Is there any evidence that Sally Hemings had any privileges?
I see no sign of any special privileges that Sally Hemings had, based on what’s in the farm book. She was treated as other domestic servants. She gets the same food rations, the same amount of cornmeal and meat, the same clothing as the other house servants. There’s nothing to suggest special distinctions in here. . . . She is still a slave. I remember when the Woodson family came to Monticello. I started to point out where the log cabin she might have lived in probably was located. They were shocked that she would live in a log cabin with an earthen floor, and a little stick-and-mud chimney. But I think she had the same living conditions as others in her family. Is there anything else that is revealed in Jefferson’s farm book? In these lists of families in the farm book, Jefferson lists them the way virtually every other slaveholder at the time did–usually by first name only, and often a diminutive. This was part of the whole way of dehumanizing his enslaved labor force. But Jefferso
