Considered to be the “Main Street” of the plantation, Mulberry Row was once the heart of production and industry at Monticello and included work buildings as well as living quarters for some members of the enslaved community.
Listen as Monticello guide Justin Bates discusses the bustling landscape of Mulberry Row.
-Betty Ann Fitch, descendant of Mary E. H. Fitch, an enslaved woman who lived at Monticello. Excerpt from Monticello’s Getting Word African American Oral History Project.
Audio Overview
Listen as Monticello's Director of Education and Visitor Programs shares details of the lives of John and Priscilla Hemmings.
This dwelling was reconstructed in 2014 and is today shown as the home of John and Priscilla Hemmings, an enslaved couple who lived in one of the original cabins in this section of Mulberry Row. John Hemmings was an enslaved woodworker at Monticello and his wife, Priscilla, was an enslaved nursemaid who cared for the children of Martha Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter. Jefferson hired a free Irish immigrant named James Dinsmore as a carpenter at Monticello, and while here, Dinsmore helped to train John Hemmings. Hemmings eventually became the head carpenter in Monticello’s Joiner Shop (joinery is a type of specialized wood-working). John and Priscilla Hemmings were deeply religious people and are remembered to have held prayer meetings at their home on Mulberry Row.
After Jefferson’s death, his heirs sold Monticello. Uriah Phillips Levy purchased the house and some of the property in 1834 to preserve it as a monument to Jefferson. Levy, the first Jewish commodore in the United States Navy, admired Jefferson for championing religious freedom. During the Levy period of Monticello (1834-1923), the Levy family began a preservation effort that continues to this day. Rachel Machado Phillips Levy, Uriah Levy’s mother and a fourth-generation American from a prominent Jewish family, was said to have been fond of visiting Monticello. While her son was serving in the Navy, she died here in 1839. Levy laid his mother to rest on Mulberry Row, an area of the plantation mostly unused after Jefferson’s death. In 2017, a group of guests traveled to Monticello to honor Rachel Levy’s grave – they traveled from New York City’s Shearith Israel synagogue, Rachel and Uriah Levy’s original congregation.
Audio Overview
Listen as Monticello Guide and House Tour Supervisor Ashley Hollinshead describes the work done in the Textile Workshop.
This stone building was originally constructed as living quarters for some of the free white craftsmen employed at Monticello and later used for housing enslaved workers. We believe the building eventually became the Textile Workshop, in which enslaved spinners and weavers, typically women, worked to produce fabric and clothing for Monticello’s enslaved community. Girls and young women, including children as young as ten, worked in this building. Mary Hern, an enslaved weaver, worked with different types of complicated machinery including a “spinning jenny” like the reproduction on display in this building today.
Harriet Hemings, daughter of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, also worked in the Textile Workshop at Monticello. Though she labored in this space when she was young, she lived her adult life in freedom. Because of a prior agreement made between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Hemings was informally freed at age 21, and allowed to leave the plantation without pursuit. According to her brother Madison Hemings’s later recollections, Harriet Hemings passed into white society and married a white man from Washington.
Audio Overview
Listen as Monticello's Manager of Historic Interpretation, Brandon Dillard, gives an overview of the Nailery site.
Built around 1796, the Nailery was constructed as an addition to the “smith’s shop” on Mulberry Row. While young women worked in the Textile Workshop, young men, many of them children between the ages of 10 and 16, worked in the Nailery. Once trained, each worker could produce upwards of 1,000 nails per day. Jefferson measured the weight of the raw material against the finished nails to assess how efficiently the boys of the Nailery were working each day. Some were punished or whipped if they “wasted” too much iron. A free white overseer named Gabriel Lilly and an enslaved blacksmith named George Granger Jr. supervised the Nailery at various times and monitored the young enslaved men who worked there, including Barnaby Gillette, Joseph Fossett, and Brown Colbert among many others.
“They kept their families together, this is key, they survived slavery, they knew who they were and they were able to make the transition during those rough days and go forth into the 20th century. So we’re very proud of them.”
A nearby stop is the Vegetable Garden. To get there, follow the steps down the hill by the restrooms or the stairs next to the Textile Workshop. Either will take you to the terrace of the Vegetable Garden.