On 24 Oct 1858, Thomas Jefferson’s granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge (1796-1876, shown courtesy of Monticello) wrote a letter to her husband about Sally Hemings’s children, and other children born at Monticello who clearly had both European and African ancestry. Most of her information came from her older brother, Thomas Jefferson Randolph.Coolidge wrote, “I have been talking freely with my brother Jefferson on the subject of the ‘yellow children’.
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I’ve been quoting from the 1868 letter in which Thomas Jefferson biographer Henry S. Randall recalled his conversations with the President’s grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph about the family’s captive maid Sally Hemings. Those con... Read Post
Henry S. Randall’s 1 June 1868 letter to James Parton makes clear that Thomas Jefferson Randolph really, really wanted the biographer to accept that Peter Carr was the father of all of Sally Hemings’s children, and that his grandfat... Read Post
I’ve been quoting and analyzing two statements about Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the relationship between them. Both documents—letters from biographer Henry S. Randall and from Jefferson granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidg... Read Post