| Mary Hemings Bell | |
| Birth Name: | Mary Hemings |
| Birth Date: | c. 1753 |
| Birth Place: | Charles City County, Virginia |
| Death Date: | after 1834 |
| Death Place: | Charlottesville, Virginia |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Domestic servant; free homemaker |
| Children: | 6 |
| Parents: | Elizabeth Hemings |
| Relatives: | Joseph Fossett (son) Peter Fossett (grandson) Sally Hemings (younger sister), Hemings family |
Mary Hemings Bell (c. 1753 – after 1834) was born into slavery, most likely in Charles City County, Virginia, as the oldest child of Elizabeth Hemings, a mixed-race slave held by John Wayles. After the death of Wayles in 1773, Elizabeth, Mary, and her family were inherited by Thomas Jefferson, the husband of Martha Wayles Skelton, a daughter of Wayles, and all moved to Monticello.
While Jefferson was in France, Hemings was hired out to Thomas Bell, a wealthy white merchant in Charlottesville, Virginia. She became his common-law wife and they had two children together. Bell purchased her and the children from Jefferson in 1792 and informally freed them. Mary Hemings Bell was the first Hemings to gain freedom. The couple lived together all their lives. (They were prohibited from marriage by Virginia law at the time.)
In 2007 Mary Hemings Bell was recognized as a Patriot of the Daughters of the American Revolution, because she had been taken as a prisoner of war during the American Revolution. By this honor, all her female descendants are eligible to join the DAR.
Mary, the daughter of Elizabeth Hemings, was born into slavery. Betty was the biracial daughter of an enslaved African woman and, an English sea captain whose surname was Hemings.[1] Mary was the first of Elizabeth's twelve children.[2] [3] Hemings lived at John Wayles' plantation until his son-in-law, Thomas Jefferson, received her as part of a division of Wayles' estate on January 14, 1774.[4]
She was a "valued household servant" and seamstress. Like her mother and sisters, she worked in the household where she took care of Martha Jefferson and her children, sewed, and cleaned. The overseer did not have control or responsibility for managing the work of the female members of the Hemings family.
Mary Hemings had six children, some of whom were freed and some of whom were separated from her when they were sold.
She initially had four children:
During Jefferson's stay in Paris as U.S. minister to France, his overseer hired out Mary Hemings (with her two younger children) to Thomas Bell in Charlottesville. Mary Hemings became partner to Thomas Bell and they had two children:
After his return and at Mary's request, Jefferson sold Mary and her two younger children to Bell in 1792. Bell informally freed the three of them that year, acknowledging the children as his.[15] [16] Hemings then took Bell's name.[17]
Thomas and Mary Bell lived the remainder of their lives together and Thomas Bell became a good friend of Jefferson. Mary Hemings Bell was the first of Betty's children to gain freedom.[18] When Thomas Bell died in 1800, he left Mary and their Bell children a sizable estate, treating them as free in his will. The property included lots on Charlottesville's Main Street. He depended on his neighbors and friends to carry out his wishes, which they did.[19] Hemings lived in a house on Main Street. Although free, Mary Hemings remained in close communication with her enslaved family at Monticello and gave gifts to her children and others. She was remembered by them many years after her death.[20] As an elderly man, her grandson Peter Fossett recalled how when he was a child, his free grandmother Mary gave him a suit of blue nankeen cloth and a red leather hat and shoes, grand compared to the attire of children of field slaves.[21] She finished her days in Charlottesville. Her grave site remains unknown.
In 1780, after Jefferson was elected as the governor of Virginia during the American Revolutionary War, he moved his family to the state capitol of Williamsburg, taking along with them a number of slaves, including Hemings. The following year, Jefferson relocated his household to the new capital of Richmond. When British forces led by Benedict Arnold raided Richmond searching for Jefferson, they took Mary Hemings and other slaves owned by him as prisoners of war. After the 1781 siege of Yorktown, Hemings was released from British captivity and returned to being enslaved by Jefferson.[22] In 2007, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) declared Hemings to be a "Patriot of the Revolution" by virtue of her status as a prisoner of war, which automatically qualified Hemings' female descendants as eligible to join the DAR; Hemings was the first slave to be honored as such.[23]
One of Mary's most notable descendants was William Monroe Trotter, who became a prominent Boston newspaper publisher, human rights activist, and a founder of the Niagara Movement, precursor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Trotter was graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1895; in his junior year he became the first man of color to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key there.[24] Trotter was a contemporary of fellow Harvard alumnus W. E. B. Du Bois. In 1896, Trotter earned a master's degree from Harvard, planning a career in international banking. But despite his outstanding credentials, racism thwarted his efforts to find work in that field.