Hello fellow listers...
 
An interesting conversation has been taking place recently regarding
Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge's 1858 letter to her husband Joseph, and
the reliability of Annette Gordon-Reed's transcription of this letter,
subsequently printed as an appendix in Thomas Jefferson and Sally
Hemings: An American Controversy.
 
First, I must point out that the original of  the letter written to
Joseph Coolidge in 1858 probably no longer exists.  If it does exist its
location is not currently known. There is, however, a transcript created
by Ellen Coolidge herself, included in her letterbook (MSS 9090,
University of Virginia, Special Collections, available on microfilm).
This letterbook, according to the catalogue, "consists of copies of
letters, or of portions of letters, that Ellen Wayles Coolidge had sent
to Henry Stephens Randall while he was writing his three-volume
biography, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York, Derby & Jackson,
1858), but which were edited for publication, or were not included in
the published work." This is probably the version that Gordon-Reed cites
at the bottom of her transcript.
 
Unfortunately, the version in Gordon-Reed and Ellen's transcript do vary
in at least two significant ways. The other instances are possibly due
to some sort of editorial policy that corrects spellings and inserts
punctuations to enhance readability. For example, Ellen Coolidge retains
her preference for "it's" instead of the possessive "its" - a habit
probably learned from her grandfather - and those have been altered in
Gordon-Reed's transcription and in at least one place a question mark
replaces an exclamation point. The two most important differences, and I
am in no way implying that they are intentional, are as below:
 
MS - "That my brother, then a young man certain to know all that was
going on behind the scenes, positively declares his indignant disbelief
in the imputations and solemnly affirms that he never saw or heard the
smallest thing which could lead him to suspect that his gradfather's
life was other than perfectly pure." Gordon-Reed's transcription uses
"belief" instead of "disbelief."
 
MS - "No female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when
he was known not to be there and none could have entered without being
exposed to the public gaze." Gordon-Reed's transcription deletes the
bold-faced portion and  instead reads "No female domestic ever entered
his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be in the public
gaze."
 
As for other transcriptions available, there are two that have already
been mentioned: that within the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian
Society, printed as "Mr. Jefferson's Private Life," by Dumas Malone
(April 1974), and the same can be found in the New York Times, 18 May
1974. These transcriptions match that in Ellen Coolidge's Letterbook. 
 
The Family Letters Project website
(http://familyletters.dataformat.com/default.aspx) does include a
transcript, and it follows the Coolidge Letterbook as indicated above. I
must apologize for the fact that we have been doing some restructuring
of the site which means that at this moment its content is temporarily
unavailable. We anticipate that this work will be finished in the next
day or so. The Monticello website cites all known transcriptions of this
letter, including Ellen Coolidge's Letterbook transcript.
http://www.monticello.org/plantation/hemingscontro/hemings_report.html
 
Finally, I will point out the obvious...that there is no shortage of
material to turn to if one is interested in exploring the
Jefferson-Hemings topic.
 
Lisa Francavilla 
Managing Editor 
Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series 

 
 

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