Eston Hemings

There Hemings became a professional musician, playing the violin or fiddle and leading a successful dance band.

In a 1902 article of the Scioto Gazette, a correspondent wrote that while Hemings lived in Ohio in the 1840s, it was widely said that he and his brother Madison were the sons of Thomas Jefferson. Several neighbors of his had traveled together to Washington, DC, where they saw a statue of Jefferson and commented on how much Hemings resembled him. The correspondent also recollected: “Eston Hemings, being a master of the violin, and an accomplished "caller" of dances, always officiated at the "swell" entertainments of Chillicothe.”

Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 increased pressure on the black communities in Ohio and other states bordering slave states. In towns along the Underground Railroad, slave catchers invaded the communities, sometimes kidnapping and selling into slavery free people as well as fugitive slaves. In 1852 the Hemingses decided to move their family further north for security, and migrated to Madison, Wisconsin. There they changed their surname to Jefferson, and they identified with the European-American (white) community. Read Less