The Descendants of Elizabeth Hemings
Betty Brown
Elizabeth Hemings’s second daughter Betty Brown (1759-after 1831) was the first of her family to come to Monticello, as personal servant to Jefferson’s wife Martha. After almost sixty years of work in the main house, she was one of the last of the Hemingses to live on the Monticello mountaintop. She had two sons, Wormley Hughes and Burwell Colbert. Wormley Hughes (1781-1858) was head gardener as well as a wagoner and coachman, with charge of the Monticello stables. He married Ursula (1787-after 1827), a niece of Isaac (Granger) Jefferson. Their descendants include:
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 Fountain Hughes (c1854-1957), whose 1949 recollections of his childhood in slavery were preserved in one of the very few surviving sound recordings of former slaves (hear Fountain Hughes). Like his grandfather, the first Wormley Hughes, he worked as a gardener and ox-team driver. |
 Lloyd Allen Hughes (1922-2006), with his children, Lloyd Hughes, Jr., Karen Hughes White, Angela Hughes Davidson, and Timothy Hughes, Getting Word participants |
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