Sarah Hemings was an enslaved woman of mixed race owned by President Thomas Jefferson and who is believed to have had a long-term relationship and six children with him, of whom four survived and all were given freedom by Jefferson. Hemings was the youngest of six siblings by the planter John Wayles and his mixed-race slave Betty Hemings ; Sally was three-quarters European and a half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton . In 1787, Hemings, at the age of 14, accompanied Jefferson's youngest daughter Mary (Polly) to London and then to Paris, where the widowed Jefferson, 44 years old at the time, was serving as the United States Minister to France . Hemings spent two years there. It is believed by most historians that Jefferson began a sexual relationship with Hemings either in France or soon after their return to Monticello. Hemings had six children of record born into slavery; four survived to ad...