John Hemmings (also spelled Hemings) (1776 – 1833) was an American woodworker. Born into slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello as a member of the large mixed-race Hemings family, he trained in the Monticello Joinery and became a highly skilled carpenter and woodworker, making furniture and crafting the fine woodwork of the interiors at Monticello and Poplar Forest.
Hemmings also served as the master joiner to apprentices Beverley, Madison, and Eston Hemings, Jefferson's sons by Sally Hemings.
After decades of service, John Hemmings was freed in 1826 by Jefferson's will and given the tools to the joinery. He remained at Monticello until about 1831 and died in 1833.
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Early life and education
John Hemmings was born into slavery at Monticello on April 24, 1776. He was the youngest son of the enslaved, mixed-race Betty Hemings and his father was Joseph Neilson, an Irish workman and Jefferson's chief carpenter at Monticello. Hemmings was the eleventh of Betty's children and half-brother to her six children by her enslaver John Wayles, including Sally Hemings, as well as to the oldest four by an unknown father. Because of a 1655 Virginia House of Burgesses law that determined an individual's enslaved or free status through the individual's mother, John Hemings was enslaved despite his three-quarters European heritage. The Hemings family had come to Monticello through the Wayles family when John Wayles's daughter Martha Wayles married Thomas Jefferson.
The vast majority of the Hemings family stayed within close proximity of each other for much of their lifetimes, as Thomas Jefferson's slave rolls at Monticello rarely changed. As many as 70 family members comprising five different generations of the family lived at Monticello. Due to this stability, the members of the Hemings family would have interacted with each other every day.
Hemings children grew up with the understanding that the girls would become house servants and that the boys would become butlers or valets, or perhaps artisans who worked in the many outbuildings on Mulberry Row. Jefferson allowed the Hemings family members a greater amount of agency than was typical for the period: the men were allowed to travel by themselves, learn trades, and hire themselves out on free days and keep the extra wages. The Hemings women were not responsible for any agricultural work and instead performed chores and housework like childcare, sewing, and baking.
As a child, Hemmings was a fieldworker. At age 14, Hemmings worked as an "out-carpenter" working in the woods and fields chopping trees and building fences, barns and three of the slave cabins on Mulberry Row at Monticello. At some point, Hemmings also learned how to read and write, although exactly when and who taught him is unclear; unlike the rest of his family, he spelled his name with a double m.
Marriage and family
Although Virginian law then forbade marriages between enslaved people, John married Priscilla and had a lifelong partnership with her. Priscilla served as the nursemaid for Thomas Jefferson's daughter Martha Randolph's children, first at Edge Hill three miles away from Monticello, but later Priscilla lived with John after Martha Randolph moved to Monticello. The Jefferson grandchildren were fond of Hemmings; they reportedly called him "Daddy" and asked him to make them little wooden presents when they visited his cabin on Mulberry Row, and he wrote letters to Jefferson's granddaughter Septimia Randolph. Priscilla and John were described as highly devout, and they held religious services in their cabin. They had no children, although they were close with Sally Hemings's three boys. When Priscilla died in 1830, Hemmings spent over a year carving her headstone.
Career
In the Monticello Joinery, Thomas Jefferson hired white joiners to train and work alongside enslaved joiners. John Hemmings received his first instructions at 17 years of age in 1793, when Thomas Jefferson wrote to his son-in-law Tom Randolph and asked Randolph to make sure Hemmings received training from the house joiner David Watson to fashion wheels and work with wood. The Monticello Joinery was well-stocked, as Jefferson was intensely engaged in refashioning his properties, and always had projects to complete. Hemmings, therefore, had the benefit of both materials and experience. Hemmings later worked as principal assistant to James Dinsmore, another Monticello joiner.
At the Monticello Joinery, Hemmings contributed to the improvements Jefferson made to Monticello and the construction of Poplar Forest.
At Monticello, Jefferson asked Hemings and Dinsmore to build small enclosures at the south side of the building with louvered blinds that enclosed his living quarters and blocked outside views into his bedroom and study. Hemmings fashioned one of the enclosures into an aviary, likely for Jefferson's mockingbirds. Hemmings independently completed the Chinese railing, Venetian blinds, cellar sashes, bedchamber closet, and window shutters at Monticello.
Jefferson began constructing his octagonal house, Poplar Forest, in 1806 and finished around 1809. At Poplar Forest, Hemmings created the classical trim on the interior and completed work on the roof, including the decorative railing. He also installed a large central skylight and repaired it after a storm in 1819, installed plaster ornaments made by sculptor William Coffee, and made repairs to the house after a roof leak in 1819 and a fire in 1825. Hemmings took Jefferson's sons Beverley, Madison, and Eston Hemings to Poplar Forest to teach them the basics of carpentry and joining.
In 1809, Hemmings assumed responsibility for the Monticello joinery. At this time, most of the exterior of Monticello was finished, but the interior was not yet complete, and most of the furniture was decades old. The joinery changed focus and began creating furniture for Monticello and Jefferson's second home at Poplar Forest. The Monticello Joinery was responsible for desks, chairs, and tables, often created from Jefferson's designs. Hemmings likely made much of the furniture and other woodwork created in the Monticello joinery after 1809, but only eight works are positively attributed to him through records: a "Campeachy" (campeche) chair, boxes made to hold books Jefferson sold to Congress, a desk for Jefferson's granddaughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge, a bedstead, a chess table, Pembroke tables, a hanging cabinet, and a dressing table. The boxes were destroyed, the desk was lost in a shipwreck, the Pembroke tables likely were destroyed in a fire at Poplar Forest, and the bedstead and dressing table remain unlocated. The hanging cabinet, made of walnut and poplar and meant to house the doll clothes of Jefferson's granddaughter Septimia Anne Randolph, was bequeathed to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation in 1957.
Legacy
Monticello has recently begun rebuilding some of the slave cabins on Mulberry Row, which were torn down sometime in the 19th century. One of the slave cabins is a reconstructed and refurnished recreation of the cabin John Hemmings, and his wife Priscilla shared. The interior furnishings of the cabin are taken from a description given by one of Jefferson's grandchildren in her diary. Monticello also offers a tour exploring the Hemings family experience at Monticello through seven of its members. The Joinery no longer stands, but the foundation and the chimney are still there.
In 2012, Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty, an exhibition co-presented by the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, opened in the NMAAHC Gallery at the National Museum of American History. This exhibition highlighted Jefferson's paradoxical dual positions as the drafter of the Declaration of Independence and a slaveholder. Some objects on display were the "Campeachy" (campeche) chair Hemmings created for Jefferson, a copy of the French chairs at Monticello attributed to the joinery, and a hanging cabinet Hemmings made.
The entrance to Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty featured a large statue of Jefferson standing in front of stacks of bricks. Each of the bricks was stamped with the name of one of the 607 people Jefferson enslaved in his lifetime, including the name of John Hemmings. This statue is visible today in the Paradox of Liberty section of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.