Jefferson’s Daughters

Jefferson’s Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America by Catherine Kerrison        Audio Book: 17 hours, 3 mins      Hardback Book:  448 pages          

A most excellent telling of the family history of Thomas Jefferson and his progeny.       Very well researched and told.    This book gives the reader a look at Jefferson’s background, his political life and his family life, both his time in America and the time he spent as a diplomat in France.    It discusses his marriage and loss of his wife and how Sally Hemmings came to be at Monticello and when he and his daughters took her with them to France as a servant and companion to his daughters while there.     The author’s research shows that France did not recognize slavery and when Jefferson left France, Sally Hemmings could have stayed behind a free woman though she had no ready income of her own and would have had to find work and living quarters without help from the Jeffersons had she done so.   The author shows that Jefferson made a pact with her that he would free any children born of their union upon his death and would see that their children would not have to do field labor during his life but would be employed as house servants with some income.     Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson had 6 children, four of which survived to adulthood.   Their three sons, Beverly, Madison and Eston were said to be the spitting image of Jefferson and all were able to pass as Caucasians.     Jefferson and Hemmings’ daughter, Harriet, is thought to have done so. Too, as James Madison said that he knew her well, she was living in Washington, D.C. and had married and had a family.    He would not disclose any more than that about her nor her brother Beverly as Madison kept in touch with them for many years  and would only say that Beverly and Harriet appeared to be happy and doing well, were prosperous and had children of their own and were wealthy members of the community, and both were well thought of bytheir peers.     In so doing, they assured their children of a life of privilege and not servitude which they would have been forced into in those days.   In reinventing themselves,  they denied their parentage and took up another identity thus assuring their heirs a better life than they had started out with by very effectively erasing themselves from known history and Harriet never saw her mother nor two siblings back at Monticello thereafter.     Really in-depth and enthralling.    You will learn much here you hadn’t heard about in your American History classes.   Bravo!   Well done!  I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is history a buff, who finds American history captivating and who would like to know more about what happened to the descendents of Sally Hemmings and Jefferson.   Excellent book.   And you will find out Jefferson left a LOT of debts and why.    (Let’s just say his daughters by his wife were users and expected him to keep them, their non-working husbands and their broods of children in a courtly lifestyle while they did nothing to contribute to the household income.   YEAH that blew through the cash real quick then they ungratefully blamed him and the country for not providing for them until their deaths.)   Reader, you will learn a lot from this book.   Well done.   I highly recommend this book.

American Ghost

American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus
320 Pages

"The award-winning journalist and author of The Beekeeper's Lament attempts to uncover the truth about her great-great-grandmother, Julia--whose ghost is said to haunt an elegant hotel in Santa Fe--in this spellbinding exploration of myth, family history, and the American West. The dark-eyed woman in the long black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Vases of flowers appeared in new locations. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events: blankets ripped off while they slept, the room temperature plummeting, disembodied breathing, dancing balls of light. La Posada--"place of rest"--had been a grand Santa Fe home before it was converted to a hotel. The room with the canopy bed had belonged to Julia Schuster Staab, the wife of the home's original owner. She died in 1896, nearly a century before the hauntings were first reported. In American Ghost, Hannah Nordhaus traces the life, death, and unsettled afterlife of her great-great-grandmother Julia, from her childhood in Germany to her years in the American West with her Jewish merchant husband. American Ghost is a story of pioneer women and immigrants, ghost hunters and psychics, frontier fortitude and mental illness, imagination and lore. As she traces the strands of Julia's life, Nordhaus uncovers a larger tale of how a true-life story becomes a ghost story--and how difficult it can sometimes be to separate history and myth."

This isn't really a ghost story.  Instead I would label as a genealogical trek to the past as the author tries to flesh out family myths and assumptions.  The author also made several visits to various mediums and psychics which I felt weakened the book.