Historians In Awe Over Discovery At Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Property

Who Was Sally Heming?

This is a picture of a descendant of Sarah “Sally” Hemings to give an idea of what she may have looked like. Sally was born in 1773 and was a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson. Hemings was the youngest of six siblings by the widowed planter John

Wayles and a mixed-race woman by the same of Betty whom Wayles kept as a slave. Betty Hemings, Sally, and her siblings were three-quarters European and half-siblings of Jefferson’s wife Martha Wayles Skelton. In those days, it was rare for slaves to be freed, and there was a good chance that Sally would spend most, if not all of her life living in slavery. This was before Jefferson became the third president of the U.S., in 1801.