Life Among the Lowly

This was a series of articles by S. F. Wetmore in the Pike County (Ohio) Republican, a weekly newspaper in Waverly, Ohio. Historians did not become aware of the articles until the mid 1950s.

The Madison Hemings interview was the first, published on March 13, 1873. This transcription is from the book The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty, published in 2001. It notes the errors in the transcription published in Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, and in the Monticello Research Committee Report. This interview occurred about 45 years after Madison Hemings left Monticello. The article is written in the first person although it is clear that the language used is that of the interviewer. There is little in the article that would have been personally known to Hemings, but it has been euphemistically termed "memoirs" or "reminiscences," in an effort to establish it as a reliable historical document. View a reproduction of the original article.

The Israel Jefferson interview was the third, published on December 25, 1873. This interview also contains little that Israel Jefferson would have personally known. The source of this document is Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History, Fawn M. Brodie, WW Norton & Company Inc., New York, 1974, pp 471- 482

Reply of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, grandson of Thomas Jefferson, to the article by Israel Jefferson. The source of this document is Down from the Mountain: The Oral History of the Hemings Family, Judith P. Justice, pp 148-152.

John A. Jones, editor of the Waverly Watchman, a rival newspaper, wrote an editorial in response to the Madison Hemings interview.

Dumas Malone, author of the six volume Jefferson and His Time, also wrote A Note on Evidence in response to the Madison Hemings interview.