Learning about the past is an enterprise that never ends, and the departments of ICJS have and continue to fuel new discoveries that support the ongoing work of the Foundation. Monticello strives to present an accurate, honest, and complete history, and ICJS staff play an integral part in helping Monticello to meet that challenge.
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Cooking Up Discoveries - Jefferson's Private Suite - A Broader Story
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series project (PTJ:RS), which began in 1999 in partnership with the Papers of Thomas Jefferson based at Princeton University, aims to make available Thomas Jefferson's complete retirement-era (1809-1826) correspondence, much of which has never been published. These documents have in turn contributed to the work of other departments at Monticello.
In their very first volume, published in 2004, PTJ:RS editors brought to light a document that provided a detailed description of some of the ironwork in Monticello's kitchen. In this letter to Washington iron founder Henry Foxall, Jefferson described the form and number of iron grates he needed for his stew stoves in the kitchen at Monticello. This description allowed curators to commission accurate reproductions for the newly-restored kitchen.
The story of Sally Hemings and her relationship with Thomas Jefferson is emblematic of this change. From the earliest research by James Bear and Cinder Stanton in the 1970s and 80s, to Monticello's formal acknowledgement of the relationship in its 2000 research report, Sally Hemings and her children are now an integral part of Monticello's interpretative efforts, with an exhibit dedicated to this established in the South Wing in 2017.
The Hemings family oral history of their descent from Thomas Jefferson was not well accepted at Monticello or among most historians prior to the late 1990s, but Cinder Stanton’s work with her colleague Dianne Swann-Wright in the Getting Word African American Oral History Project helped to change minds on this topic, including her own.
The first gathering held by the Getting Word project was held in the summer of 1997. Here, historian Lucia (Cinder) Stanton speaks with descendants of Monticello’s enslaved community.
"I had questions before that, but I always was such a fan of Ellen Coolidge, that I couldn't give up her point of view for a long time. That it was unthinkable that her grandfather would be conducting this connection while in the midst of the family. And that made sense to me for a long time. But then once I began reading Madison Hemings and … what he said, and he sounded so honest and compelling, and of course, talking to the descendants who were not making a big thing about who their ancestors were, but just stating it as fact through the families’ stories." - Cinder Stanton Oral History Interview, 9 August 2023.
In 1998, Dr. Eugene Foster announced that the DNA tests he had performed showed a genetic relationship between the Hemings family and the Jefferson male line. In response, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation gathered a committee to investigate the question of Jefferson’s paternity, and announced their own results in a 2000 report:
"The DNA study, combined with multiple strands of currently available documentary and statistical evidence, indicates a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings, and that he most likely was the father of all six of Sally Hemings's children appearing in Jefferson’s records."
In 2018, Monticello opened a new exhibit in the South Wing of Monticello’s dependencies, telling the story of Sally Hemings, her children with Thomas Jefferson, and their descendants.
