November 22, 2025 • 26 mins
(Host: Kristin)
You know it and love it, but did you realize who was responsible for bringing macaroni and cheese into your life? Learn about James Hemings, the enslaved man who traveled to France and trained in French cuisine, this week on Footnoting History!
For further reading suggestions and more, please visit: https://www.footnotinghistory.com
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You know it and you love it, but did you realize who was responsible for bringing
macaroni and cheese into your life? Learn about James Hemings, the enslaved man who
traveled to France and trained in French cuisine, this week on Footnoting History!
(00:24):
Hello, Footnoting History friends, it’s Kristin, here to make sure you know all
the important historical stuff – and if you’re listening to this episode around release day,
to bring you a little Thanksgiving pre-game. Today, we’re talking macaroni and cheese – and
I wasn’t kidding, this is important historical stuff. Mac and cheese is one of the most
(00:47):
delightful culinary contributions to our world and one that is a frequent star at the American
Thanksgiving table, including my own. And you have James Hemings to thank for that.
Before I tell you about James Hemings – or as much about him as we know – remember
that you can find a captioned version of this episode on our website FootnotingHistory.com
(01:08):
as well as on our YouTube channel. And if you’d like to read more about James,
you can find a list of Further Reading on our website, footnotinghistory.com.
Also, true to Kristin form, before I tell you what we know about James Hemings and how he brought mac
and cheese to the table, I’m going to tell you a little bit about how we know what we know – which
is complicated because James Hemings was enslaved, and as a general matter, historians do not know
(01:33):
nearly enough about the backgrounds and lives of enslaved people because the institution of
slavery bypassed the personhood of the enslaved and treated them as commodities and numbers,
rather than individuals. James – and his family, the Hemingses – are a little different,
and in fact, historians know more about them than many free white people in the 18th and
(01:54):
early 19th-century Virginia where they lived. The information is still not as fulsome as we would
like but we do have some information, and a lot of that information comes to us from documents that
detailed James Hemings’ ownership. The person who wrote those documents wrote a lotta stuff – some
of which you may be particularly familiar with if you’re a student of American history. And
(02:16):
that guy was Thomas Jefferson, who was just prolific in writing down all kinds of stuff.
Annette Gordon-Reed – whose book, The Hemingses of Monticello, which I highly recommend and there are
also clips of her talking about James on the Monticello website – Gordon-Reed talks about
sitting down with one of the main sources on the Hemingses – Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book,
(02:37):
written by Jefferson between 1774-1824 and now held at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Farm Book is basically what it sounds like. It’s a very detailed record of the agricultural
operations on Jefferson’s various properties, the most famous of which is the plantation of
Monticello which is about 70 miles northwest of Richmond, Virginia. And before I go on,
(03:02):
I will say that I am pronouncing it Monti-CHELL-o and not Monti-SELL-o because that is what the
Monticello website says it’s supposed to be. Apparently, there was some confusion in the
1960s when NBC released its pronunciation manual and decided it was supposed to be
SELL not CHELL but CHELL was how Jefferson pronounced it, so Monti-CHELL-o it is.
(03:22):
The Farm Book was about what and how much was being produced and the livestock … and the
enslaved people who ran the plantations and farms. The Farm Book isn’t the only mention
of the Hemingses and not the only mention by Jefferson – but it’s a significant source.
Jefferson also wrote a lot of letters that talked about the Hemingses. We
also have the memoirs of Madison Hemings, who was James’ nephew – and a lot of oral
(03:45):
histories from people who lived at Monticello and knew the people there
as well. And certainly people outside of Monticello aware of the family and wrote
about them. There are also a small number of surviving recipes that James Hemings wrote.
Sally Hemings is probably the Hemings you think of first in the context of Thomas Jefferson and
the Hemings family, if you have heard of them – and she was James Hemings’ younger sister.
(04:10):
You might be familiar with her story – or you may not – but it does provide some important
context to James’ story, so I’ll just give you a brief overview. Sally was born into slavery
around 1773 on a Virginia plantation called “The Forest” that was owned by a man named John Wayles,
who historians believe was Sally’s father. Sally’s mother, Elizabeth also called “Betty,” was born
(04:33):
sometime in the 1730s to an African mother and an English father who was the captain of a trading
vessel. Because Betty’s mother was enslaved, so too was her daughter and any other children she
might have. John Wales would not sell Betty to her father, though her father did try. Likely,
this captain’s last name was Hemings – he acknowledged that Betty was his even though
(04:54):
he didn’t have a legal claim to her, he still gave her his name and that’s where the last name
Hemings comes from. We do not know what Betty’s mother’s name was. John Wayles would go on to
father six children with Betty, one of whom was Sally and another of whom was James. Sally was the
youngest of Elizabeth and John’s children, born in 1773; James was their second oldest child,
(05:16):
born in 1765. John Wayles was Thomas Jefferson’s father-in-law. When Wayles died, Thomas Jefferson,
by way of his wife, Martha, inherited the Hemingses, other enslaved people,
and other property. That was a horrible sentence to say but that’s what happened.
People were talking about Thom and Sally as early as the 1790s and their “relationship” (and there
(05:39):
is much debate about whether we can even call it that). Their relationship was brought up in the
presidential campaign in the early 1800s because Jefferson’s political opponents thought that would
work against him (spoiler (05:50):
it didn’t). People still called Sally and her family awful things
in the press – but Sally didn’t actually say anything publicly that we know about, nor did
her family. What we do know is this (06:00):
Sally went to Paris to work in Jefferson’s household in 1787
when he was the U.S. Minister to France, when she was 14 years old and he was 44. Sally was supposed
to be there as a maid for Jefferson’s daughters, but he initiated a sexual relationship with Sally
and when it was time to go home, in 1789, she was pregnant. Slavery was not legal in France at that
(06:25):
time (the French weren’t exactly against the enslavement of others – there was still slavery
in the French colonies in the Caribbean)– but in Paris, Sally was free, and it seems she did not
want to go back to Virginia. Jefferson convinced her to go back – Madison Hemings talks about how
he promised her “extraordinary privileges” – and also promised to free all her children when
(06:46):
they turned 21 – which he did do. Sally and Thom had a sexual relationship for decades after they
returned from France. There has been much written on the nature and the consensual aspect of this
relationship that is certainly interesting but not really the focus here today. So,
I encourage you to head to the Further Reading for directions to go, if you’re so interested.
(07:08):
I am a professionally trained historian, I get the idea of placing people in their historical
context and how people are complicated, they can do both good and bad things, like I get it.
Gordon-Reed has a great section in her book about how older men and much younger women
pairing up was far more acceptable then than it is today. Still, I read all this – 44-year-old man
(07:29):
and a 14-year-old girl of wildly different social statuses and powers and just … no. Jefferson … no.
Also in France, around this time, right before the French Revolution, was Sally’s brother James,
who was training in French cuisine so Jefferson could do more fancy European living back in
(07:51):
America. Jefferson was enamored with All Things European, the architecture, the culture, the food.
He had ideas for how he wanted Monticello to be. And James Hemings would be an integral part of how
that transformation would happen. James moved to Monticello in 1773 when he was 8 years old
(08:12):
when John Wayles died. But before Wayles died, Jefferson visited and was in contact with the
Hemings children and singled them out for special treatment. According to the Monticello website,
the first mention we have of James by Jefferson is when James sold him a mockingbird. When Wayles
died and the Hemings boys came to Monticello, they got special privileges, like being able
(08:34):
to travel around on their own, they got to learn trades and they were allowed to hire themselves
out and keep their wages. Many of the Hemings boys grew up to be artisans who were the carpenters and
skilled workers of Monticello and built what you see today. They were not working in the fields,
nor were the Hemings women. In 1781, James and his brother Robert were working as valets
(08:58):
for Jefferson while he was in Williamsburg and then in Richmond when Jefferson was the
wartime Governor of Virginia. Of course, people wonder why Jefferson singled out the Hemingses,
and there has been a lot written on that, too. Most theories have to do with the mixed
race of the family and how their lineage caused people to view them differently,
more capable, more intelligent, than other people of African descent, and though they were enslaved
(09:23):
and definitely not viewed as equal, they were still sort of part of this larger Wayles family.
When Jefferson was first appointed commerce minister by George Washington in 1784,
and when Jefferson went to Paris, 19-year-old James went with him to train in French cuisine.
Jefferson was really into this idea of James – who had worked in the kitchens in Monticello and
(09:46):
who must have shown some talent for cooking – learning how to make fancy French food but
it’s kind of a mystery as to why. Thomas Craughwell – whose book is listed in the
Further Reading – doesn’t think that Jefferson had ever even tasted French cuisine before he got to
Paris – there were no French chefs in Virginia, and while there were perhaps French immigrants
around and there were certainly French military officers helping during the American Revolution,
(10:10):
it doesn’t seem like Jefferson knew exactly why he wanted what he wanted except Jefferson
was just a generally curious person, and that French cooking had a reputation for
being exciting and varied and finely executed. And I guess he was going anyway, so why not?
Also, Jefferson was a people-pleaser. Many historians have written about how he loved to
(10:33):
be loved, and he loved entertaining people. People often didn’t like him right away, but spend a few
minutes with him, and he felt like your best friend. He was constantly hosting dinners at
Monticello and his other properties. He put in a large kitchen at Monticello in 1770 (which,
fun fact, was turned into visitor bathrooms in the 1960s because no one thought the kitchen would be
(10:55):
interesting to people – don’t worry, they’ve fixed that, it’s restored now). The original
kitchen included gardens where Jefferson directed plants to be grown that he imported from Europe
and Mexico – he did order fig plants from France; he also had orchards and vineyards.
He tried to grow European vine varieties – the vitis vinifera which is grown in France
(11:17):
but not exclusively in France – but it didn’t work out. He tried American varieties too,
but Monitcello wine was not winning any awards. Jefferson, his older daughter Patsy, and James
left for Paris in July of 1784 and arrived in Paris in August. They were supposed to be
staying at the Hôtel d’Orléans but – there were actually two places with that name in Paris,
(11:40):
and they ended up at the wrong one first. John Adams and Ben Franklin were also there – at the
correct Hôtel d’Orléans in the Left Bank, where Jefferson, and James eventually moved. (Patsy
was a part-timer and went to school at an abbey during the week. Polly, the younger daughter,
would go there too when she came a little later.) Eventually, the Jefferson household moved to
(12:01):
another residence on the Champs-Elysées, which was a happen’ place to be in the 18th-century and
must have been very exciting, if not overwhelming at first, for a person who hadn’t traveled much
in his life, meaning James. Jefferson had no real plan for James learning how to cook French cuisine
before leaving America for France, but when they got there, he started looking around for
(12:22):
somewhere for James to apprentice and eventually found a restauranteur and caterer named Monsieur
Combeaux who charged 150 francs to teach James the culinary ropes – the details of which we don’t,
unfortunately, know much about but we do know that James was with Combeaux for many months.
He also worked in the household of the Prince de Condé, who charged a lot more than Combeaux,
(12:46):
where among other things, he learned how to make French pastry, which is definitely not easy.
We do know that James learned French, and he spoke it better than Jefferson did. I find it
endlessly amusing that Thomas Jefferson thought he spoke French, and maybe he technically knew it,
but the guy who taught him had a thick Scottish accent and so when he got to Paris,
(13:08):
no one could understand what he was saying, and he didn’t seem to ever really speak French well.
James got the hang of it pretty quick, though – I mean, he kind of had to – but learning a new
language is not easy, and there is a lot of evidence that James was a proficient French
speaker. He was also certainly aware that, in France, he was a free man – and he encountered
(13:30):
other free Black men and women in Paris. James Hemings had freedom of movement in Paris,
and he was pulling a wage, and he hired a tutor in 1787 to learn French better, so maybe
he was thinking of staying. And that’s maybe why Jefferson eventually agreed to emancipate James:
if he taught someone else of Jefferson’s choosing what he learned in France, someone who could take
(13:52):
his place back in America. (The written agreement from Jefferson comes after their return to
America, but there was maybe some discussion to that effect before the Jefferson/Hemings
crew left Paris.) A lot of people have done a lot of wondering – including me – why James
(or Sally for that matter) agreed to return with Jefferson to places where slavery was legal when
(14:12):
they were free in France and they only had the unenforceable promises of Jefferson to either
free them or their children. It’s something of a mystery and neither James nor Sally ever really
said. We can imagine that they truly believed Jefferson, he treated them “well,” (you know,
minus the enslavement part, but Jefferson did tend to keep enslaved families together and he
(14:36):
did favor the Hemingses, so when you’re weighing your realistic options, that probably factored
in); maybe they wanted to believe Jefferson because France wasn’t looking so good in 1789,
there was still a lot of social and racial hurdles that were difficult if not impossible to surpass,
and the rest of their family was back in Virginia but … we don’t really know.
(14:57):
And while we also don’t know exactly what Combeaux and de Condé’s chef were teaching James in their
kitchens, we do have written evidence of what French cuisine was like around this time,
notably a multi-volume cookbook called Les Dons de Comus – The Gifts of Comus – written
in 1739 by François Marin. He was a big deal Parisian chef who was writing for a
(15:18):
bourgeoisie audience (so not the nobility but people who were wealthy enough to want
to eat like the nobility – kind of describes Jefferson). The books were super popular and
had a lot of later reprintings and you can read versions of the work online, if you’re curious.
There’s lots of really interesting stuff in it, but for our purposes, it’s important to
know that it’s full of sauces like béchamel which is a base of butter and flour cooked
(15:41):
together with the addition of milk – fancy French chefs and Top Chef wannabes call this a roux.
James knocked his apprenticeship out of the park – and he eventually became the head chef
at Jefferson’s Paris house in 1787, which was the same year that Sally headed over to join the
household with Jefferson’s younger daughter. Jefferson was a big deal American diplomat,
(16:04):
and he was entertaining lots of important and wealthy and culinarily discerning people,
of which he was one, and James had his work cut out for him. But he did a great job. People
seemed to really enjoy his work and probably missed him when he returned to America in 1789.
Back in America, James was installed as the head chef at Jefferson’s New York and
(16:26):
later Philadelphia residences. There was a big, famous dinner in New York,
which was at that time the temporary capital, and later Jefferson described that evening as
the meal “to save the union” because at the end of the night, Alexander Hamilton agreed to make
Washington D.C. the capital if James Madison would agree to the federal government taking on the debt
(16:46):
of the states. The food was that good, I guess. Then the capital moved again to Philadelphia – and
James was there too, cooking for all the big deal Americans and whoever they were trying to impress.
Philadelphia must have been interesting to James. If an enslaved person was in Philadelphia for 6
months, he could have claimed his freedom – that was the according the 1780 Pennsylvania Act for
(17:08):
the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. James was there long enough, but he didn’t file for freedom.
When Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State in 1793 and was preparing to return to Monticello,
that’s when we get the written evidence about Jefferson’s agreement to (eventually) free
James and the terms of that freedom. James was freed in 1796, but before that moment happened,
(17:34):
he trained his brother, Peter, and James’ culinary legacy endured. So,
also shout out to Peter Hemings because he was also doing an amazing job as a chef at
Monticello. We can’t know how Peter felt about training to be James’ replacement when James
was about to be freed and he wasn’t (Peter would be emancipated when he was in his 50s
(17:54):
but that was a long ways off at this point) – but Peter apparently mastered the art of
French cuisine and cooked as well as James, or enough so that James was granted his freedom.
James really revolutionized the kitchens and the cuisine at Monticello. Culinary historian
and author of the food blog “Afroculinaria,” James Twitty, talks about the stove that James
(18:15):
had built upon his return – and it’s this French-German-English hybrid of a beast
and you can see the archeological remains of it on the Monticello website – it was
the French aspects of this stove though were really groundbreaking for how food got made.
It was charcoal fueled and had grates on it and you could move pots around on the grates,
(18:35):
according to how hot you needed things to be, and you could lower the grates or raise them
as you needed – kind of like cooking with a charcoal grill today but really amped up.
And then there was the food that came out of this jazzed up kitchen and beyond. In 1824,
a man named Daniel Webster wrote about dining at Monticello and called the food half Virginian and
(18:55):
half French. Half-Virginian/half-French seems to mean American ingredients like corn and squash and
stuff like that prepared with those delicate French sauces. I mean, sounds pretty good.
But, macaroni and cheese is arguably James Hemings’ most lasting imprint on American
cuisine and dare I say one of the greatest gifts humanity has ever received. In the 18th century,
(19:20):
macaroni was a catch-all term for any kind of pasta – it wasn’t just the elbow shape we know
today. The word is derived from the Italian word “maccheroni,” (please enjoy my terrible Italian
accent). This was a generic name for types of tube-shaped pasta made from durum wheat. So,
think rigatoni and penne, that could fit here too. American colonists definitely knew about and made
(19:44):
pasta, and cookbooks have recipes for it by the mid-1700s. And Jefferson became well-acquainted
with pasta while he was in France – and while the pasta was Italian in origin,
it was used in French cuisine, and there were occasions where Jefferson
was traveling all around France and even made into Italy. I bet he ate pasta there, too.
(20:05):
Jefferson loved pasta, and so James was making it. Jefferson had a “mould for making macaroni” made
in anticipation of his departure from France, and later imported pasta (and parmesan cheese)
when he got back home, and Jefferson was buying pounds of macaroni right up to the moment he
died. We only have four surviving recipes that James Hemings wrote down himself – and yes,
(20:29):
he was literate. They’re for snow eggs, chocolate, tea, and coffee creams. Snow eggs
are a Very French Thing – they’re meringues poached in a vanilla-custard sauce and yes,
please. All of these recipes sound delicious – but none of them, unfortunately, are mac and cheese.
Many people have tried to re-create James’ mac and cheese,
(20:52):
and while we don’t have a specific recipe that he wrote, we have an idea. There is a recipe,
written down by Jefferson and held now at the Library of Congress for “macaroni.” It’s: “6 eggs,
yolks & whites. 2 wine glasses of milk. 2 tb of flour. A little salt. Work them together without
water and very well. Roll it then with a roller to a paper thickness. Cut it into small pieces
(21:17):
which roll again with the hand into long slips, & then cut them to a proper length. Put them
into warm water a quarter of an hour. Drain them. Dress them as macaroni. But if they are intended
for soups they are to be put into the soup & not into warm water.” So, that gets you some of the
way there – and the “dress[ing] … as macaroni” is the room for the cheese and the butter. The
(21:39):
recipe doesn’t cite its originating source and is undated, but historians think Jefferson wrote it
down sometime in 1789 before he left France – and, you know, Jefferson wasn’t the one at the stove,
that was James. If Jefferson wrote this down, he wanted to eat it, and James was going to make it.
According to food historian Leni Sorensen, our mac and cheese of today comes from James’
(22:00):
“macaroni pie” which was something often served at Jefferson’s table. In this dish, you cook the
noodles until tender in a mix of water and milk – a lot of mac and cheese recipes today do it this
way. In this version, you drain the noodles and then you layer the pasta in a dish with butter and
then layers of shredded cheese. The layering of a starch with butter and cheese is a very French
(22:21):
technique, and if you’ve ever had gratin potatoes, you’ll be familiar with that deliciousness. Julia
Child’s famous Gratin Dauphinois is a classic – and it’s basically the same thing here, the milk
has a different application, but just sub potatoes for pasta and add in some garlic and there you go.
Gratin Dauphinois is first mentioned in writing in France in 1788, but the good historian in
(22:44):
you knows that it was probably around earlier than that – and James was in France in 1788.
The actual written recipe that Sorensen seems to be following is very similar to the one that
appears in Mary Randolph’s cookbook “The Virginia Housewife,” which was published in 1824 – but very
likely was inspired by the Hemings’ spin on a macaroni dish that become quite popular already.
(23:06):
When Jefferson became president in March of 1801, he kept throwing his dinner parties and impressing
people with menus honed by James Hemings. Jefferson served a version of James’ “macaroni
pie” at a state dinner in the White House in 1802 – and that’s where it took off. Reverend Manasseh
Cutler of Ohio wrote about being served a “pie called macaroni,” at this White House dinner,
(23:28):
and he actually didn’t like it – and with a name like Reverend Manasseh Cutler, I can’t say
I’m surprised. He described it as a “rich crust filled with the strillions of onions, or shallots,
which I took it to be, tasted very strong, and not very agreeable.” Some things may be subjective,
but the good Reverend was wrong. At least in the court of public opinion. Jefferson had this dish
(23:50):
served a lot – and it became incredibly popular on tables around the country.
James Hemings didn’t invent putting pasta and cheese together, and we can’t discount
the possibility that Peter Hemings was adding his own flare to a dish he learned from James,
but James was the teacher, and he did mac and cheese so well
(24:11):
with his own James Hemings’ twist, and with such a public platform,
that he really was behind the popularity of a dish that remains beloved to this day.
James unfortunately did not live happily ever after. His final years and his death
in 1801 are terribly tragic. We don’t really know where James went after 1796,
(24:32):
though there is a comment by Jefferson in a letter to his daughter that suggests that James maybe
went back to Paris. But if he did, he didn’t stay. He was also back in Philadelphia for a
time and was maybe thinking about going to Spain. He was working at a tavern in Baltimore in 1801,
and in 1801, James Hemings died in Baltimore at the age of 36. A friend of Thomas Jefferson,
(24:54):
William Evans, wrote to Jefferson that “the report respecting James Hemings having committed the act
of suicide is true … the General opinion was that drinking too freely was the cause” – but drinking
wasn’t the whole answer. There was something more behind that. James lived in a world that
was not kind to him. He was separated from his family – he went back to Monticello to visit,
(25:16):
and for a short time, to work again for Jefferson for a few months in 1801,
but the family he came from was close and he wasn’t with them. Virginia law
said that an emancipated person had to leave the state – that, combined with just being a
Black man in early America, had to more difficult than I could possibly imagine.
(25:36):
There is a lot that we unfortunately do not know about James Hemings,
but we do know this. He was an incredibly smart and talented person who lived a very
complicated and interesting and difficult life. He was really good at what he did – and the
world is better off for having him in it. So, thank you, James Hemings. Thank you.
(25:58):
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Thank you for listening and remember, the best stories are in the footnotes.
You know it and you love it, but did you realize who was responsible for bringing
macaroni and cheese into your life? Learn about James Hemings, the enslaved man who
traveled to France and trained in French cuisine, this week on Footnoting History!
(00:24):
Hello, Footnoting History friends, it’s Kristin, here to make sure you know all
the important historical stuff – and if you’re listening to this episode around release day,
to bring you a little Thanksgiving pre-game. Today, we’re talking macaroni and cheese – and
I wasn’t kidding, this is important historical stuff. Mac and cheese is one of the most
(00:47):
delightful culinary contributions to our world and one that is a frequent star at the American
Thanksgiving table, including my own. And you have James Hemings to thank for that.
Before I tell you about James Hemings – or as much about him as we know – remember
that you can find a captioned version of this episode on our website FootnotingHistory.com
(01:08):
as well as on our YouTube channel. And if you’d like to read more about James,
you can find a list of Further Reading on our website, footnotinghistory.com.
Also, true to Kristin form, before I tell you what we know about James Hemings and how he brought mac
and cheese to the table, I’m going to tell you a little bit about how we know what we know – which
is complicated because James Hemings was enslaved, and as a general matter, historians do not know
(01:33):
nearly enough about the backgrounds and lives of enslaved people because the institution of
slavery bypassed the personhood of the enslaved and treated them as commodities and numbers,
rather than individuals. James – and his family, the Hemingses – are a little different,
and in fact, historians know more about them than many free white people in the 18th and
(01:54):
early 19th-century Virginia where they lived. The information is still not as fulsome as we would
like but we do have some information, and a lot of that information comes to us from documents that
detailed James Hemings’ ownership. The person who wrote those documents wrote a lotta stuff – some
of which you may be particularly familiar with if you’re a student of American history. And
(02:16):
that guy was Thomas Jefferson, who was just prolific in writing down all kinds of stuff.
Annette Gordon-Reed – whose book, The Hemingses of Monticello, which I highly recommend and there are
also clips of her talking about James on the Monticello website – Gordon-Reed talks about
sitting down with one of the main sources on the Hemingses – Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book,
(02:37):
written by Jefferson between 1774-1824 and now held at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Farm Book is basically what it sounds like. It’s a very detailed record of the agricultural
operations on Jefferson’s various properties, the most famous of which is the plantation of
Monticello which is about 70 miles northwest of Richmond, Virginia. And before I go on,
(03:02):
I will say that I am pronouncing it Monti-CHELL-o and not Monti-SELL-o because that is what the
Monticello website says it’s supposed to be. Apparently, there was some confusion in the
1960s when NBC released its pronunciation manual and decided it was supposed to be
SELL not CHELL but CHELL was how Jefferson pronounced it, so Monti-CHELL-o it is.
(03:22):
The Farm Book was about what and how much was being produced and the livestock … and the
enslaved people who ran the plantations and farms. The Farm Book isn’t the only mention
of the Hemingses and not the only mention by Jefferson – but it’s a significant source.
Jefferson also wrote a lot of letters that talked about the Hemingses. We
also have the memoirs of Madison Hemings, who was James’ nephew – and a lot of oral
(03:45):
histories from people who lived at Monticello and knew the people there
as well. And certainly people outside of Monticello aware of the family and wrote
about them. There are also a small number of surviving recipes that James Hemings wrote.
Sally Hemings is probably the Hemings you think of first in the context of Thomas Jefferson and
the Hemings family, if you have heard of them – and she was James Hemings’ younger sister.
(04:10):
You might be familiar with her story – or you may not – but it does provide some important
context to James’ story, so I’ll just give you a brief overview. Sally was born into slavery
around 1773 on a Virginia plantation called “The Forest” that was owned by a man named John Wayles,
who historians believe was Sally’s father. Sally’s mother, Elizabeth also called “Betty,” was born
(04:33):
sometime in the 1730s to an African mother and an English father who was the captain of a trading
vessel. Because Betty’s mother was enslaved, so too was her daughter and any other children she
might have. John Wales would not sell Betty to her father, though her father did try. Likely,
this captain’s last name was Hemings – he acknowledged that Betty was his even though
(04:54):
he didn’t have a legal claim to her, he still gave her his name and that’s where the last name
Hemings comes from. We do not know what Betty’s mother’s name was. John Wayles would go on to
father six children with Betty, one of whom was Sally and another of whom was James. Sally was the
youngest of Elizabeth and John’s children, born in 1773; James was their second oldest child,
(05:16):
born in 1765. John Wayles was Thomas Jefferson’s father-in-law. When Wayles died, Thomas Jefferson,
by way of his wife, Martha, inherited the Hemingses, other enslaved people,
and other property. That was a horrible sentence to say but that’s what happened.
People were talking about Thom and Sally as early as the 1790s and their “relationship” (and there
(05:39):
is much debate about whether we can even call it that). Their relationship was brought up in the
presidential campaign in the early 1800s because Jefferson’s political opponents thought that would
work against him (spoiler (05:50):
it didn’t). People still called Sally and her family awful things
in the press – but Sally didn’t actually say anything publicly that we know about, nor did
her family. What we do know is this (06:00):
Sally went to Paris to work in Jefferson’s household in 1787
when he was the U.S. Minister to France, when she was 14 years old and he was 44. Sally was supposed
to be there as a maid for Jefferson’s daughters, but he initiated a sexual relationship with Sally
and when it was time to go home, in 1789, she was pregnant. Slavery was not legal in France at that
(06:25):
time (the French weren’t exactly against the enslavement of others – there was still slavery
in the French colonies in the Caribbean)– but in Paris, Sally was free, and it seems she did not
want to go back to Virginia. Jefferson convinced her to go back – Madison Hemings talks about how
he promised her “extraordinary privileges” – and also promised to free all her children when
(06:46):
they turned 21 – which he did do. Sally and Thom had a sexual relationship for decades after they
returned from France. There has been much written on the nature and the consensual aspect of this
relationship that is certainly interesting but not really the focus here today. So,
I encourage you to head to the Further Reading for directions to go, if you’re so interested.
(07:08):
I am a professionally trained historian, I get the idea of placing people in their historical
context and how people are complicated, they can do both good and bad things, like I get it.
Gordon-Reed has a great section in her book about how older men and much younger women
pairing up was far more acceptable then than it is today. Still, I read all this – 44-year-old man
(07:29):
and a 14-year-old girl of wildly different social statuses and powers and just … no. Jefferson … no.
Also in France, around this time, right before the French Revolution, was Sally’s brother James,
who was training in French cuisine so Jefferson could do more fancy European living back in
(07:51):
America. Jefferson was enamored with All Things European, the architecture, the culture, the food.
He had ideas for how he wanted Monticello to be. And James Hemings would be an integral part of how
that transformation would happen. James moved to Monticello in 1773 when he was 8 years old
(08:12):
when John Wayles died. But before Wayles died, Jefferson visited and was in contact with the
Hemings children and singled them out for special treatment. According to the Monticello website,
the first mention we have of James by Jefferson is when James sold him a mockingbird. When Wayles
died and the Hemings boys came to Monticello, they got special privileges, like being able
(08:34):
to travel around on their own, they got to learn trades and they were allowed to hire themselves
out and keep their wages. Many of the Hemings boys grew up to be artisans who were the carpenters and
skilled workers of Monticello and built what you see today. They were not working in the fields,
nor were the Hemings women. In 1781, James and his brother Robert were working as valets
(08:58):
for Jefferson while he was in Williamsburg and then in Richmond when Jefferson was the
wartime Governor of Virginia. Of course, people wonder why Jefferson singled out the Hemingses,
and there has been a lot written on that, too. Most theories have to do with the mixed
race of the family and how their lineage caused people to view them differently,
more capable, more intelligent, than other people of African descent, and though they were enslaved
(09:23):
and definitely not viewed as equal, they were still sort of part of this larger Wayles family.
When Jefferson was first appointed commerce minister by George Washington in 1784,
and when Jefferson went to Paris, 19-year-old James went with him to train in French cuisine.
Jefferson was really into this idea of James – who had worked in the kitchens in Monticello and
(09:46):
who must have shown some talent for cooking – learning how to make fancy French food but
it’s kind of a mystery as to why. Thomas Craughwell – whose book is listed in the
Further Reading – doesn’t think that Jefferson had ever even tasted French cuisine before he got to
Paris – there were no French chefs in Virginia, and while there were perhaps French immigrants
around and there were certainly French military officers helping during the American Revolution,
(10:10):
it doesn’t seem like Jefferson knew exactly why he wanted what he wanted except Jefferson
was just a generally curious person, and that French cooking had a reputation for
being exciting and varied and finely executed. And I guess he was going anyway, so why not?
Also, Jefferson was a people-pleaser. Many historians have written about how he loved to
(10:33):
be loved, and he loved entertaining people. People often didn’t like him right away, but spend a few
minutes with him, and he felt like your best friend. He was constantly hosting dinners at
Monticello and his other properties. He put in a large kitchen at Monticello in 1770 (which,
fun fact, was turned into visitor bathrooms in the 1960s because no one thought the kitchen would be
(10:55):
interesting to people – don’t worry, they’ve fixed that, it’s restored now). The original
kitchen included gardens where Jefferson directed plants to be grown that he imported from Europe
and Mexico – he did order fig plants from France; he also had orchards and vineyards.
He tried to grow European vine varieties – the vitis vinifera which is grown in France
(11:17):
but not exclusively in France – but it didn’t work out. He tried American varieties too,
but Monitcello wine was not winning any awards. Jefferson, his older daughter Patsy, and James
left for Paris in July of 1784 and arrived in Paris in August. They were supposed to be
staying at the Hôtel d’Orléans but – there were actually two places with that name in Paris,
(11:40):
and they ended up at the wrong one first. John Adams and Ben Franklin were also there – at the
correct Hôtel d’Orléans in the Left Bank, where Jefferson, and James eventually moved. (Patsy
was a part-timer and went to school at an abbey during the week. Polly, the younger daughter,
would go there too when she came a little later.) Eventually, the Jefferson household moved to
(12:01):
another residence on the Champs-Elysées, which was a happen’ place to be in the 18th-century and
must have been very exciting, if not overwhelming at first, for a person who hadn’t traveled much
in his life, meaning James. Jefferson had no real plan for James learning how to cook French cuisine
before leaving America for France, but when they got there, he started looking around for
(12:22):
somewhere for James to apprentice and eventually found a restauranteur and caterer named Monsieur
Combeaux who charged 150 francs to teach James the culinary ropes – the details of which we don’t,
unfortunately, know much about but we do know that James was with Combeaux for many months.
He also worked in the household of the Prince de Condé, who charged a lot more than Combeaux,
(12:46):
where among other things, he learned how to make French pastry, which is definitely not easy.
We do know that James learned French, and he spoke it better than Jefferson did. I find it
endlessly amusing that Thomas Jefferson thought he spoke French, and maybe he technically knew it,
but the guy who taught him had a thick Scottish accent and so when he got to Paris,
(13:08):
no one could understand what he was saying, and he didn’t seem to ever really speak French well.
James got the hang of it pretty quick, though – I mean, he kind of had to – but learning a new
language is not easy, and there is a lot of evidence that James was a proficient French
speaker. He was also certainly aware that, in France, he was a free man – and he encountered
(13:30):
other free Black men and women in Paris. James Hemings had freedom of movement in Paris,
and he was pulling a wage, and he hired a tutor in 1787 to learn French better, so maybe
he was thinking of staying. And that’s maybe why Jefferson eventually agreed to emancipate James:
if he taught someone else of Jefferson’s choosing what he learned in France, someone who could take
(13:52):
his place back in America. (The written agreement from Jefferson comes after their return to
America, but there was maybe some discussion to that effect before the Jefferson/Hemings
crew left Paris.) A lot of people have done a lot of wondering – including me – why James
(or Sally for that matter) agreed to return with Jefferson to places where slavery was legal when
(14:12):
they were free in France and they only had the unenforceable promises of Jefferson to either
free them or their children. It’s something of a mystery and neither James nor Sally ever really
said. We can imagine that they truly believed Jefferson, he treated them “well,” (you know,
minus the enslavement part, but Jefferson did tend to keep enslaved families together and he
(14:36):
did favor the Hemingses, so when you’re weighing your realistic options, that probably factored
in); maybe they wanted to believe Jefferson because France wasn’t looking so good in 1789,
there was still a lot of social and racial hurdles that were difficult if not impossible to surpass,
and the rest of their family was back in Virginia but … we don’t really know.
(14:57):
And while we also don’t know exactly what Combeaux and de Condé’s chef were teaching James in their
kitchens, we do have written evidence of what French cuisine was like around this time,
notably a multi-volume cookbook called Les Dons de Comus – The Gifts of Comus – written
in 1739 by François Marin. He was a big deal Parisian chef who was writing for a
(15:18):
bourgeoisie audience (so not the nobility but people who were wealthy enough to want
to eat like the nobility – kind of describes Jefferson). The books were super popular and
had a lot of later reprintings and you can read versions of the work online, if you’re curious.
There’s lots of really interesting stuff in it, but for our purposes, it’s important to
know that it’s full of sauces like béchamel which is a base of butter and flour cooked
(15:41):
together with the addition of milk – fancy French chefs and Top Chef wannabes call this a roux.
James knocked his apprenticeship out of the park – and he eventually became the head chef
at Jefferson’s Paris house in 1787, which was the same year that Sally headed over to join the
household with Jefferson’s younger daughter. Jefferson was a big deal American diplomat,
(16:04):
and he was entertaining lots of important and wealthy and culinarily discerning people,
of which he was one, and James had his work cut out for him. But he did a great job. People
seemed to really enjoy his work and probably missed him when he returned to America in 1789.
Back in America, James was installed as the head chef at Jefferson’s New York and
(16:26):
later Philadelphia residences. There was a big, famous dinner in New York,
which was at that time the temporary capital, and later Jefferson described that evening as
the meal “to save the union” because at the end of the night, Alexander Hamilton agreed to make
Washington D.C. the capital if James Madison would agree to the federal government taking on the debt
(16:46):
of the states. The food was that good, I guess. Then the capital moved again to Philadelphia – and
James was there too, cooking for all the big deal Americans and whoever they were trying to impress.
Philadelphia must have been interesting to James. If an enslaved person was in Philadelphia for 6
months, he could have claimed his freedom – that was the according the 1780 Pennsylvania Act for
(17:08):
the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. James was there long enough, but he didn’t file for freedom.
When Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State in 1793 and was preparing to return to Monticello,
that’s when we get the written evidence about Jefferson’s agreement to (eventually) free
James and the terms of that freedom. James was freed in 1796, but before that moment happened,
(17:34):
he trained his brother, Peter, and James’ culinary legacy endured. So,
also shout out to Peter Hemings because he was also doing an amazing job as a chef at
Monticello. We can’t know how Peter felt about training to be James’ replacement when James
was about to be freed and he wasn’t (Peter would be emancipated when he was in his 50s
(17:54):
but that was a long ways off at this point) – but Peter apparently mastered the art of
French cuisine and cooked as well as James, or enough so that James was granted his freedom.
James really revolutionized the kitchens and the cuisine at Monticello. Culinary historian
and author of the food blog “Afroculinaria,” James Twitty, talks about the stove that James
(18:15):
had built upon his return – and it’s this French-German-English hybrid of a beast
and you can see the archeological remains of it on the Monticello website – it was
the French aspects of this stove though were really groundbreaking for how food got made.
It was charcoal fueled and had grates on it and you could move pots around on the grates,
(18:35):
according to how hot you needed things to be, and you could lower the grates or raise them
as you needed – kind of like cooking with a charcoal grill today but really amped up.
And then there was the food that came out of this jazzed up kitchen and beyond. In 1824,
a man named Daniel Webster wrote about dining at Monticello and called the food half Virginian and
(18:55):
half French. Half-Virginian/half-French seems to mean American ingredients like corn and squash and
stuff like that prepared with those delicate French sauces. I mean, sounds pretty good.
But, macaroni and cheese is arguably James Hemings’ most lasting imprint on American
cuisine and dare I say one of the greatest gifts humanity has ever received. In the 18th century,
(19:20):
macaroni was a catch-all term for any kind of pasta – it wasn’t just the elbow shape we know
today. The word is derived from the Italian word “maccheroni,” (please enjoy my terrible Italian
accent). This was a generic name for types of tube-shaped pasta made from durum wheat. So,
think rigatoni and penne, that could fit here too. American colonists definitely knew about and made
(19:44):
pasta, and cookbooks have recipes for it by the mid-1700s. And Jefferson became well-acquainted
with pasta while he was in France – and while the pasta was Italian in origin,
it was used in French cuisine, and there were occasions where Jefferson
was traveling all around France and even made into Italy. I bet he ate pasta there, too.
(20:05):
Jefferson loved pasta, and so James was making it. Jefferson had a “mould for making macaroni” made
in anticipation of his departure from France, and later imported pasta (and parmesan cheese)
when he got back home, and Jefferson was buying pounds of macaroni right up to the moment he
died. We only have four surviving recipes that James Hemings wrote down himself – and yes,
(20:29):
he was literate. They’re for snow eggs, chocolate, tea, and coffee creams. Snow eggs
are a Very French Thing – they’re meringues poached in a vanilla-custard sauce and yes,
please. All of these recipes sound delicious – but none of them, unfortunately, are mac and cheese.
Many people have tried to re-create James’ mac and cheese,
(20:52):
and while we don’t have a specific recipe that he wrote, we have an idea. There is a recipe,
written down by Jefferson and held now at the Library of Congress for “macaroni.” It’s: “6 eggs,
yolks & whites. 2 wine glasses of milk. 2 tb of flour. A little salt. Work them together without
water and very well. Roll it then with a roller to a paper thickness. Cut it into small pieces
(21:17):
which roll again with the hand into long slips, & then cut them to a proper length. Put them
into warm water a quarter of an hour. Drain them. Dress them as macaroni. But if they are intended
for soups they are to be put into the soup & not into warm water.” So, that gets you some of the
way there – and the “dress[ing] … as macaroni” is the room for the cheese and the butter. The
(21:39):
recipe doesn’t cite its originating source and is undated, but historians think Jefferson wrote it
down sometime in 1789 before he left France – and, you know, Jefferson wasn’t the one at the stove,
that was James. If Jefferson wrote this down, he wanted to eat it, and James was going to make it.
According to food historian Leni Sorensen, our mac and cheese of today comes from James’
(22:00):
“macaroni pie” which was something often served at Jefferson’s table. In this dish, you cook the
noodles until tender in a mix of water and milk – a lot of mac and cheese recipes today do it this
way. In this version, you drain the noodles and then you layer the pasta in a dish with butter and
then layers of shredded cheese. The layering of a starch with butter and cheese is a very French
(22:21):
technique, and if you’ve ever had gratin potatoes, you’ll be familiar with that deliciousness. Julia
Child’s famous Gratin Dauphinois is a classic – and it’s basically the same thing here, the milk
has a different application, but just sub potatoes for pasta and add in some garlic and there you go.
Gratin Dauphinois is first mentioned in writing in France in 1788, but the good historian in
(22:44):
you knows that it was probably around earlier than that – and James was in France in 1788.
The actual written recipe that Sorensen seems to be following is very similar to the one that
appears in Mary Randolph’s cookbook “The Virginia Housewife,” which was published in 1824 – but very
likely was inspired by the Hemings’ spin on a macaroni dish that become quite popular already.
(23:06):
When Jefferson became president in March of 1801, he kept throwing his dinner parties and impressing
people with menus honed by James Hemings. Jefferson served a version of James’ “macaroni
pie” at a state dinner in the White House in 1802 – and that’s where it took off. Reverend Manasseh
Cutler of Ohio wrote about being served a “pie called macaroni,” at this White House dinner,
(23:28):
and he actually didn’t like it – and with a name like Reverend Manasseh Cutler, I can’t say
I’m surprised. He described it as a “rich crust filled with the strillions of onions, or shallots,
which I took it to be, tasted very strong, and not very agreeable.” Some things may be subjective,
but the good Reverend was wrong. At least in the court of public opinion. Jefferson had this dish
(23:50):
served a lot – and it became incredibly popular on tables around the country.
James Hemings didn’t invent putting pasta and cheese together, and we can’t discount
the possibility that Peter Hemings was adding his own flare to a dish he learned from James,
but James was the teacher, and he did mac and cheese so well
(24:11):
with his own James Hemings’ twist, and with such a public platform,
that he really was behind the popularity of a dish that remains beloved to this day.
James unfortunately did not live happily ever after. His final years and his death
in 1801 are terribly tragic. We don’t really know where James went after 1796,
(24:32):
though there is a comment by Jefferson in a letter to his daughter that suggests that James maybe
went back to Paris. But if he did, he didn’t stay. He was also back in Philadelphia for a
time and was maybe thinking about going to Spain. He was working at a tavern in Baltimore in 1801,
and in 1801, James Hemings died in Baltimore at the age of 36. A friend of Thomas Jefferson,
(24:54):
William Evans, wrote to Jefferson that “the report respecting James Hemings having committed the act
of suicide is true … the General opinion was that drinking too freely was the cause” – but drinking
wasn’t the whole answer. There was something more behind that. James lived in a world that
was not kind to him. He was separated from his family – he went back to Monticello to visit,
(25:16):
and for a short time, to work again for Jefferson for a few months in 1801,
but the family he came from was close and he wasn’t with them. Virginia law
said that an emancipated person had to leave the state – that, combined with just being a
Black man in early America, had to more difficult than I could possibly imagine.
(25:36):
There is a lot that we unfortunately do not know about James Hemings,
but we do know this. He was an incredibly smart and talented person who lived a very
complicated and interesting and difficult life. He was really good at what he did – and the
world is better off for having him in it. So, thank you, James Hemings. Thank you.
(25:58):
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