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    Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America
    Unavailable
    Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America
    Unavailable
    Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America
    Audiobook17 hours

    Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America

    Written by Catherine Kerrison

    Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The remarkable untold story of Thomas Jefferson's three daughters—two white and free, one black and enslaved—and the divergent paths they forged in a newly independent America

    Thomas Jefferson had three daughters: Martha and Maria by his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet by his slave Sally Hemings. In Jefferson's Daughters, Catherine Kerrison, a scholar of early American and women's history, recounts the remarkable journey of these three women—and how their struggle to define themselves reflects both the possibilities and the limitations that resulted from the American Revolution.

    Although the three women shared a father, the similarities end there. Martha and Maria received a fine convent school education while they lived with their father during his diplomatic posting in Paris—a hothouse of intellectual ferment whose celebrated salonnières are vividly brought to life in Kerrison's narrative. Once they returned home, however, the sisters found their options limited by the laws and customs of early America.

    Harriet Hemings followed a different path. She escaped slavery—apparently with the assistance of Jefferson himself. Leaving Monticello behind, she boarded a coach and set off for a decidedly uncertain future.

    For this groundbreaking triple biography, Kerrison has uncovered never-before-published documents written by the Jefferson sisters when they were in their teens, as well as letters written by members of the Jefferson and Hemings families. She has interviewed Hemings family descendants (and, with their cooperation, initiated DNA testing) and searched for descendants of Harriet Hemings.

    The eventful lives of Thomas Jefferson's daughters provide a unique vantage point from which to examine the complicated patrimony of the American Revolution itself. The richly interwoven story of these three strong women and their fight to shape their own destinies sheds new light on the ongoing movement toward human rights in America—and on the personal and political legacy of one of our most controversial Founding Fathers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 30, 2018
    ISBN9780525492436
    Unavailable
    Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America
    Author

    Catherine Kerrison

    CATHERINE KERRISON is a professor of history at Villanova University. She is author of Jefferson’s Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America and Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South.

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