JEFFERSON, Thomas (1743-1826). Autograph note signed (''Th: J'') to James Leitch, 12 February 1818.

JEFFERSON, Thomas (1743-1826). Autograph note signed ("Th: J") to James Leitch, 12 February 1818.

1 page, 72 x 88mm, some surface soiling, neat repair to center crease.

"To be chosen by the bearer John Hemings." One of only two instances of the family name "Hemings" in Jefferson's hand that have sold at auction. "Some plain irons," begins this list of carpenters' tools, followed by "sand-paper, isinglass, glue brush to be chosen by the bearer John Hemings." The half-brother of Sally Hemings and one of only five slaves freed by Jefferson in his will (all five being Hemings family members), John Hemings enjoyed special status at Monticello. He worked closely with Jefferson on the design and construction of the many renovations to the mansion. In fact, he was probably the slave that Jefferson interacted with most on a day-to-day basis, as the master confined his dealings to the skilled artisans among "his people." During Jefferson's retirement Hemings spent much of his time working on the buildings at Poplar Forest, but he also helped construct several of the buildings at "Mr. Jefferson's University" in Charlottesville. According to Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone, it was almost certainly John Hemings who made the coffin in which Jefferson was buried.

The Hemings and Jefferson families remain as intertwined in history as they were in Jefferson's lifetime. Controversy about the exact nature of that relationship first emerged in 1802 when James T. Callender, a Jeffersonian pamphleteer turned embittered enemy, published the story of Jefferson's sexual relationship with Sally Hemings. The Federalist press eagerly reprinted the story of the President's ongoing affair with "Dusky Sally" but Jefferson refused to dignify the charges with any response. For decades the prevailing view was the one laid down by Professor Malone, who tried to brush the story away as mere gutter politics. The charges, he wrote, were "virtually unthinkable in a man of Jefferson's moral standards and habitual conduct" (4:214). Malone speculated that the special status of the Hemings slaves owed to their being the descendants of Jefferson's father-in-law John Wayles. Sally's and John's mother Elizabeth was Wayle's concubine (thus making Sally the half-sister of Jefferson's wife).

However, the circumstantial case remained strong: Jefferson was present at Monticello when each of Sally's children was likely conceived; contemporary visitors were forcibly struck by the strong facial resemblance between Jefferson and the Hemings children who served them at dinner; Sally's son Madison claimed in 1873 that his mother identified Jefferson as his father. A century later DNA entered the argument. In 1998 a team of geneticists established that a Jefferson family male was the father of Sally's youngest son, Eston Hemings, and that Jefferson's paternity was likely but not definitive. In January 2000, a team of scholars commissioned by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation found "a high probability" that Jefferson was the father of Eston and indeed all of Sally's six children. Several subsequent studies have demurred at this level of confidence.

Easier to establish is the great rarity of any document to link Thomas Jefferson and the Hemings family: RBH and ABPC record only one other example selling at auction (in 2008).

Pre-Lot Text
PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR IN TEXAS