listen to. Furthermore, because today

00:08:05.280 we're talking about Sally Hemings, we're talking about American history. I think it's important

00:08:08.800 for people to know that I am Canadian, not American. And this means that every country I

00:08:16.180 talk about, except for Canada, I am looking at inherently as a foreign country because it is.

00:08:22.460 I did not grow up in America. I did not grow up being taught American history,

00:08:27.340 nor did I grow up being taught, you know, Swedish history or New Zealand history or Indian history.

00:08:34.680 Like all of these things are new to me. And so I'm just learning them for the first time now

00:08:38.120 as an adult. And so I want to let American people know, you may not be aware Americans

00:08:45.780 of how much of the world's pop culture has Americans as kind of the main characters of it,

00:08:53.040 like movies and TV shows and celebrity gossip, like people all around the world know about like

00:08:57.420 the traditions of American Thanksgiving or the fact that you have like founding fathers or like

00:09:02.720 who George Washington is, like, in a way that Americans in general don't know those sorts of

00:09:08.720 things about the history of Finland, or like Hungary, you know, like, so I'm learning things

00:09:15.060 about American history that Americans might assume people already knew, but I didn't. 0.92

00:09:20.060 So also, I mean, I guess, content warning, I'm going to be shit talking over this season, 0.54

00:09:27.780 this season of the podcast, which is looking at the revolutions of the long 18th century. 0.97

00:09:34.240 I'm going to be shit talking most of the American founding fathers because it turns out like when 0.81

00:09:40.720 you're looking, when you're reading their story and you weren't growing up reading sort of like 0.99

00:09:44.420 the propaganda about how they're all so great and everything they did was so great. Like when you're

00:09:49.360 just looking at it from an objective point of view, like turns out they were all kind of shitty 0.96

00:09:53.140 people who did kind of shitty things except for maybe benjamin franklin but i haven't read about

00:09:57.900 him super a lot and i reserve the right to talk him later anyway if this is not your thing hearing

00:10:03.920 america spoken about as a foreign country um being examined in an objective way then there are lots

00:10:10.360 of other podcasts you can listen to instead or you could go and listen to the the cast recording of

00:10:15.880 the musical hamilton those songs are great so we're going to be talking today about sally hummings

00:10:23.140 She's one of the most famous people, one of the most famous women in American history, I think, based on a survey I did of American listeners.

00:10:33.540 You know, I recorded the actual story about her a bit ago, and I'm pretty sure I explained all that stuff in that.

00:10:39.040 So let's just cut right to it. We're going to talk about Sally Hemings here on Vulgar History.

00:10:43.460 so sally hemmings now i did a little survey a few months ago of just as people on patreon

00:10:59.220 as people in my instagram stories just americans i was curious to know who how famous various people

00:11:06.380 are in america because we're going to be talking about american people in the next

00:11:11.840 several episodes. And I just really wanted to, because I'm Canadian. I have never studied

00:11:18.860 colonial history. I just kind of vaguely know there was these guys, little ponytails on,

00:11:26.380 the musical Hamilton I'm familiar with. Anyway, so I was just curious how famous who is in America.

00:11:33.700 And I was interested to see that today's subject, Sally Hummings, is the second best known woman

00:11:39.820 on my list of people. The best known woman, Martha Washington. More on her in a future episode.

00:11:47.560 But Sally Hemings, 76.9% of people surveyed had heard of her, which is much higher than most of

00:11:54.420 the other women on the list. So she's someone who Americans know about and people not in America,

00:12:00.860 I don't know how much you know about her or not. But what I want to do in this episode,

00:12:05.380 and we'll see if I accomplish this

00:12:08.040 is to tell her story the way that I did

00:12:10.620 if you listen to the Mary Cruz Scott season

00:12:12.640 assuming not explaining what's going on

00:12:16.680 until this thing happens.

00:12:17.920 I don't want to have a lot of foreshadowing

00:12:19.400 because some of the writing is about this.

00:12:23.480 Most of the writing is about her

00:12:25.040 assumes a certain knowledge

00:12:26.820 of American revolutionary history

00:12:29.200 that I didn't necessarily have

00:12:31.520 that people listening may or may not have.

00:12:33.560 So I'm just going to really explain this

00:12:35.380 I'm Canadian. So as objectively as I can, just looking at the history of another country that

00:12:42.380 I'm not familiar with. I do want to shout out for another podcast, Lennon Wood Johnson, who did help

00:12:46.680 me in a few clutch moments in the research of this, specifically involving presidential elections

00:12:52.860 and American history. And the main slash only source I use for this episode was the incredible

00:13:00.600 book, The Hemmings of Monticello, An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed. I had done an

00:13:06.520 episode on Patreon. I do episodes there sometimes about just terrible men from history. And I did

00:13:13.000 one about Thomas Jefferson. And in so doing, like I had listened to some podcasts about him

00:13:18.980 and spoiler, Thomas Jefferson is going to be in the story and Sally Hemmings life intersects with

00:13:25.040 And so I was like, well, first I could just dust off those notes and just focus on Sally

00:13:30.700 Hemings a bit more.

00:13:31.500 But I was like, I want to read more about Sally Hemings.

00:13:33.220 And so this seems to be, as far as I could tell, the book on the topic.

00:13:37.820 This book, so it's from 2008 by American historian Annette Corden-Reed.

00:13:42.780 And she did so much work.

00:13:46.120 She studied legal records, diaries, farm books, letters, wheels, newspapers, archives, and

00:13:51.520 also oral history from the Hemings family.

00:13:53.540 and so the book has won 16 awards I was reading the book and I was like wow this is a really good

00:13:59.220 book but it's also very dense in a way that the books I look at for research aren't always like

00:14:06.060 I'd have to read a page or two and just like take a moment to like absorb what I just read then read

00:14:10.800 the next page like it's so full of such interesting thoughtful thought-provoking information and then

00:14:16.360 I'm like oh okay because this book like won the Pulitzer Prize and actually in it Gordon Reed

00:14:23.440 was the first african-american to be awarded this prize it's also won so many prizes um the national

00:14:29.400 book award for non-fiction like all kinds of things so this is like an incredibly good book

00:14:35.920 and so what i did with this book is i mean a read it and then b just really pull out just the sally

00:14:42.120 stuff so i really recommend this book because there's lots of sort of side characters who show

00:14:46.540 up sally some of her siblings um if you want to know what happens with them or with some of the

00:14:52.140 Jefferson people like she really talks about everyone's life it's big the intersection of

00:14:57.000 all these people over several generations and this book is really good but what I pulled out

00:15:01.540 for this episode is Sally herself because I want this episode to be a tribute to a woman who is

00:15:09.700 often a supporting character or a side note in the lives of other people I wanted to just make

00:15:16.400 her the main character so sally hemings her mother was named elizabeth hemings and it was called

00:15:23.640 betty hemings and elizabeth hemings sally's mom was born in the 1730s in virginia so this was a

00:15:32.020 time when chattel slavery was dramatically expanding in virginia and just so we're all clear

00:15:37.740 chattel slavery refers to the colonial system of slavery which was practiced in all the original

00:15:43.780 13 British colonies in what is now America. In this system, enslaved people were the personal

00:15:48.940 property of their owners for life, a source of labor or a commodity that could be willed,

00:15:53.880 traded, or sold like livestock or furniture. And so we're back in Virginia. If you just joined us

00:16:00.360 this season, you may not have heard a month or two ago, we did an episode in that between seasons

00:16:06.400 era where I was talking about Matoka, aka Pocahontas, and that was like the founding of Virginia. So this

00:16:12.240 is the same Virginia 116 years later from when Matoka slash Pocahontas was there and so Virginia

00:16:18.800 bear in mind was founded by the Virginia company not a country by a company as a money-making

00:16:28.620 enterprise so Virginia was a place for men to seek their fortunes versus some of the northern

00:16:35.120 colonies in what is now the United States where it was like Puritans fleeing religious persecution

00:16:41.140 this was like all business in order to make money doing business and the business was agriculture

00:16:46.560 based largely um they needed to get as much physical labor done as possible but they needed

00:16:51.620 to pay as least amount of money on that physical labor which is why uh these men for they were men

00:16:58.520 um turned to chattel slavery workers that they didn't pay and who would work for them forever

00:17:04.020 and then this was a different form of slavery than what had been in place in ingu like these

00:17:10.160 guys came over from england the virginia company and then they invented their own system of bondage

00:17:17.300 that was based on race so back in england because this is all pre-american revolution it's all

00:17:22.340 british people so in britain a person's status was based on who their father was

00:17:28.460 and then in 1662 when the virginians were inventing the rules for their kind of slavery

00:17:34.980 they were like how about not that how about we go back to like ancient roman days to the rule

00:17:40.860 um part is secutar ventram which means whoever your mother was is what your identity is going to

00:17:48.100 be so this meant that children would inherit enslaved status from their mother even if their

00:17:55.200 father was not enslaved um and this removed an escape route for children born to enslaved

00:18:00.520 mothers um in that and this is a way that the virginia slavery could like keep perpetuating

00:18:06.760 itself and eventually not have to keep taking more people from african countries like that 1.00

00:18:12.240 the enslaved women would have children and those children would become the new slaves 1.00

00:18:15.740 yeah so children were born enslaved due to who their mother was even if the a white father for

00:18:21.060 instance like a white plantation owning enslaver father like that child if it was born to an

00:18:26.960 enslaved woman would still be enslaved. There was no legal advantage to being mixed race 0.95

00:18:31.760 or light-skinned because everything came down to your mother's identity, not what she looked like.

00:18:38.700 So Elizabeth Hemings, Sally's mom, was born in this situation. Her mother, Parthenia,

00:18:45.460 had been an enslaved woman from Africa. And her father, we just know his last name was Hemings,

00:18:52.620 was a captain of an English trading vessel. And this is where she got her surname from,

00:18:58.180 Hemmings, which the Hemmings of Monticello is the name of the book that I read. Like she

00:19:03.120 proudly carried on this surname. So she was born at a plantation in Virginia called Bermuda 100.

00:19:10.280 And that's where she grew up until age about 11. And the reason that she was moved at that point

00:19:16.200 was that the owner's daughter had brought her and other enslaved people with her 0.98

00:19:21.240 because she got married. And that's kind of how, and we'll see this happen in other times in the

00:19:25.540 story, when the daughter of a plantation house got married, then she would go to start her own

00:19:31.520 new household and she'd bring with her some of the enslaved people who she had inherited from 1.00

00:19:35.860 her parents. So the owner's daughter at this point is named Martha Epps. And there's going 0.94

00:19:42.180 to be numerous Marthas in this story. So we're going to call her Martha One. So Martha One got

00:19:49.600 married to John Wales. And so Elizabeth was moved to go serve her in that household. So when Elizabeth

00:19:56.660 had been born, her father, Captain Hemmings, acknowledged her as his daughter, which is why

00:20:01.840 she has this surname. Everyone knew that she had this surname, like it was accepted she had this

00:20:06.000 surname. After she was moved to go live with Martha One, her father, Captain Hemmings, tried to buy her,

00:20:12.480 which we'll also get into more of this later on in the story but this was a way i don't know

00:20:19.680 and that gordon rey doesn't know exactly what the context was of why captain hemings was trying to

00:20:23.900 buy his daughter but this was a way that some families could stay together mixed race families 0.95

00:20:29.740 would be if you buy the enslaved child of your black sexual partner then at least they'd be under 0.99

00:20:36.920 your roof, they'd be in your home. But when Captain Hemmings tried to buy Elizabeth, Mr. Wales refused 0.99

00:20:42.900 to sell the child. Captain Hemmings then tried to steal Elizabeth away, but was stopped. And so

00:20:49.500 Elizabeth's life, much like the life of her daughter, Sally, was affected by the fact that

00:20:57.160 she was probably very beautiful. And I want to emphasize this is not to do with skin tone,

00:21:04.220 necessarily like she was a mixed race woman so probably a bit lighter skin tone but lighter 0.68

00:21:11.500 skin tone wasn't necessarily seen as like that's more beautiful it's just like facial features like

00:21:15.500 she's probably just a very seen as beautiful to other people and this affected the way the people

00:21:20.520 treated her they treated her a bit differently this is maybe part of why john wales martha one's

00:21:27.480 father refused to sell her like maybe he was like she's 11 but she's like really pretty and i just

00:21:33.460 want to kind of see how this goes. I want to keep this really pretty young girl around me. So as a

00:21:38.620 young child, as an 11-year-old, her duties probably included household chores other than cooking.

00:21:45.340 She's too young for cooking. She's just 11 at this point. She probably served as nurse or minder.

00:21:51.460 So gosh, we're already into all of the Marthas. So Martha one was the owner's daughter. She got

00:21:59.980 married to John Wales. She then died giving birth to her daughter, Martha 2. So Elizabeth, 11 years

00:22:09.400 old, 12 years old, she probably became sort of like a nurse slash helper to Martha 2, the little

00:22:15.360 baby. And young enslaved girls would have been considered suitable to look after a very young 1.00

00:22:19.780 child or at least helping an older woman to do so. So Elizabeth, Martha 2, you know, they spending 1.00

00:22:25.960 time together in this situation. And then the years go by and Elizabeth, when she was 18 years

00:22:32.800 old, she also became a mother. Her first child was a daughter who she named Mary. Two years later,

00:22:38.540 she gave birth to Martin. Four years later to Betty and two years later to Nancy. No record

00:22:45.360 of the identity of these children's father has been found even by Annette Gordon-Reed, who was

00:22:50.600 like, goodness knows, doing all of the work, looking at all these papers and things. But part

00:22:55.580 of what she was looking at in echo and read is family tradition oral history which suggests

00:23:00.180 that these may have been these children may have been followed by a white man but other people

00:23:06.500 suggest maybe their father was a black man we just don't know who the dad was of these children

00:23:11.380 during this period of time when elizabeth was being a young woman a young mom john wales married

00:23:18.440 two more times um because he married and then his wife died and then he married and his wife died

00:23:22.860 so his second marriage produced a daughter elizabeth who we're going to call elizabeth

00:23:27.340 two because elizabeth hemmings is elizabeth one elizabeth two comes up later and then he got

00:23:32.720 married again to a woman also called elizabeth elizabeth three so america you know i was having

00:23:41.800 a nice time reading well it's a nice time as one can have reading american history i was appreciating

00:23:47.520 the fact that everyone in the story was not unlike in the american of scott season called

00:23:50.960 mary or james but it turns out everyone is called elizabeth and martha so yeah same thing everywhere

00:23:56.960 anyway so elizabeth three becomes john wales third wife um and by then elizabeth hemings

00:24:05.560 had this clearly established kind of special status in the eyes of the wales family different

00:24:12.800 from other enslaved people so for instance when john wales married elizabeth three he wrote out

00:24:18.960 a new will because when you marry wives and you know she's going to inherit stuff and like what

00:24:23.180 her children could inherit and he specifically singled out elizabeth hemings and another enslaved

00:24:28.160 woman called jenny who was the cook to become property of his new wife should he pre-decease

00:24:32.880 her then upon her death they would be inherited by his daughter martha too ultimately there's a

00:24:38.780 lot of will talk in this episode but what this really meant was that he elizabeth three inheriting

00:24:45.240 wasn't as important as the fact that he wanted elizabeth hemings and jenny the cook to go to

00:24:50.420 martha too eventually and this could just be he wanted to ensure his daughter got a good cook

00:24:54.320 and housekeeper so elizabeth hemings was a standout in that way she was one of two people

00:24:58.860 named although note that she was listed as elizabeth or betty hemings jenny the cook

00:25:04.260 knows her names that's because elizabeth's dad captain hemings had acknowledged her as his 0.95

00:25:10.880 daughter. Not all enslaved people had that. They didn't all have surnames. So the wife, my goodness,

00:25:21.000 Elizabeth, Elizabeth three, Elizabeth three, this wife, John Wales' third wife died. After which

00:25:29.180 John Wales began fathering children with Elizabeth Hemmings. So over the next 10 years, they had five

00:25:35.460 children together, five mixed race children. Robert, James, Thenia, Krita, and Peter were

00:25:41.460 their names. So these children had three white grandparents and one black grandparent. So in the

00:25:49.460 book, Annette Gordon-Reed describes, you could say these are like three quarters white people,

00:25:56.120 but born into slavery. And again, your skin tone didn't affect your status of being enslaved or

00:26:02.020 It was just, who was your mother? So if you think about this, so Elizabeth Hemmings, just in terms

00:26:07.520 of, because what everybody looks like does come up again and again in this story. So Elizabeth

00:26:12.440 Hemmings was mixed race. She had a white father and a black mother. Then she had these children 1.00

00:26:17.040 with a white man. So she was a mixed race woman who had children with a white man. So like the

00:26:21.220 skin tone is getting lighter and lighter of these children. All the children also inherited her 0.95

00:26:27.380 surname Hemmings instead of John Whale's surname. So he didn't acknowledge them the same way that

00:26:34.780 Captain Hemmings had, but kind of everyone knew that he was the father of his children. So in

00:26:39.820 terms of what these people all look like, and I mean, spoiler, Sally Hemmings is the youngest

00:26:46.460 child of this pairing of people. So when she was older, Sally was described as being quote,

00:26:52.300 near white um light skin with straight hair down her back so this is what they're all kind of

00:26:58.960 looking like so we can picture them there's no portraits at all of any of these people

00:27:01.860 um in this story any of the Hemmings's I mean so we can sort of imagine maybe what she looked like

00:27:08.600 so Elizabeth Hemmings having children with John Wells and her son Peter was born the same year

00:27:19.280 that Martha Too, remember, she was a little baby who Elizabeth watched when she was like a teenager.

00:27:25.020 Martha Too, now hot and teen as well, started being courted by her husband-to-be, who was a 0.97

00:27:31.260 lawyer named Thomas Jefferson. And so Martha Too married Thomas Jefferson in 1772. And it's basically

00:27:39.680 like nine months later, Martha Too had a daughter. Guess what she called her daughter? Martha. This 0.89

00:27:44.960 is Martha three. And then one year later, Elizabeth Hemings had her sixth and final child

00:27:50.980 fathered by John Wales, who has a daughter named Sarah, but always called Sally, Sally Hemings,

00:27:57.620 which is the main person who we're building up to talking about in this episode. But just bear

00:28:02.240 in mind that Martha three, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson and Martha two was one year older than

00:28:09.180 Sally Hemings. And then the same year that Sally was born, John Wales died, which presumably is

00:28:14.960 is why Elizabeth had many stopped having her children. This put Elizabeth and her children

00:28:19.420 on an uncertain path because he had died. The chances of their being sold and separated

00:28:24.720 increased enormously. And this was such like, I want to focus on Sally's story and Sally's story

00:28:31.200 means talking a lot about slavery, which we have been doing. I don't want to like, and I go and

00:28:36.560 read gets into all of this stuff, but just what it meant for a family to have no control or power

00:28:41.200 over if you're going to be separated or not like it there's a lot there's every shitty thing

00:28:46.800 for this situation and this is one of the shitty things is the fact that once your owner died

00:28:52.520 enslaved people could be separated mothers from children enslaved people weren't allowed to get

00:28:57.780 married but there were people in long-term relationships they could be separated etc

00:29:01.620 it took a year for the estate to be settled ultimately it was decided that Elizabeth and

00:29:07.180 her six children and one grandchild because her children were so spread out in age. Her oldest

00:29:11.360 daughter, Mary Hemmings, had had a son by now called Daniel Farley. So they were all sent

00:29:16.740 together to a farm in Amelia County that was owned by the Wales family. Then some of the children

00:29:24.960 were separated. I think some of the younger ones from the older ones in the next move to Thomas

00:29:29.520 Jefferson's farm, Elk Hill in Goochland County. But then all the Hemmings siblings and the mother

00:29:35.000 were all reunited in 1775 when they moved to Thomas Jefferson's new home in progress,

00:29:41.360 which was called Monticello. Sally Hemmings at this point was two years old. And so Monticello

00:29:47.980 is a very, very famous house slash tourist destination in Virginia. And we'll talk at the

00:29:55.940 very end about the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and all the stuff they've done to like

00:29:59.500 fix the house up and make it like look beautiful. I think it's on some American money. One of your

00:30:07.900 bills has this house on it. It's like the most famous house in the United States, maybe second

00:30:12.800 after the White House. I don't know. But during this entire story, please bear in mind, it was

00:30:19.180 constantly under construction and kind of messy and not gloriously perfect looking. So through

00:30:26.960 all of these moves, like the Hemmings were kind of shuffling around from house to house.

00:30:30.660 So Martha too, the daughter of John Wales. So she was the half sibling of all of the younger

00:30:42.880 Hemmings, including Sally. So they, and Martha too had, we know she had dark brown hair because

00:30:50.740 later, like a lock of her hair was like down in a locket. So she might have also in some ways

00:30:57.620 resembled, like physically looked like some of the Hemings girls. And so she could have chosen

00:31:04.280 not to bring Elizabeth, who was her father's long-term mistress. Some of the writings describe

00:31:11.620 her as concubine. Martha too could have chosen not to bring Elizabeth and the Hemings siblings 0.65

00:31:19.000 who were her mixed race half siblings she could have not taken them with her when she moved from 0.73

00:31:23.820 house to house but she chose like three times in a row to have them around like she valued them

00:31:30.060 she appreciated them and this could be partially we don't know what was in her heart but another

00:31:36.880 person might have said like I don't want my father's mistress around I don't want these

00:31:41.860 reminders of like these these half siblings who are like children like this is all I can't 0.80

00:31:47.860 another person might not have wanted that but martha had had a lot of loss like her she her

00:31:52.680 mother died in childbirth it might just be she wanted to have people around who she felt

00:31:57.380 comfortable with who she um recognized and knew and who she knew were sort of

00:32:02.740 i'm saying sort of like they were her family question mark like they were her half siblings

00:32:11.620 comma and also were enslaved by her so the whole family situation in this is just

00:32:18.660 fucking weird um but she kept choosing to have them around and thomas jefferson her husband

00:32:25.880 seemingly also appreciated that the hemings were to be treated differently from other enslaved 0.99

00:32:33.400 people so he singled out elizabeth's oldest three sons through special treatment he gave them each

00:32:39.720 more freedom than other enslaved people had. They were allowed to travel around independently.

00:32:45.160 They were educated in trades. They were allowed to learn to read and write. They could hire

00:32:50.420 themselves out to other employers and were permitted to keep their wages. Maybe this was

00:32:55.020 partially because they were Martha, I'm not saying my Marthas, Martha Two's half-brothers.

00:33:02.300 And so he's treating them, I would presume the way that John Wales would have been treating them,

00:33:08.980 the way that Martha too wanted them to be treated with like special privileges like not freed not

00:33:14.620 emancipated not made into free men but he sort of Thomas Jefferson had them in the situation

00:33:23.620 where they're sort of treated maybe similar to lower class white men who were not enslaved but

00:33:31.220 they were still enslaved so we're gonna talk a lot about Thomas Jefferson's psychology

00:33:37.160 but he really had a thing where he wanted everyone to like him and also to think he was a really good

00:33:44.420 guy so he treated them in this way and then presumably he thought that would make people

00:33:52.180 look at him and be like look at that you know he's not the other enslavers he's a cool enslaver

00:33:56.640 so none of the Hemings boys were put to work in agriculture as the other enslaved men and boys were

00:34:03.500 at Monticello. There were hundreds of slaves there. The Hemmings boys would work within the

00:34:10.760 house or they'd travel with Thomas Jefferson to attend to him. I think he referred to them as

00:34:16.260 servants instead of as his slaves. And that's partially because he, Thomas Jefferson, kind of

00:34:23.360 liked to live in this fantasy reality where nothing unpleasant was happening. It's a bit of,

00:34:30.640 i kept trying to think who does this remind me of is it the wizard from the wizard of oz like he

00:34:35.820 just wanted everyone to be happy around him or at least he wanted everyone to seem happy around him

00:34:42.780 and so he just and to pretend like he was i'm gonna say thomas jefferson had enough self-awareness to

00:34:53.700 be kind of embarrassed to be a virginia enslaver but not so embarrassed to not be that but

00:35:03.460 embarrassed enough that he kind of liked to cosplay like he wasn't that which is why he had

00:35:08.700 mostly light-skinned servants around him who he would call servants like he liked to he built his 0.72

00:35:15.060 house monticello on the top of like a mountain they had to kind of the top of the mountain

00:35:18.040 and then where the fields were where the majority of the enslaved people would work and also

00:35:24.160 live he didn't have to he's literally above it he didn't have to look at it or think about it

00:35:29.320 and the only people who were around him he got them to sort of pretend like they were servants 0.96

00:35:34.560 and not enslaved it's all pretty fucked up the Hemings women and girls were also exempted from 0.88

00:35:40.940 field work even on days when like all hands on deck like every enslaved person had to go there 0.93

00:35:46.480 at harvest time, the Hemmings were not sent there. So the Hemmings women and girls performed 0.95

00:35:51.040 household chores, like sewing, bending clothes, looking after children and baking cakes. 0.82

00:35:56.200 And so the Hemmings girls and women were also dressed differently from other enslaved people

00:36:00.960 at Monticello. Like the house staff, um, again, it's like enslaved people, but the Hemmings,

00:36:11.060 like it was just all Hemmings all the time inside of this house. And as the Hemmings 0.53

00:36:14.780 like paired up and started having children they couldn't get married but they like many of them

00:36:19.900 got into long-term relationship committed relationships then there was like a new

00:36:23.860 generation of Hemmings and so the Hemmings would always work in the house the Hemmings people and

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00:39:48.960 and we're back all the other enslaved people would be doing agriculture type stuff 0.99

00:39:56.840 so the hemings girls and women were dressed differently from other enslaved monticello

00:40:02.860 women um and thomas jefferson was really into fashion and clothes he's listened to

00:40:07.840 archaeology or not archaeology architecture he really was into aesthetics of things

00:40:13.160 and so he wanted to he bought irish linen muslin and calico fabrics for the hemings girls women's

00:40:20.760 outfits he wanted to make sure they were not all in the same pattern to avoid monotony in their

00:40:25.260 outfits he also purchased for them fitted cotton stockings and taking note of their sizes versus 0.54

00:40:31.900 all other enslaved women at monticello received a uniform made of coarse bradish linen and baggy

00:40:37.680 stockings of woven cloth and i'm saying this um this is a good example of thomas jefferson who

00:40:45.520 like we're just gonna call thomas jay because that was the name of macaulay culkin's character

00:40:50.180 and my girl and i prefer him to this guy so thomas jay was really into

00:40:57.580 if he was around today i'm not sure if he would just have like some really you know he'd have his

00:41:04.880 smartwatch on all these notifications every day like trying to like biohack all the time

00:41:09.040 but he was really really really committed to writing down lists of everything he did

00:41:14.540 and that everyone around him did constantly so if you write down like all of the outfits

00:41:19.340 all the fabric he bought and how many yards of the fabric there were and like

00:41:23.540 witch and slave people were doing this job this day like he what was the weather like today like

00:41:27.920 he just liked recording everything so a lot of this story we know kind of like times and dates

00:41:34.440 sort of figures because Thomas Jay was writing down everything. Like, again, I was like, is this

00:41:39.160 a bullet journal vibe or would he have like notion templates? He just wrote down everything

00:41:45.900 down. And this is how we know he wrote down the sizes of the Hemings women and girls to get them

00:41:50.100 correctly fitting stockings because he wrote down that sort of detail. At one point, Elizabeth

00:41:56.360 Hemings's daughter, Critta, she fell ill and Thomas Jay paid to send her to a place called

00:42:02.720 The Springs for medical care, and her room and board were paid for by him, by Thomas J.

00:42:09.880 Annette Gordon-Reed writes, the everyday existence of the Hemings women and girls

00:42:13.660 encouraged them to think of themselves as different from others who share the same

00:42:17.380 legal status. Yet, they still shared that same legal status as they were permanently enslaved,

00:42:28.720 and Thomas Jay could free them, but did not.

00:42:33.260 But I think his thing was also,

00:42:34.500 he's like, I'm going to make these people

00:42:36.240 so happy and content here.

00:42:38.880 They're not even going to want freedom,

00:42:41.020 he thought delusionally to himself.

00:42:43.460 So Thomas Jay, I'm really trying to include him

00:42:46.840 as little as possible in the story,

00:42:48.700 but he does a lot of stuff.

00:42:49.860 He kept changing jobs.

00:42:50.900 So I need to keep you up to date with what he's doing.

00:42:54.180 So actually, so we're up to 1779,

00:42:57.600 which is like in the middle of the american revolution a big important thing that a lot

00:43:05.320 of people are involved with but not the hemmings because they were at monticello just like doing

00:43:10.920 their jobs and thomas jay was doing his job which was being governor of virginia and he had been

00:43:18.260 offering some other jobs but he wanted to stay at least in the state of virginia because his wife

00:43:23.060 remember martha too was perpetually pregnant which i if you're keeping a vulgar history season 1.00

00:43:32.700 seven bingo card um lack of birth control and women having more children than their bodies 0.96

00:43:40.960 were prepared to do um mark that score off because martha too was perpetually like she was pregnant 1.00

00:43:47.760 all the time um and every time she had a baby she almost died during their 10 years of marriage

00:43:53.460 she gave birth to six children two of whom survived infancy and childhood who were their

00:43:58.980 daughters the aforementioned martha three and another daughter whose name is sometimes maria

00:44:06.340 and sometimes mary and sometimes polly and that's why i wrote her in my notes as mmp maria mary

00:44:13.240 poly so those are the two children who survived but she was constantly pregnant really not um

00:44:20.260 thriving in a pregnant state almost dying every time she gave birth thomas j was like i want to

00:44:24.400 be close to her so that's why he wanted to stay in virginia and do this job 1782 martha too gave

00:44:32.180 birth yet again to another daughter called lucy she it was a rough birth and she never recovered

00:44:39.200 from the experience um martha too died a few weeks later and while she was dying the

00:44:44.840 kind of the this is where the book by annette gordon reed is so important and the one that

00:44:52.300 people are surprised because she's looking at kind of what the letters were of the people the

00:44:56.220 like white playboating people who were there were saying was going on versus kind of what

00:45:02.080 hemming's family oral tradition said was going on and so i'm going to emphasize the hemming stuff

00:45:06.560 because she was sick. 0.68

00:45:08.160 She was constantly sick. 1.00

00:45:08.980 The Hemmings women and girls 1.00

00:45:09.980 throughout all this,

00:45:11.620 this 10 year period

00:45:12.620 would have been tending to her

00:45:14.000 as her helpers,

00:45:17.400 kind of her nurses.

00:45:18.700 Like they probably would have been there

00:45:20.160 as she gave birth,

00:45:21.140 as she was not doing okay.

00:45:23.600 Afterwards, they were at her bedside

00:45:25.260 during her final days and hours.

00:45:26.620 Thomas J also there.

00:45:28.760 Allegedly, as she's dying,

00:45:30.760 Martha too made Thomas J promise

00:45:32.800 he would never remarry.

00:45:34.760 And this was because she didn't want her daughters to have stepmothers, because if you'll recall, in the litany of people called Martha and Elizabeth, Martha 2, her mother, Martha 1, had died.

00:45:48.380 And then her father married two more times.

00:45:52.840 And just like that chaos of all of it, like I think Martha 2 just didn't want her daughters to have to go through that situation.

00:45:59.520 She had not enjoyed seeing her father marry and remarry again.

00:46:02.860 and so thomas j promised he would not remarry again um martha too also as she was dying singled

00:46:09.680 out her youngest half-sister um sally who is at this point like eight or nine years old

00:46:14.940 a hand bell as a memento and this might have been the bell that martha too would like ring when she

00:46:20.340 needed sally to come and help her but it's interesting that she singled her out and also

00:46:25.320 interesting that sally was probably there at least hemmings were there to tell her that thomas j

00:46:31.640 had promised he would never marry again. Thomas Jay, inconsolable at the loss of his wife. He

00:46:38.520 locked himself up in his rooms for weeks in grief. Whenever he was going for a really hard time,

00:46:43.700 he also suffered from migraines and health problems. So not doing okay, Thomas Jay. And

00:46:50.800 then he, which is why when he was offered a job until before he hadn't taken jobs, that would take

00:46:55.580 him very far away from his wife, Martha too, because she's going through his pregnancy

00:46:59.540 issues, but now he was offered a job to go to Paris. And he's like, I need a fresh start. I

00:47:04.940 need to get out of here. He was having suicidal thoughts. He was struggling in a situation. He

00:47:10.220 wanted a fresh start. And so the job in Paris was to participate in peace negotiations with

00:47:15.860 Great Britain because we're in 1782. So towards the end of the American Revolution era, so peace

00:47:25.760 negotiations because the american revolution to recap was american patriot people versus the

00:47:33.000 british people and so like the peace talks were gonna try to like wrap up the american revolution

00:47:37.000 i presume so he arranged for his older daughter martha three to come with him to paris where she

00:47:44.020 would go to boarding school he sent his two younger daughters um mmp and lucy who had just

00:47:50.840 been born to go stay with um martha two's white sister um elizabeth i want to say three elizabeth 0.83

00:48:02.260 two yeah elizabeth two is the sister anyway so siblings wise we have the now dead martha two 0.96

00:48:12.580 she had a sister Elizabeth II who is still alive and is a white person slave owner and then

00:48:20.320 most of the Hemmings except for the oldest ones are also half siblings to Elizabeth II and Martha

00:48:27.040 II we only have one Martha left in the story anymore which is Martha III but I'm going to

00:48:31.560 call her Martha III just so you remember anyway so MMP and Lucy the younger youngest Jefferson

00:48:41.860 kids, went to live with Elizabeth II, their aunt. Their other aunt, their nine-year-old

00:48:49.260 half-aunt, mixed race Sally Hemings, went with them as the nurse and helper. So this is the thing

00:48:55.680 where enslaved girls up until like age 10, 11, 12, like they would often be a helper to a much 0.99

00:49:00.920 younger child. So no other Hemingses went there with her. Most of them stayed at Monticello. 1.00

00:49:06.900 while this was all happening some went to a few other places and her older brother james went with

00:49:13.500 thomas jay to paris because he was being trained to be a chef and he was going to go train with

00:49:17.700 some french chefs in paris so they were there for maybe a year ish and then the youngest jefferson

00:49:26.200 daughter lucy um who is a split two years old she died of whooping cough elizabeth two's daughter

00:49:34.340 also called Lucy died of the same thing at around the same time so Sally Hemings who is 10 years old

00:49:43.060 ish who had been companion to all these little girls like she's just like seeing all this what

00:49:47.580 is all this happening um she's also Sally Hemings half-sister of Elizabeth too so like what was her

00:49:54.220 relationship to everybody unclear but she's also Sally away from her extended Hemings family

00:50:01.320 and so thomas jay had been thinking like this was devastating to him and he wanted to have

00:50:07.260 surviving daughter mmp with him in paris as well and he was at this point appointed to a new job

00:50:14.920 also in paris so you know there's a show called franklin that stars michael douglas as benjamin

00:50:21.540 franklin it takes place in paris i think it's on apple tv plus i have not watched it myself yet

00:50:26.660 but i do understand that in i think episode three the chevalier d'on appears in what sounds like a

00:50:34.340 really cool way so anyway that show is about benjamin franklin in paris he decided to leave

00:50:40.360 um thomas j appointed to succeed as the new american minister to france and so knowing

00:50:48.100 like he was gonna be in france for longer he was like right like send my other surviving daughter

00:50:53.700 mmp to live with me in paris tout sweet but elizabeth too's family were really close to mmp

00:51:02.420 like they had had like she had been with them for two years at this time she was a little girl

00:51:09.360 um and elizabeth too had come to love her as parents they just kind of avoided his letters

00:51:15.280 they only answered his letters they kind of didn't they kept coming with excuses why she couldn't go

00:51:18.880 ultimately took two years before finally thomas jay was able to get mmp to be arranged to be sent

00:51:25.940 to paris so the plan all along was for her like she's a little girl she had to be there to be like

00:51:31.900 a man traveling with her for like safety and security and then also a nurse like ladies

00:51:37.000 maid helper who would be one of the enslaved people from elizabeth two's house and so they

00:51:41.800 intended it to be this 27 year old woman called isabel hearn but just when they like after two 0.93

00:51:46.940 of arrangements they figured out okay mmp is going to paris um elizabeth hearn was pregnant and so 0.94

00:51:52.340 unable to travel and so it was that 14 year old sally hummings was appointed in her place

00:51:57.540 to go along with mmp to paris so picture 14 year old sally hummings like very little travel

00:52:08.380 experience other than just going back and forth between monticello and elizabeth too's house

00:52:14.620 like just very Virginia based going from home to home. Later in her life, others remember that she

00:52:22.100 would often talk about her trip to Paris. Like this was a defining thing for her. This was huge.

00:52:27.940 This was an amazing experience that she was often talking about throughout her whole life.

00:52:34.200 So she went with MMP. So she, five weeks at sea, the length of time things took to travel places,

00:52:41.360 five weeks at sea she arrived in london and so she and mmp went to visit some friends some

00:52:49.700 jefferson family friends in london who were well included abigail adams who there's a podcast that

00:52:59.180 let me just get the name of it abigail adams not a person i'm going to be talking about in this

00:53:06.100 season but there is a podcast called revolutionary women that is created and hosted by two members of

00:53:12.120 the tits out brigade and they have done an episode with abigail adams so you can learn more about her

00:53:16.240 there like she's not a tits out type person but interesting well worth learning about abigail 0.82

00:53:23.200 adams was in london at this time her husband john adams was the first american ambassador to great

00:53:28.560 Britain, which I guess is why that's where Sally and MMP went to stay. And so Abigail Adams

00:53:35.860 bought new clothes for MMP and Sally because they're going on to France. And in France,

00:53:43.020 you had to, you had to keep up appearances, basically. Poorly dressed servants reflected

00:53:47.920 badly on their employers. And there's some question about like, should Sally go to France

00:53:54.620 with MMP or should she return to America like her job had been to kind of watch MMP during the boat

00:54:00.420 journey but like well they can't send Sally back by herself and so but she was decided by Thomas

00:54:05.820 J that she should come to Paris with MMP to sort of help out so London like this is 1787 so it was 0.64

00:54:14.660 a huge city still is but I mean Sally had was coming from these plantation homes in Virginia

00:54:23.420 like she this would be like nothing she'd ever seen before she got these new outfits and stuff 0.99

00:54:27.980 and also she may not have known this yet but slavery was illegal in France at this time so

00:54:36.280 as soon as she got there Sally would technically be a free person Thomas Jane knew this rule he

00:54:44.660 knew that you were supposed to if you're an American or someone traveling with enslaved

00:54:48.500 people you had to declare that you had them with you um and then you would be subject to these

00:54:54.180 fines of like 6 000 livres thomas j who was just so you know always extremely bad with money

00:55:03.280 overspending constantly because he wanted to look much richer than he was his whole plan was like

00:55:08.880 let's just have if you know don't ask don't tell type five he's just like what is it like don't

00:55:15.660 us for permission beg for forgiveness he's like i'm just gonna not tell anyone that sally this

00:55:20.460 14 year old girl and her brother james who remember he was there to learn about french cooking

00:55:24.500 he's like well if we don't declare then maybe no one will notice and i won't have to pay

00:55:29.320 this bill um and he also was like and also i'm i thomas jay i'm not going to tell sally and james

00:55:35.880 because i don't want them to know and hopefully no one will tell them and they won't find out

00:55:41.440 that they could stay in france and be not enslaved anymore so paris again 1787 this is described as

00:55:50.880 at the apex of its grandeur a global center of politics culture and the arts the city itself

00:55:58.500 was home to over half a million people which is close to the entire population of virginia

00:56:03.060 at this time of these half a million people about a thousand of them were free black people

00:56:09.420 this is also paris 1787 like on the cusp of when the french revolution was going to start and this

00:56:17.000 whole season this whole extended season seven book or history experience we're all building up to

00:56:23.900 like understanding how the french revolution happened and then how it affected marie and

00:56:27.460 vinette and the french revolution didn't just happen like there was a lot of smaller revolutions

00:56:34.460 or protests and stuff building up so like this was happening like the energy would just been

00:56:38.360 electrifying when they got there it was an exciting time to be there and sally was just like

00:56:44.620 14 years old and just taking it all in her brother james was also there to welcome her

00:56:49.940 he was at this point 22 she was 14 they hadn't seen each other in three years so the hemmings

00:56:55.940 were all close to each other like it was a really strong family unit but i mean this wasn't her

00:57:01.740 sibling closest in age to her or anything but anyway it was probably so exciting for them to

00:57:06.500 see each other. She could give him all the latest news about what was happening in Virginia. He's

00:57:13.180 probably happy to speak English to somebody because most of the other servants employed by

00:57:17.840 Thomas J would have been French speaking. Sally was moved into Thomas J's residence, the Hôtel

00:57:23.860 de L'Angiac, perhaps de L'Angiac. MMP was sent to the same boarding school that Martha 3 was already

00:57:32.300 intending. There could have been an option to have Sally go with him as their lady's maid,

00:57:38.060 but I think Annette Goenry talks about all the reasons why that probably didn't happen. And part

00:57:42.800 of that was probably because it might bring attention to the fact that Thomas Jay had brought

00:57:49.680 enslaved people to France and he just didn't want anyone to kind of know about that. Anyway,

00:57:55.380 so one of the things that Thomas Jay had said in his instructions for sending MMP over to be with

00:58:00.180 him was he wanted whoever came with her to be inoculated against smallpox. And then because

00:58:06.520 of all the mix up and like, who's going to go and when Sally had not been inoculated against

00:58:10.380 smallpox. Thomas J, big believer in inoculation. You can go all the way back in this podcast. I

00:58:15.940 have a whole episode about Dr. Jenner and smallpox vaccine and how that kind of all developed. But

00:58:24.200 Thomas J., a man of science, was really into it all. 0.97

00:58:27.800 So she was sent to see the Suttons.

00:58:31.640 So there was a Dr. Sutton, and then he had six sons.

00:58:34.740 And that's why it's the Suttons.

00:58:36.380 So it's this family of male English doctors who just went around inoculating people in Europe.

00:58:42.400 So they've been invited to members of the nobility, heads of state.

00:58:46.340 They administered inoculation to King Louis XV, who did die of smallpox.

00:58:51.660 But that's just because they got there too late.

00:58:54.200 And the total cost of this treatment was the equivalent today of about $1,000, which included, which is paid by Thomas Jay, which included housing and food at the Sutton's inoculation house in the outskirts of the city where Sally stayed for the mandatory 40-day quarantine period.

00:59:11.120 so again just picturing this 14 year old girl who not worldly um had really limited experience

00:59:21.460 kind of any situation outside of being at Monticello with her family um she was just by

00:59:27.480 herself in this place where most people spoke French as was how inoculation worked at this

00:59:33.260 point she came down with a mild case of smallpox from the inoculation during which time she was 0.99

00:59:38.400 monitored and treated so it'd be like white servants like serving her which just adds to 0.95

00:59:45.580 kind of a surreality to her perhaps of what this is like um they emphasize the suttons emphasize 0.97

00:59:52.340 rest as an important thing so i don't know how much rest she was used to getting her like regular

00:59:57.460 life of being like an enslaved child um she would go for walks like for exercise around 1.00

01:00:03.540 for a set period of time each day and she probably at this point in this like 40 day

01:00:10.620 quarantine situation is probably when she began learning french because it's like literal french

01:00:15.840 immersion like everyone around her is french the sentence were english but the servants who she

01:00:20.060 began drafting with for french she eventually was said to have learned the language well

01:00:24.480 after her treatment ended she went back to thomas jay's house the hotel de long jack

01:00:31.220 so the place where he was staying was more expensive than what thomas jay could afford

01:00:38.400 but that is something that you'll see a lot in the story it was more important to him that he look

01:00:43.600 wealthy rather than avoid debt so this place um the hotel would have been both thomas jay's and

01:00:52.680 sally's first experience of indoor bathrooms there was a whole bathtub room um a whole floor

01:00:58.240 guest bedrooms like he was still like monticello today is this like glamorous museum but it was an

01:01:06.180 under construction building site for sally's whole life basically to this point and this was like an

01:01:11.960 elegant fancy french like manor place so we don't know where sally and her brother james

01:01:19.760 lived specifically when they were there um the hotel had adjacent servants quarters there are

01:01:25.760 also some rooms for servants on the mezzanine floor and the thing about her coming there though

01:01:30.500 is like recall like her job had been to escort mmp to paris and now she wasn't her lady's maid

01:01:37.040 so she kind of didn't have a specifically defined job so she would have been at this point

01:01:43.060 kind of at loose ends like sort of a fifth wheel which would give her time to sort of

01:01:48.120 learn some french like experience her new surroundings in her own way and watch other

01:01:54.220 people to learn kind of what the French customs were for things and so how she was seen there I

01:02:02.140 think was similar to how the Hemmings were treated and seen back in Virginia as well which is like

01:02:09.840 different from other enslaved people different from other servants so

01:02:15.960 just in terms of like people who saw her and how they saw the Jeffersons react to her like

01:02:24.020 she would have been the ladies made to martha three and mmp when they came for weekends or

01:02:28.760 holidays or whatever back to visit their dad so she would have met their friends um and one of

01:02:34.100 martha three's french friends wrote a letter at one point saying like well say hello to mademoiselle

01:02:38.720 sally for me which this is martha three's like aristocratic french friend referred to sally 0.80

01:02:46.000 hammings as mademoiselle sally members of the french upper class did not refer to servants

01:02:50.760 by titles like mademoiselle so this indicates that martha three herself seemed to treat sally

01:02:57.920 as something more than a normal servant to the point that her friends picked up on it

01:03:03.220 and said like send her my best wishes and called her mademoiselle in another instance um in one of

01:03:09.680 her letters martha three passed along sally's regards to one of her other friends they're all

01:03:13.760 ruined but they're like really similar age martha three and sally and so also the house where they

01:03:20.020 were, which was located on the Champs-Élysées, was you wouldn't have had to go very far to see

01:03:26.240 lots of cool stuff happening. There's so many festivals, religious festivals, secular festivals,

01:03:30.900 like day-long festivals. Sally was not receiving a formal education, but there were many things for

01:03:39.860 her to see and learn just by living there, seeing what was happening in her own neighborhood.

01:03:43.420 again she didn't have a specific job but her tasks included sewing and mending

01:03:49.820 probably running errands maybe helping her chef's brother with ingredients and things

01:03:54.600 helping Martha III and MMP as needed accompanying them on day trips like driving around Paris in a

01:04:00.480 carriage with them and then being also a chambermaid for Thomas J. She was also and I think

01:04:07.720 this is because slavery was illegal in France, paid for her work for the first time. So she had 0.98

01:04:14.040 her own money and she, for the first time in her life, could choose what to do with her money. She

01:04:18.520 could buy clothing, go to museums with her brother. There was some affordable theater she

01:04:24.400 could have attended. She could give the money to charity, buy gifts for her family. This is from

01:04:30.800 her wages. She wasn't given additional spending money, though her brother James was, and perhaps

01:04:35.220 this was meant for him to share with her um thomas jay spent his own money because this guy

01:04:42.060 loves a shopping b being a debt um he bought clothes for sally as well i think again the

01:04:48.820 whole thing about like what your servants look like reflected on how fancy you were and so she

01:04:54.880 was also at this point attending balls and dinners and things as martha threes ladies made so she had

01:04:59.940 to fit in so she's getting these gorgeous outfits like it's such an interesting chapter in her life

01:05:08.140 there was one anecdote i want to mention so at one point there was a violin concert at martha

01:05:13.820 three and mmp school and the violin concert concert was being performed by a nine-year-old

01:05:19.420 mixed race boy named george bridgetower so george bridgetower was born in poland

01:05:24.440 to a white polish mother and a black father from barbados um he became a personal servant to

01:05:30.720 an english nobleman and a few years after this concert after performing in london

01:05:36.200 um guess who decided who was so moved by his talent he decided to oversee the musical education

01:05:41.300 prinny aka the husband of carolina brunswick aka the future george iv aka the regent aka the guy

01:05:51.640 who just keeps jump scaring his way in episodes of this podcast um something else to put in your

01:05:56.080 bingo card a gratuitous printy appearance anyway at the beginning of 1788 martha three and mmp both

01:06:03.880 contracted typhus presumably from their school and so they were sent to stay in thomas jay's house

01:06:08.520 but so that the other people in the house wouldn't get sick sally was sent away for five weeks so she

01:06:13.800 wouldn't get infected so again she's just having not like non-stop leisure time but just like a

01:06:19.060 really different experience from in Monticello like first of all just being on her own a lot and

01:06:23.700 second of all just having time to herself to think and learn French and things so while in France

01:06:31.400 Thomas Jay became a regular companion of the Marquis de Lafayette he was a French hero of

01:06:38.020 the American Revolutionary War character in Hamilton played by David Diggs and they're doing

01:06:45.820 political stuff together. The French Revolution was, you know, kind of beginning and Thomas Jay

01:06:52.460 supported the French Revolution. So he allowed his Paris residents, the hotel to be used by

01:06:57.400 Lafayette and other Republicans for meetings, lower R Republicans, French Republicans.

01:07:03.920 And so during this whole time in Paris, so Sally and James learned about the fact that slavery was

01:07:12.640 illegal in france like they couldn't not learn about that because they were living in the world 0.59

01:07:17.320 like they had contact with black and white servants in the house they were living in um they would

01:07:22.520 have met other servants in other households when they're going to events and things like they would

01:07:25.560 have met people at the museum or the theater like they knew that slavery was illegal and they

01:07:32.140 presumably probably would have heard that um other black people in paris were hoping that the

01:07:39.660 oncoming revolution would present an opportunity for black people to have a better life for

01:07:44.080 themselves in 1789 the society des amis de noir which i think means the society of black friends

01:07:52.380 engaged in a public struggle to include free tax-paying black people into the new

01:07:58.940 the new world order in france they wanted black people to also have a seat at the table

01:08:04.680 um as part of their campaign to try and be included they quoted words of the american

01:08:09.440 constitution from the american revolution thomas jay was at the meetings of the national assembly

01:08:15.560 where this was all happening he didn't comment upon it in writing his vibe at this point was

01:08:20.400 kind of like i'm not like other enslavers i'm a cool enslaver slash like am i an enslaver look

01:08:25.920 over there he wrote stuff about how he was anti-slavery but also maintained plantations

01:08:36.560 and owned enslaved people so also the winds of change are coming through in the winter of 1788

01:08:45.300 slash 89 so like the end of 88 beginning 89 winter was one of the coldest ones in europe

01:08:51.880 in 300 years. We're going to return to this, I think, other times throughout this season,

01:08:56.020 because this is a pretty crucial thing. It was so incredibly cold. Sally, James, Thomas J.,

01:09:03.220 people from Virginia were just like, get me out of here. I don't, Paris is cool, but this is a bit

01:09:09.520 too cold. Poor moi. In the midst of this impending collapse of French society and also the cold 0.96

01:09:18.020 weather, Thomas J. was like, let's go back to Virginia. Let's leave here. And at the same time, 0.69

01:09:25.900 47-year-old Thomas J. began having a sexual relationship with, by then, 16-year-old Sally,

01:09:34.000 getting her pregnant. And we're going to leave the story at that point, because this is where

01:09:40.400 this is a pivotal turning point in the life of Sally Hemings. So next week, what happens next?

01:09:48.020 so what's funny about how i just ended this episode is that i had naively thought that

01:10:01.660 the sally hummings episode would be one one episode length i thought i would it would be

01:10:07.300 about an hour to get through her story and i realized at that point firstly that i was about

01:10:11.060 halfway through her story and it had been an hour or something but also just as i said that final

01:10:16.240 sentence, my, my neighbor, like the people who I share like a wall with the wall that is next to

01:10:22.660 where I record the podcast started doing something that involved us like slamming, I don't know,

01:10:28.800 some sort of mallet directly at the wall. And so I was not able to record anymore, but I was like,

01:10:33.200 oh, but that's actually the perfect place to stop the story. And people, American history,

01:10:38.220 knowledgeable people may know what happens next to this young teenage, pregnant enslaved girl in

01:10:44.240 France and other people might not so that this will be a bit of our cliffhanger next week we're

01:10:48.680 gonna get into part two of the story of Sally Hemings and so just you know I want to check in

01:10:55.580 with you all at the end just to let you know what's what's up how you can keep up with me if

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01:16:20.080 to get into more well the exciting conclusion of the saga of sally hemmings which has a lot of

01:16:26.140 updates about how she is commemorated now in America. And so until next time,

01:16:33.940 keep your pants on and your tits out. Vulgar History is researched, written, 1.00

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Vulgar History - June 19, 2024

American Revolution, part 3： Sally Hemings (pt 1⧸2)

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