Robert Hughes

Rev. Robert Hughes

Robert Hughes (1824-1895) was related to two important enslaved families at Monticello, the Hemings family and the Granger family. As the son of Wormley Hughes, grandson of Betty Brown, and great-grandson of Elizabeth Hemings, he was a member of the large Hemings family. The Granger connection derived from Robert's mother, Ursula Granger Hughes, who was the daughter of George Granger, Jr., granddaughter of Great George Granger and Ursula Granger, and niece of Isaac Granger Jefferson.

Robert Hughes was born at Monticello. Along with his mother and several of his siblings, he lived in slavery until the end of the Civil War at Edgehill, the plantation of Thomas Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. After the war, Hughes, who was a blacksmith, acquired over a hundred acres of Albemarle County land. He was the founding minister of Union Run Baptist Church near Charlottesville, Virginia, where he served for three decades.