I was somehow unaware till last week that Sally Hemings was Jefferson's dead wife's half-sister, his father-in-law having raped her mother while she was his slave. Which just makes everything even worse.— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) July 17, 2020
The incestuous nature of American chattel slavery gives it an particular horror, though all slave societies are also rape societies by their very nature. But the South pretended it wasn't happening even as they kept their own relatives in bondage.— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) July 17, 2020
From the Monticello website:
Tradition holds that she is the child of Martha Jefferson’s father, John Wayles, and Elizabeth Hemings, an enslaved woman, making Martha and her half-sisters. Madison Hemings later stated that Elizabeth Hemings and Wayles had six children together. Likewise, Sally would go on to bear at least six children to her master.
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She came to Monticello as a toddler with the rest of her enslaved family after the death of her father. The Hemingses were part of Jefferson’s inheritance through his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson.
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When Sally Hemings was 14, she was chosen by Jefferson’s sister-in-law to accompany his daughter Maria to Paris, France, as a domestic servant and maid in Jefferson’s household.
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Hemings arrived back in Virginia and slavery at the age of 16. According to Madison Hemings, she was pregnant with Jefferson's child.
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Thomas Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings's children: Beverly and Harriet were allowed to leave Monticello in 1822; Madison and Eston were released in Jefferson's 1826 will.
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Thomas Jefferson did not free Sally Hemings. She was permitted to leave Monticello by his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph not long after Jefferson's death in 1826,