Notes on the Program

In and around Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, music was an essential part of life. Jefferson was an accomplished violinist who reportedly practiced several hours a day as a young man and was a voracious collector of fashionable European compositions—everything from Corelli sonatas to Scottish folk tune arrangements (Lochabar being perhaps his favorite tune). Jefferson’s wife and daughters were also accomplished amateur keyboard and guitar players, and his brother Randolph was known to play his fiddle on Mulberry Row, home to some of the estate’s enslaved residents.

What is more remarkable is the number of Black fiddlers—both free and enslaved—who had a connection to Monticello. It should come as no surprise that Sally Hemings’s sons with Thomas Jefferson, all enslaved by their father, were accomplished fiddlers. While Jefferson took great care not to reveal his familial connections to Beverly, Madison, and Eston, and thus likely never directly taught them to play, musical talent was in their DNA. Without a doubt, Jefferson made sure the boys had access to instruments and opportunities to hone their craft.

Youngest son Eston, freed upon Jefferson’s death in 1826 and leaving Monticello that same year, would go on to become one of the most famous musicians Chillicothe, Ohio has perhaps ever known. His band there, active from about 1837 to 1851, consisted of fiddle, clarinet, and bass. Their rendition of Money Musk was the stuff of legends—no surprise, given that Thomas Jefferson scribbled this same tune in one of his music books, suggesting it was one of his favorites. Like every dance band of the day, the Eston Hemings Band also played the Virginia Reel, which is not really a tune, but rather a choreography that can be danced to nearly any reel. A popular choice at Monticello was Lord Macdonald’s Reel, which likely also made it into the Ohio band’s repertoire.

In nearby Knox County, Ohio, another family of fiddlers was making their mark. The Snowden family band consisted of five siblings playing fiddles, banjos, percussion, guitar, and various other instruments. The band included two young girls, which was very unusual for the time. Snowden’s Jig was a tune Dan Emmett learned from the Snowden family. Emmett is commonly known as the composer of “Dixie,” a tune now properly attributed to the Snowdens.

In two successive generations, Hemings family women married into the Scott family of Charlottesville. The patriarch of this family, fiddler Jesse Scott, was the son of Anika Cumba, a Pamunkey Indian, and a white man, Governor Charles Scott of Kentucky. He trained the next two generations of fiddlers in his family, including sons Robert, Thomas, and James, and grandson Robert Scott, Jr.

The Scott family band usually consisted of three fiddle players, though Robert, Jr. sometimes played cello. In addition to playing and composing reels, the Scotts played the most well-known opera dances of the day, including the Valse infernale from Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, which became very popular off the opera stage due to Franz Liszt’s virtuosic piano transcription.

The Scotts played all over Virginia for college graduations, picnics, and balls; they also played for the Marquis de Lafayette’s visit to Charlottesville in 1824 and reportedly entertained every sitting U.S. president for decades. Thomas Jefferson was said to regularly stop by the Scott’s Main Street home to listen to the family band play on his way to check on the construction of his University of Virginia.

Elsewhere in Virginia, Black fiddler Sy Gilliat, regularly employed by the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, was the most popular fiddler in Richmond and he was known to play a congo, a dance of African or West Indian origin. Described as “the most prominent member of the black aristocracy” by Samuel Mordecai, Gilliat likely played for the balls and dancing parties attended by Jefferson’s wife and daughters.

The Black string band tradition is still alive today, in part due to the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Grammy Award winning string band from Durham, North Carolina that counts Rhiannon Giddens among its members. The Carolina Chocolate Drops learned early tunes by ear, including Duck’s Eyeball and Brown’s Dream, from rural North Carolina tradition bearers Joe and Odell Thompson.

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Our program interweaves tunes from the string band traditions throughout the oral history of the Hemings family at Monticello. As an adult, Thomas Jefferson’s granddaughter Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge wrote down a series of “Negro stories” from her childhood. This manuscript remained in private hands until acquired by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 2013, though somehow, two of the stories we will perform tonight found their way into a 19th-century French publication compiled by Eugene A. Vial. This collection, printed in French, also includes a handful of work songs Coolidge apparently heard the enslaved workers of Monticello sing.

Coolidge lived at Monticello from 1809 with her mother Martha, grandfather Thomas Jefferson, and her siblings. Critta Colberg and Priscilla Hemings both served as nurses to Coolidge and her siblings and are likely the enslaved women who told these stories to the children. Two of the stories appear to be about John Hemings, brother of Sally and wife of Priscilla. In the second story, we learn that John was a fiddler until he found religion, at which point he gave up fiddling because he felt it was an instrument of the devil.

In Mama Dinah and Her Three Dogs, Coolidge notes that the storyteller sings part of the story in a recitative style, a “sort of low chant.” Where she writes down the lyrics of the sung bits of the story, she includes a blank musical staff, complete with treble clef, but fails to write in the musical notes. Using similar stories with surviving melodies as a guide, we offer up a possible tune for the sung portion. Our performance of Mr. Fox Tricks Mr. Rabbit and is Tricked in Return features an adaptation for two fiddles of Jonathan Woody’s 2023 composition designed to fit between sections of this story.

~ David McCormick