CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVEC) -- The sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, and a slave he owned was the scandal of his time. For decades, their relationship was told through rumor and innuendo.
Now, historians at Jefferson’s home, Monticello, are making room for Sally Hemings and the life she lived there.
Hemings had been mentioned in some of the stories told at Monticello, but archaeologists currently are helping to expand the narrative, restoring the room where she and the six children she had with Jefferson lived in the home’s south wing. For the first time since the public has been able to visit Monticello, people will be able to see Hemings' story, physically.
“She's probably one of the most well-known people who was ever enslaved in the history of the United States,” said Brandon Dillard, Monticello’s Manager of Special Programs.
“Given that we know that a Jefferson was the father through DNA testing, we can look at Thomas Jefferson's records. This is a man that wrote down the temperature and precipitation twice a day, every day of his life, so we know where he was and what he was doing,” Dillard explained. “He's the only male Jefferson who was definitively with Sally Hemings exactly nine months before she gives birth to all six of her children.”
Those records and the work of archaeologists, including Gardiner Hallock, let us know what life looked like for Hemings and her children at Monticello 200 years ago.
“It was a detective story,” said Hallock, describing the efforts of him and his crew.
They had to dig through modern walls and four inches of a cement floor where a men's restroom once sat. Most recently, the area served as a storage space.
History, literally, was covered up.
“This is a once in a generation opportunity,” noted Hallock, who took 13News Now on a tour through the exhibit before it opens to the public.
“We have just a few of the original bricks that Jefferson's masons laid in 1802 that would've paved the floor,” he said as he showed the bricks. “We've also been able to find pieces of evidence of how the room was finished. This is possibly where Sally Hemings would have possibly started a fire to warm her family.”
What archaeology won't tell us, however, is what the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson may have been like.
Dillard said if asked to describe the relationship, the most honest answer, even for historians who have spent their lives studying Hemings and Jefferson, would be: "We don't know."
“Thomas Jefferson owned Sally Hemings,” stated Dillard. “He was 30 years older than she was, and the reality of a white man and a black woman two centuries ago, itself, presents a lot of power imbalance. Honestly, consent probably wasn't part of the conversation.”
Despite the circumstances, historians can’t rule out the potential for true affection, even love, in the relationship.
“Denying Sally Hemings the possibility of having had genuine feelings for Thomas Jefferson denies her an agency that she was denied in life,” Dillard explained.
Shannon LaNier, however, didn’t grow up hearing romantic love stories.
“Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings are my great, great, great, great, great, great-grandparents,” said LaNier.
His family always yearned to learn more about Sally.
“When I heard about the renovations, I said 'It's about time,'” recalled LaNier. “The thing about history is when mistakes are made we try to correct them, and we try to tell the truth. We don't try to just keep covering them up or act like it never happened. It happened.”
The new exhibit at Monticello might not be able to give the complete picture about the relationship between Hemings and Jefferson, but many believe it will give a better picture and tell a better, truer story.
“A lot of institutions can learn from what they're doing and how they're trying to tell the correct story and the right story, and it's never too late to tell the truth,” LaNier stated. “There's never a wrong time to tell the truth and do the right thing.”
The Sally Hemings' Room is set to open in spring 2018.