Betty Hemings

Elizabeth Betty Hemings was a mulatto slave in colonial Virginia, who in 1761 became the concubine of her master, planter John Wayles, a threetime widower. He had six mixedrace children with her over a 12year period, including Sally Hemings they were threequarters white and all were born into slavery, halfsiblings to his daughter Martha Jefferson. After Wayles died, the Hemings family and his other more than a hundred slaves were inherited as part of his estate by his daughter Martha and her husband Thomas Jefferson.

Eventually more than 75 of Bettys mixedrace children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren were born into slavery. They worked on Jeffersons plantation of Monticello. Many had higher status positions as chefs, butlers, seamstresses, weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths, gardeners, and musicians in the household. Jefferson gave some of Bettys enslaved descendants to his sister and daughters as wedding presents, and they lived at other Virginia plantations.

Source: Wikipedia