Eston Hemings, the formerly enslaved son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings [A], had lived in Ohio since the late 1830s, when, after his mother’s death, he packed up his family consisting of his wife, Julia, and their three children: John, Annie, and Beverly. However, the future for Eston and his family seemed to never be assured.

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was signed into law, allowing for slaves to be captured in any state and essentially acting as a legal kidnapping method. This, along with the fact that Eston was still remaining in African-American society, were almost certainly push factors for him to pack up his life as an “African-American” and pass over into white society.

And thus it so happened: in the Fall of 1852, Eston and his family left Chillicothe, OH for a better life in Madison, WI. One must wonder though: why Wisconsin? Although we don’t know the exact answer, one potential pull factor is that Wisconsin, which had become a free state in 1848, had a growing abolitionist community. Additionally, the ability for him and his family to easily pass over as white people in Wisconsin without recognition or fear would’ve almost certainly been a contributing factor.

Julia Jefferson Westerinen, a great-great-granddaughter of Eston, in a somewhat modified family retelling of the story [B], recalled that: “…my ancestor came from Virginia, through Ohio, to Wisconsin in a covered wagon…”

After arriving in Wisconsin, however, the family’s happiness was short-lived. Eston’s daughter, Annie, married Albert Pearson. However, just a month before the birth of their first child (his first grandchild), Eston died, aged 47. Although his cause of death is unknown, Hemings-Jefferson family tradition suggests that he died of smallpox. He is buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, WI, where his headstone reads thus:

“E. H. Jefferson

Died ~ Jan. 3, 1856.

Æ 48 ys 7 ms”

Notes:

[A] The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, along with the majority of Jeffersonian scholars, have affirmed that he did father enslaved children by his slave, Sally Hemings.

[B] Eston’s direct male-line great-grandsons (Beverly, William, and Carl Jr.) met in the 1940s or 1950s and agreed to end the Sally Hemings story with them out of fear due to segregation and the one drop rule, favoring a story that they descended from an a uncle of Jefferson. This has often been misquoted as them saying that they descended from an “Uncle Ran” or an “Uncle Randolph.”

- Tim Marsh