The Monticello Assocation, made up of descendants of Thomas Jefferson, has decided to forever banish the descendants of the union between Jefferson and the slave Sally Hemings from the family graveyard at Monticello, Jefferson’s last home.
They said they were tired of dealing with the issue.
Their response was inevitable from the moment they demanded DNA testing, and forgets the fact that a family operates solely on faith and welcomes in all comers, some more gracefully than others. A family’s job is to celebrate the living and not the dead; to take pride in each other’s present-day accomplishments and who we are now. Fortunately, not all of us have forgotten.
My name is Martha Randolph Carr and I am a Jefferson descendant. The ancestor I was named for, Martha Jefferson Carr, Thomas Jefferson’s sister, is buried right next to him. A small square headstone with our shared name and just the dates of her birth and death sits next to the oversized obelisk that bears Jefferson’s name, dates and the accomplishments he cherished most.
The private cemetery everyone is arguing over is appropriately halfway between the public parking lots and the house. The list of whom could be buried there has been very defined and easily managed. Who could even walk in the graveyard was given a common definition. But science — DNA testing — threw a rock at all of that, and thank God.
The desire to know where a body has come from, and the desire of others to maintain strict lines around who is in their family and who is out, collided in the family stories of Sally Hemings’ descendants. Maybe no one would have worked as hard to prove blood ties if some of my white cousins hadn’t been so adamant that no one of color could possibly belong and therefore be buried by their side. But I bless them every day for their rigidity because of the unforeseen blessings their smallness, their fear, has given way to.
In order to determine who was related to whom, whether Sally Hemings’ descendants were direct descendants of Jefferson’s or related to a Carr (the progenitor Carr, Jefferson’s boyhood friend Dabney Carr, was married to Jefferson’s sister Martha), making them nieces and nephews like me, male descendants of every possible line had to be located. Male Jeffersons and male Carrs. Cousins in almost every state were found, including Puerto Rico, and included many cousins of color, many I’d never known of. How wonderful and weird to find out not only were there more, but many of them come in every shade and hue of brown.
Not Hemings descendants, but Carr and Barnett descendants, making them Jefferson family members as well. These cousins were the result of a union between Samuel Carr, one of Dabney’s sons, and Judith Barnett, a free person of color. Samuel had recognized their six children as his own and many even took his surname. The last years of his life were spent in Ohio near them.
“I was expecting issues and resistance,” said Charles Terry, an Ohio cousin of color, after meeting a group of his Carr cousins. “I was expecting denial, and pleasantly, that wasn’t the case with the majority of the Charlottesville cousins. I was shocked over the acceptance and at not finding rejection.
“I noticed how similar the Charlottesville Carrs [Charles’ name for the white side of the family] were to the Ohio Carrs. How quiet they are and oh, how they love a good story.” There was that easy Carr laugh. Never very loud, never at someone else’s expense.
It’s hard to get a Carr to be impressed by what you do or what you own, but if you can tell a good story that gets everyone to be quiet. Now that’s something, Charles said.
“They’re family. They’re the same as I am,” he said.
Newly found family
My sister Linda, the second child out of four girls and one boy — the heir, Dabney Jefferson Carr IV — was in charge of planning a service in the family graveyard to commemorate the coming together of our new family. Ours is a very patriarchal family, but Linda in her wisdom, changed that for a few hours. The names of our earliest Virginia ancestors were read off one at a time, starting with the women, as a white rose was laid on each of those graves. I was able to place a rose on my namesake’s grave, and as I did, I stopped there to watch Phyllis Jarrett, a cousin of color, carry a rose to her great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel, and place it carefully by his name. As she went by me, back to the throng of people, I grabbed her hand and kept her next to me. My newly found cousin.
Recently, Charles felt the need to know for sure if he was blood-related. I was sorry to hear it yet held my tongue. But, fortunately — and I have told him I think it was fortunate — the company that was to do the testing went bankrupt and the broker who held the money fled, cash in hand. Charles laughs at the end of that story.
A feeling of belonging
“We’re a family, not an institution,” I finally tell him. “People are let in because they believe they belong with us, not because science figured out a way to make it okay. It was always okay.”
I’m relieved to hear Charles laugh.
The family is now trying to set up a trust fund to benefit all the Carrs who come after us, making me wonder if we can always be so open to newly discovered cousins.
“Maybe, the test should be we set up a time and place and if they’re late but eager to help out, they’re in,” said Charles, laughing at the common trait most of us share.
“Love ya’ cousin,” he says, before hanging up. It’s the way he ends all our phone calls.
My son and I are taking off for Chicago to live, leaving Virginia behind. It’s time for a new adventure. The easy laugh and self-reliance my family has passed down to all of us makes it easy to venture out beyond their realm and I’m heading to Chicago with as much anticipation as I did when I was a 17-year-old setting off for college. Anything is possible. And, I know, if I had to, there are a thousand arms of every shade I can come back to, who would love to hear how I’m doing now.
