{"id":55632,"date":"2018-01-29T20:24:04","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T20:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55632"},"modified":"2018-01-29T20:24:04","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T20:24:04","slug":"jeffersons-three-daughters-two-free-one-enslaved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55632","title":{"rendered":"Jefferson\u2019s Three Daughters \u2014 Two Free, One Enslaved"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jefferson\u2019s Three Daughters \u2014 Two Free, One Enslaved<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Book Review<\/a>
\nThe New York Times<\/a>
\n2018-01-26<\/p>\n

Mary Beth Norton<\/strong><\/a>, Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History History
\nCornell University, Ithaca, New York<\/em><\/p>\n

JEFFERSON\u2019S DAUGHTERS<\/strong><\/a>
\n Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America<\/strong><\/a>
\nBy Catherine Kerrison<\/a>
\nIllustrated. 425 pp. Ballantine Books. $28.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nMartha Jefferson Randolph<\/a>
\nCredit Thomas Jefferson Foundation<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Fawn Brodie<\/a> would be astonished \u2014 and gratified. In 1974, her biography \u201cThomas Jefferson: An Intimate History<\/a>\u201d contended that the third president<\/a> had fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings<\/a>. For this, Catherine Kerrison<\/a>, a professor of American history at Villanova University, accurately notes, Brodie was \u201cexcoriated by a cadre of Jefferson experts.\u201d A lot has changed, and largely because of the work of Annette Gordon-Reed<\/a>, who took seriously Hemings family stories and, bolstered by a DNA study<\/a>, convinced nearly all scholars, including Kerrison, that Brodie was correct. \u201cJefferson\u2019s Daughters<\/a>,\u201d Kerrison\u2019s beautifully written book, takes the relationship\u2019s existence as a given.<\/p>\n

And so, to a nuanced study of Jefferson\u2019s two white daughters, Martha<\/a> (born 1772) and Maria<\/a> (born 1778), she innovatively adds a discussion of his only enslaved daughter, Harriet Hemings<\/a> (born 1801). The result is a stunning if unavoidably imbalanced book, combining detailed treatments of Martha\u2019s and Maria\u2019s experiences with imaginative attempts to reconstruct Harriet\u2019s life…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot has changed, and largely because of the work of Annette Gordon-Reed, who took seriously Hemings family stories and, bolstered by a DNA study, convinced nearly all scholars, including Kerrison, that Brodie was correct. \u201cJefferson\u2019s Daughters,\u201d Kerrison\u2019s beautifully written book, takes the relationship\u2019s existence as a given.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,5,459,8,6462,6940,20,693],"tags":[27965,24007,27967,24991,24992,27966,27977,27968,2640,918,2327,477],"class_list":["post-55632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-slavery","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-catherine-kerrison","tag-harriet-hemings","tag-maria-jefferson","tag-martha-jefferson","tag-martha-jefferson-randolph","tag-martha-wayles-jefferson","tag-mary-beth-norton","tag-mary-jefferson-eppes","tag-new-york-times","tag-sally-hemings","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-thomas-jefferson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55633,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55632\/revisions\/55633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}