Person:John Wayles (1)

Information on John Wayles

John Wayles was the father-in-law of President Thomas Jefferson. John Wayles had three wives, all of whom pre-deceased him. Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson (wife of Thomas Jefferson) was the daughter of his first wife, Martha Eppes. In 1761, after the death of his third wife, Wayles took Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings as his concubine. According to her descendants, she had six children with Wayles: Robert, James, Thenia, Critta, Peter, and Sally Hemings. Wayles died in 1773, and all eleven members of the Hemings family became the property of Thomas Jefferson.

Historians have tended to accept the account that Betty Hemings and John Wayles had children together, although, as in the case of many relationships between slave-owners and slaves, documentary evidence is slight. Betty was mentioned in John Wayles' will, which some take as an indication of a relationship. Some of Betty's children, according to contemporary accounts, were nearly white. Other support is found in gossip from the first decade of the 19th century, which manifested itself in a few private letters that eventually became public. The accounts of former slaves Isaac Jefferson and Madison Hemings are the most well-known sources for the relationship. (Source: Wikipedia.com [1])

One of the children from John Wayles' relationship with Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings was a daughter, Sally Hemings. Sally became a slave of Thomas Jefferson after the death of John Wayles, and according to some historical data, bolstered by 1998 DNA testing that indicated that a male in Jefferson's line was the father of at least one (or more) of Sally Hemings' children.