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Though there were several surnames
among the slaves on the “mountaintop”—Fossett, Hern, Colbert, Gillette, Brown, Hughes—they were all Hemingses by
blood, descendants of the matriarch Elizabeth “Betty” Hemings, or Hemings relatives by marriage.

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Once, a
missing bundle of rod had started a fight in the nailery that got one boy’s skull bashed in and another sold south to terrify
the rest of the children

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What Jefferson set out clearly for the first time was
that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children.

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The only asset more valuable than the black people was the land
itself.

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the nailery was functioning very well because “the small ones” were being whipped. The youngsters did not take
willingly to being forced to show up in the icy midwinter hour before dawn at the master’s nail forge. And so the
overseer, Gabriel Lilly, was whipping them “for truancy.”

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My master was, to my knowledge, the
father of eleven slaves.

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He was too scrupulous to sell me; but he had no scruples whatever about committing a much greater
wrong against the helpless young girl placed under his guardianship,

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The young wife soon
learns that the husband in whose hands she has placed her happiness pays no regard to his marriage vows.
Children of every shade of complexion play with her own fair babies, and too well she knows that they
are born unto him of his own household.

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Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not
trouble themselves about it. They regard such children as property,

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With an
occasional kick of the older men and women, and many a sharp crack of the whip about the ears of the
younger slaves, it was not long before they were all astir, and wide awake.

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He would make us hold
up our heads, walk briskly back and forth, while customers would feel of our hands and arms and bodies,
turn us about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a
jockey examines a horse which he is about to barter for or purchase. Sometimes a man or woman was
taken back to the small house in the yard, stripped, and inspected more minutely. Scars upon a slave’s
back were considered evidence of a rebellious or unruly spirit, and hurt his sale.

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Freeman, however, declared that I was sound and healthy, of a good constitution,
and intelligent. He made it a point to enlarge upon my musical attainments. The old gentleman argued
quite adroitly that there was nothing extraordinary about the nigger, and finally, to my regret, went out,
saying he would call again.

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The man
answered that he could not afford it, and then Eliza burst into a paroxysm of grief, weeping plaintively.
Freeman turned round to her, savagely, with his whip in his uplifted hand, ordering her to stop her noise,
or he would flog her. He would not have such work – such snivelling; and unless she ceased that minute,
he would take her to the yard and give her a hundred lashes.

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“Don’t cry, mama. I will be a good boy. Don’t cry,” said Randall, looking back, as they passed out of the
door.

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James Hemings, the 17-year-old son of the house servant Critta Hemings, had been sick for three
nights running, so sick that Oldham feared the boy might not live. He took Hemings into his own room to keep watch over
him. When he told Lilly that Hemings was seriously ill, Lilly said he would whip Jimmy into working. Oldham “begged
him not to punish him,” but “this had no effect.” The “Barbarity” ensued: Lilly “whipped him three times in one day, and
the boy was really not able to raise his hand to his head.” ...

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After Jefferson’s death in 1826, the families of Jefferson’s most devoted servants were split apart. Onto the auction block
went Caroline Hughes, the 9-year-old daughter of Jefferson’s gardener Wormley Hughes. One family was divided up
among eight different buyers, another family among seven buyers.

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Joseph Fossett, a Monticello blacksmith, was among the handful of slaves freed in Jefferson’s will, but Jefferson left Fossett’s family enslaved. Fossett found sympathetic buyers for his wife, his son Peter and two other children, but he watched the auction of three young daughters to different buyers.