Eston Hemings Jefferson
(1808-1856)
BIRTH
May 21, 1808
PLACE
Monticello, Virginia, U.S.
DEATH
January 3, 1856
PLACE
Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.
FAMILY
FATHER
Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)
MOTHER
Sally Hemings
(1773-1835)
SISTER
Harriet Hemings
(1801-after 1822)
BROTHER
Madison Hemings
(1805-1877)
HOMES
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
NOT YET RESEARCHED
NOT YET RESEARCHED
MEMBERSHIPS
AWARDS
Eston Hemings Jefferson (1808–1856) was Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson’s youngest son. Enslaved at Monticello, he learned woodworking from John Hemmings and became free under Jefferson’s will in 1829. He married Julia Ann Isaacs and moved to Ohio, where he led a dance band as violinist and caller. The family later settled in Madison, Wisconsin, adopted Jefferson as its surname and lived as white people. His descendants’ DNA corroborated the family’s Jefferson connection.
EARLY LIFE
Eston Hemings was born on May 21, 1808 in Monticello, Virginia, U.S. The surviving biographical summary provides only limited evidence about childhood, schooling, and the daily circumstances of the household, so those details are not reconstructed here without documentation. What can be stated securely is that this person belonged to the interconnected family world from which HistoryGPS traces participants, relatives, and later descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
Hemings worked as a musician, carpenter and cabinetmaker.
CAREER
DEATH
Eston Hemings Jefferson was Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson’s youngest son. Enslaved at Monticello, he learned woodworking from John Hemmings and became free under Jefferson’s will in 1829. Hemings worked as a musician, carpenter and cabinetmaker. Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 increased pressure on the black communities in Ohio and other free states bordering slave states. In towns along the Underground Railroad, slave catchers invaded the communities, sometimes kidnapping and selling into slavery free people as well as fugitive slaves. In 1852, Eston decided to move the family further north for security, and migrated to Madison, Wisconsin. There they took the surname Jefferson, and they passed into the European-American (white) community. Eston Hemings Jefferson died in 1856. The available biographical account does not describe a continuous final medical course. It gives no dependable sequence of treatment and last symptoms from which to reconstruct a more detailed bedside narrative.
MUSEUM
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello
1050 Monticello Loop, Charlottesville, VA 22902
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
Eston Hemings Jefferson, Sally Hemings’s youngest son, the formerly enslaved carpenter and musician. These selections address him within the Hemings family and Monticello community. Editorial selections prioritize biographical coverage; five standalone biographies were not established. Family and collective biographies, primary writings, references and related studies are labelled individually. Multi-volume works and series are counted as one selection.
1. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family — Annette Gordon-Reed. [Family biographical reference] Find on Amazon
2. Beyond Jefferson: The Hemingses, the Randolphs, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America — Christa Dierksheide. [Family biographical reference] Find on Amazon
3. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy — Annette Gordon-Reed. [Family biographical reference] Find on Amazon
4. Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture — Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf (editors). [Family biographical reference] Find on Amazon
5. Those Who Labor for My Happiness: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello — Lucia Stanton. [Collective biography and family history] Find on Amazon
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