WASHINGTON — Restoration projects at Monticello that showcase where slaves lived and worked in Thomas Jefferson’s 5,000 acre working plantation will unearth the room of Sally Hemings.
Hemings, a slave, served as a chambermaid and seamstress. Historians believe that Jefferson, the nation’s third president, fathered at least four of her children, according to CBS News.
Hemings’ bedroom was just a few steps away from Jefferson’s, but it has served as the museum and historical landmark’s restroom since 1941, reports The Washington Post.
Her room will include artifacts found on the property and period furniture. Historians hope the room will give a better glimpse of her life. “We want to tell a story about her that doesn’t limit her to Jefferson’s property,” Gary Sandling, vice president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, told the Post.
The exhibit of Hemings’ bedroom is currently under restoration and is expected to open to the public next year. The Mountaintop Projects, the restoration projects at Monticello, were unveiled in 2015 and started out with the reconstruction of a stable and workmen’s house on Mullberry Row according to Monticello’s website.
“Visitors will come up here and understand that there was no place on this mountaintop that slavery wasn’t,” Christa Dierksheide, a Monticello historian, told the Post. “Thomas Jefferson was surrounded by people, and the vast majority of those people were enslaved.”
