Israel Jefferson

Israel Jefferson (1797 – c. 1879), known as Israel Gillette before 1844, was born a slave at Monticello, the plantation estate of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States. He worked as a domestic servant close to Jefferson for years, and also rode with his brothers as a postilion for the landau carriage.

After 1826, Gillette was sold to Thomas Walker Gilmer as part of the sale of 130 slaves from Monticello following Jefferson's death, when many families were broken up. He purchased his freedom from Gilmer in 1844 and took the surname of Jefferson. According to his memoir, this was at the suggestion of a clerk when he registered as a free man.

Jefferson and his freeborn wife Elizabeth moved to the free state of Ohio, where he worked on a steamboat. In 1873, he was interviewed and his memoir was published in the Pike County Republican, the same year as a memoir by Madison Hemings, also a former slave at Monticello. Jefferson's memoir provided detailed information on life at Monticello. In it, he also attested to Thomas Jefferson's fathering the children of Sally Hemings, affirming Madison's account. In 1998, a DNA study showed a match between the Jefferson male line and a descendant of Eston Hemings, the youngest son.

Early life and education Israel Gillette was born into slavery; he estimated about 1797. Thomas Jefferson Randolph claimed records showed Israel's birth to be 1800 . His enslaved parents were a woman known as Jane and Edward Gillett. Together, Edward and Jane had thirteen children, all of whom bore their father's surname Gillette.

During his years as a slave at the Monticello estate, Gillette served in a number of capacities, starting as a waiter at the family table at about the age of eight years. Of his service to Mr. Jefferson, he said: "For fourteen years I made the fire in his bedroom and private chamber, cleaned his office, dusted his books, run of errands and attended him about home". He and his older brother Gilly "... were both retained about the person of our master as long as he lived." He added, "Frequently, gentlemen would call upon him on business of great importance, whom I used to usher into his presence," and "sometimes I would be employed in burnishing or doing some other work in the room where they were."

Among the visitors was the Marquis de Lafayette, who had served in the Revolution. Of that occasion Israel Jefferson recalled:

In those times I minded but little concerning the conversations which took place between Mr. Jefferson and his visitors. But I well recollect a conversation he had with the great and good Lafayette, when he visited this country in 1824 and 1825, as it was of personal interest to me and mine.

Sold from Monticello In 1829, three years after Jefferson's death, Gillette was among the 130 slaves sold from Monticello to settle Jefferson's debts. He was sold to Thomas Walker Gilmer. Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Jefferson's oldest grandson and executor of the late President's estate, supervised the sales, which broke up many of the slave families of Monticello.

Elected to the Virginia House of Delegates that same year, Gilmer was later named Speaker. He went on to be elected the 28th Governor of Virginia, and later to the 27th and 28th U.S. Congress. In 1844 Rep. Gilmer was appointed by President John Tyler to be U.S. Secretary of the Navy. Gillette later said that Gilmer asked him then to go with him to the capital as his servant, but he would have had to leave his wife behind.

Gillette "demurred," as he put it, not refusing but saying he preferred to gain his freedom. Having originally paid $500 for Gillette in 1829, Gilmer agreed in 1844 to let Gillette purchase his freedom for the same price. Gillette had served him for 14 years.

Secretary Gilmer was accidentally killed on board the newly commissioned warship U.S.S. Princeton when one of its two large guns the "Peacemaker" exploded during a test firing while on a ceremonial tour on the Potomac River with 400 guests aboard. He had been in his new post for just over one week. President John Tyler was also onboard, though unhurt. Israel believed that he himself would most assuredly have been killed alongside his former master had he accompanied him to Washington because, as he said, "... it would have been my duty to keep very close to his person." It was the unfortunate fate of another fellow slave by the name of Armistead, who was likewise obliged to be aboard ship at the time, to also perish in the explosion.

In order to avoid the Virginia law requiring freedmen to leave the state within 12 months after manumission, Gillette was purchased in his wife's name.

"Life Among the Lowly" Jefferson had been a close childhood friend of Madison Hemings, a son of Sally Hemings at Monticello. Madison, his brother Eston Hemings and their families also moved to Pike County, Ohio. In the year 1873, Hemings and Jefferson, then both established, older men, were both interviewed by the journalist Samuel F. Wetmore, who published their memoirs successively in the Pike County Republican under the feature title: "Life Among the Lowly." Hemings said that he and his siblings were children of Thomas Jefferson, and that their mother had been his concubine. He accused Israel Jefferson of "calumny" and adding to a political attack, and denied both that his grandfather had the relationship, and that he had freed Hemings and her children.

Jefferson-Hemings controversy

Until the late 20th century, historians generally discounted the testimony of Hemings and Israel Jefferson in favor of the denials of the president's recognized descendants. Following additional late 20th-century historical analysis by Annette Gordon-Reed, among others, and a DNA study in 1998 that disproved the Carr claim and showed a match between the Jefferson male line and an Eston Hemings' descendant, the scholarship has changed dramatically. Many historians now accept that Thomas Jefferson had a long-term relationship with Sally Hemings and fathered all her children. In 2012, the Smithsonian Institution and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation held a major exhibit at the National Museum of American History: Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: The Paradox of Liberty; it says that "evidence strongly support the conclusion that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children."

Other historians continue to dispute these conclusions, suggesting that Randolph Jefferson, the president's younger brother, or other Jeffersons could have been the father. They were never seriously proposed as alternatives until after the DNA study results were known.