Posted on 02/21/2017 2:26:51 AM PST by iowamark
A $35 million restoration of Monticello is underway, but it's what's been buried under a restroom there for nearly 80 years that's been attracting the most attention of late: the bedroom of Sally Hemings, one of President Thomas Jefferson's slaves and the mother of six children who historians suspect were his, the Washington Post reports. The WWII-era bathroom that was apparently built over where Hemings slept, close to Jefferson's own bedroom, has been slowly pulled apart by archaeologists based on coordinates provided by the third president's own grandson. The work is revealing the 18th-century plaster walls and brick floor, and peeling back the cover-up of a long-hidden (but well-known) secret of Jefferson's longtime relationship with Hemings.
USA Today explains it's all part of the Mountaintop Project, an ambitious initiative to bring the former Virginia plantation back to how "Jefferson knew it," and to showcase more stories of those who lived on the estate—both free residents and slaves, of which the author of the Declaration of Independence owned hundreds. Hemings, believed to have been a nursemaid for the president's daughter, then a regular Monticello maid, is rumored to be the daughter of Jefferson's father-in-law. Once the room (set to be open to the public next year) is fully restored, it will be furnished with artifacts from the Jefferson-Hemings period. A philanthropist who's donated money to various Monticello projects says bringing people to such historic landmarks means you have to "show them what it was really like. … The good and bad of history." (The UVa community pleaded with its president to not quote Jefferson.)
No....these were over by the gardens....west of the house. They were tiny huts. I was there in 1988.
I agree with you. I read all the info on the DNA results.
You’re right it’s Randolph, I remembered the name incorrectly!
If only Martin Luther King Jr., the only man to have a named federal holiday, was subject to the same evocative scrutiny.
Allow me to rephrase myself.
MLK wouldn’t have a his own national holiday if he was subject to the same scrutiny as Thomas Jefferson.
I had the same impression of the tour when I took it.
Perhaps they were sun shades for the field workers during the heat of the day.
Yes, you are correct in the technical sense. However, certainly Sally being “let go” was highly unusual since the estate was in severe debt and all the other slaves were sold who were not named in the will.
https://www.monticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/sale-monticello
True, but Heming value at sale would have been low. She was 58 years old, and her sole skill was as a seamstress. Virginia law required “freed slaves” to leave the state.
By allowing her to remain technically a slave, Hemings could live out her life with her sons and not be required to leave Virginia. That was the law, how rigorously that law was enforced, I don’t know.
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