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1) How history surprises. Got a query the other day from an editor at The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton) about a reference in TJ's Summary Journal of Letters. TJ records receiving a letter on Nov. 19 1805 from Critta Bowles. I almost fell out of my chair.
2) Critta Bowles was the married name of Critta Hemings, sister of Sally Hemings and daughter of Elizabeth Hemings and Johns Wayles. We knew she was married to Zacharia Bowles whenTJ died in 1826. We had indications they had married before that, but this sets an early time.
3) The letter itself is missing. And the listing under Bowles may have obscured this entry. In any event, there is much to think of. We knew her brother Robert corresponded with TJ. Those letters are gone, too. This is the first confirmation that a Hemings sister wrote to TJ.
4). Critta Bowles was still enslaved at Monticello. Her husband was a free man.The super patriarch TJ listed her under her husband's name although the marriage had no legal force because, well, patriarchy.
5) What was she writing to TJ, who was in Washington being president, about? We'll likely never know unless the letter turns up or something describing the letter turns up. But here's the context. Her son, James (Jamey) Hemings, worked in the Monticello nail factory.
6) The overseer Gabriel Lilly beat Jamey so badly that Jamey ran away. TJ sent someone to get him from Richmond where he ran, likely to be near his uncle, Robert, who lived there with his wife and kids.
7) Jamey sent word to TJ that he wouldn't come back unless TJ removed him from Lilly's control & and let him work with his uncle, John Hemings, the carpenter. Overseers at Monticello didn't have authority over TJ's artisans or people who worked in the house. TJ agreed to this.
8) Then Jamey decided not to come back at all. TJ just removed him from the roll of enslaved people. The next reference to him is in the 18 teens, when TJ notes paying Jamey, then a young man, for finding a part for his telescope.
9) Critta Bowles's letter to TJ was written in the middle of all of this. We do not know, but it would not surprise me if was about her son, Jamey.
10) It was important that Jamey was the grandson of TJ’s father-in-law John Wayles, the half-nephew of his wife Martha, the nephew of Sally Hemings, the first cousin to his kids, Beverley, Harriet,& Madison— Eston had not been born yet.
