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.
Early life and education
John Hemmings was born into slavery at Monticello on April 24, 1776. He was the youngest son of the mixed-race slave 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 late master 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 slave or free status through the individual's mother, John Hemings was considered a slave 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. In fact, 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 time 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 slave marriages were not recognized by Virginian law, 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 extremely devout, and they held religious services in their cabin. They had no children of their own, although they were close with Sally Hemings's three boys. When Priscilla died in 1830, Hemmings spent over a year carving her headstone himself.
Career
In the Monticello Joinery, Thomas Jefferson hired white joiners to train and work side by side with 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 both the improvements Jefferson made to Monticello and the construction of Poplar Forest.