James Hemings

Infobox Person
name = James Hemings


image_size =
caption =
birth_name =
birth_date = 1765
birth_place = Guinea, Cumberland County, Virginia
death_date = 1801
death_place = Baltimore, Maryland
death_cause =
resting_place =
resting_place_coordinates =
residence =
nationality = American
other_names =
known_for =
education =
alma_mater =
employer =
occupation = Slave, chef de cuisine, cook
home_town =
title =
salary =
networth =
height =
weight =
term =
predecessor =
successor =
party =
boards =
religion =
spouse =
children =
parents = Betty Hemings, John Wayles
relatives = Sally Hemings, John Hemings, Mary Hemings, Madison Hemings, Eston Hemings, Frederick Madison Roberts, John Wayles Jefferson


website =
footnotes =

James Hemings (Guinea, Cumberland County, Virginia, 1765 – Baltimore, Maryland, 1801) was an American slave owned by Thomas Jefferson. He is said to have been a half-sibling of Jefferson's deceased wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, as was his sister Sally Hemings.cite web | title = John Wayles | url = http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/John_Wayles | publisher = Monticello Foundation | author = Berkes, Anna; et al. |accessdate=2008-07-29 ] James accompanied Jefferson to Paris when Jefferson was appointed Minister to France. James was one of the few slaves Jefferson freed during his lifetime.

Biography

James Hemings's mother, Betty Hemings, was owned by Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles, who died in 1773, leaving nearly all members of the Hemings family to his daughter Martha Jefferson..

James, at age 19, went to Paris with Thomas Jefferson in 1784. Jefferson intended to have him trained as a chef. While in France, James earned a wage of four dollars per month and studied cooking and French grammar, eventually earning the role of "chef de cuisine" in Jefferson's kitchen on the Champs-Elysees.cite web | title = James Hemings Learning resource | url = http://classroom.monticello.org/teachers/resources/profile/83/James-Hemings-an-enslaved-cook | publisher = Monticello Foundation |accessdate=2008-07-29 ] cite web | title = Hercules and Hemings | url = http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18950467 | publisher = National Public Radio | author = Nelson, Davia; Silva, Nikki |accessdate=2008-07-29 ]

While they were in France, Jefferson became concerned that James might learn that he could be free under French law, and corresponded with another American slaveholder in a similar situation. According to Madison Hemings, the son of James's sister Sally - who had joined her brother and Jefferson in Paris in 1787 - James and Sally were actively contemplating freedom in France. While fearful of this possibility, Jefferson, who was in debt for most of his life, was also concerned about the cost of training James; at one point, James himself was said to have fought with the tutor who taught him French grammar, who had come to claim an unpaid debt.cite web | title = James Hemings | url = http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/James_Hemings | publisher = Monticello Foundation | author = Craig, Bryan; et al|accessdate=2008-07-29 ] [John Adams, By David G. McCullough, p. 319, 419]

In 1789, however, James returned to America with Jefferson, and traveled with him as his chef. They initially returned to Monticello, then lived briefly in a leased house on Maiden Lane in New York City, where James ran the kitchen. In the spring of 1791, when Hemings and Jefferson were resident in Philadelphia, James accompanied Jefferson and James Madison on a month-long vacation in which they traveled through New York and Vermont, stopping at Albany, Lake George, Lake Champlain and Bennington. As was also the case in France, James was often given the responsibility of traveling ahead of the others to arrange accommodations along the way. One notable stop they made was at the home of a free black farmer, Prince Taylor, on the remote northern shore of Lake George. Madison was impressed by the man's intelligence and the fact that he had six white indentured servants. After heading back south through western Massachusetts and Connecticut, Jefferson and Hemings returned, for a long-term stay, to Philadelphia. In Pennsylvania, slavery was illegal, and Jefferson was obliged to pay James a wage. After two years there, Jefferson made plans to return to Virginia, and Hemings - reluctant to return to a slave state - negotiated a contract with Jefferson in which he would attain his freedom after going to Monticello and training another slave to cook.cite web | title = Jefferson Takes a Vacation | url = http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1996/4/1996_4_74.shtml | author = Randall, Willard Sterne | publisher = American Heritage Magazine |accessdate=2008-07-29 ]

[Understanding Thomas Jefferson, By Ernest Milton Halliday, p.111]

In the 1793 agreement, Jefferson, mindful of the cost to himself of James's training, wrote:

Having been at great expence [sic] in having James Hemings taught the art of cookery, desiring to befriend him, and to require from him as little in return as possible, I hereby do promise & declare, that if the said James should go with me to Monticello in the course of the ensuing winter, when I go to reside there myself, and shall there continue until he shall have taught such person as I shall place under him for that purpose to be a good cook, this previous condition being performed, he shall thereupon be made free...cite web | title = James Hemings contract | url = http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/images/vc108.jpg/James_Hemings | author = Jefferson, Thomas | publisher = Library of Congress |accessdate=2008-07-29 ]

After three more years of service, during which he trained his brother, Peter, he was manumitted in 1796. James was multi-lingual, and was literate; a handwritten inventory of kitchen supplies made before he left Monticello is in the Library of Congress. Free, he traveled to Europe, eventually returning to America, where he found work as a cook. cite web | title = Life and Labor at Monticello | url = http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefflife.html | publisher = Library of Congress |accessdate=2008-07-29 ]

In 1797 Jefferson wrote from Philadelphia to his daughter Maria that he was concerned about James's future:

James has returned to this place and is not given up to drink, as I had been informed. He tells me his next trip will be to Spain. I am afraid his journeys will end in the moon... [Quoted in "The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson" By Sarah N. Randolph, p 244]

Jefferson, although theoretically opposed to slavery, was also opposed to merely freeing slaves, believing, as he had expressed in Notes on the State of Virginia in 1782, that the institution of slavery made its victims ill-prepared for the responsibilities encountered by free men. Some historians have asserted that his experience with James, who was rumored to be an alcoholic and who committed suicide in 1801, confirmed his beliefs and prejudices, which - in addition to his indebtedness, his belief in African intellectual inferiority, and his concern for the political stability of the nation - allowed him to justify why he freed so few of his other slaves. ["Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder" By Jack McLaughlin, p 228]

In 1801, Jefferson offered James a position at the White House, which James refused. James returned briefly to Monticello to work in the kitchen. After a month and a half, Jefferson paid him thirty dollars, and James left. Later, while employed as a cook in a tavern in Baltimore, he committed suicide, at age 36.cite web | title = Monticello Explorer, James Hemings | url = http://explorer.monticello.org/text/index.php?id=31&type=7 | publisher = Monticello Foundation |accessdate=2008-07-29 ] ["Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder" By Jack McLaughlin, p 222]

Jefferson had a friend in Baltimore, William Evans, make inquiries, and on November 5, 1801, Evans reported:

The report respecting James Hemings having committed an act of suicide is true. I made every inquiry at the time this melacholy circumstance took place. The result of which was, that he had been delirious for some days prior to committing the act, and it was the general opinion that drinking too freely was the cause. [William Evans to Thomas Jefferson, Nov. 5 1801, quoted in "Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder" By Jack McLaughlin, p 222]

On November 9, 1801, Jefferson wrote to James Dinsmore, the Irish joiner in charge of much of the construction at Monticello, informing him of the circumstances of James's death, presumably with instructions to tell his mother Betty and his brother John, who was Dinsmore's assistant. In a letter of December 4, 1801, Jefferson wrote to his son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, characterizing James's passing away as a "tragical end."cite web | title = Letter From Jefferson to Randolph, 12/04/1804 | url = http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/025/0100/0139.jpg| publisher = Library of Congress | author = Jefferson, Thomas|accessdate=2008-07-29 ]

Footnotes and citations

External Links

[http://www.lib.virginia.edu/small/collections/tj/deed.html Thomas Jefferson - James Hemings Deed of Manumission]

[http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0history/taylor.prince.html Prince Taylor memorial]