Frances Gillette Hern

Frances “Fanny” Gillette Hern was born enslaved on March 31, 1788, on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. She grew up at Monticello and married David “Davy” Hern, Jr., an enslaved man who worked as a wagon driver.¹ 

From 1801-1804, Jefferson hired Frances out to John H. Craven to work at Jefferson’s nearby property, Tufton Farm.² In October 1806, at eighteen years old, Frances went to the White House to work alongside another enslaved teenager in the White House kitchen, her sister-in-law, Edith Hern Fossett. She was likely selected for this role because of her age, gender, and strong family ties to Monticello.³ As an enslaved person, she was not paid a wage for her work. However, Jefferson did pay her a $2.00 gratuity each month.⁴ Frances’s husband Davy drove wagons to the White House from Monticello and the couple only saw each other 2-3 times a year. Frances gave birth to a child in 1808, but the child died in November of whooping cough. While Frances prepared to bury her child, Jefferson’s Monticello overseer Edmund Bacon wrote to Jefferson, “Davy Has petitioned for leave to come see his wife at Christmass. He being so Good a fellow. I hate to Deny him. And probably you have some thing for him to bring a Cart…”⁵ Davy joined Frances at the White House to mourn the loss of their child. 

On another occasion when Davy was at the White House, the couple got into “a terrible quarrel.” The fight was so intense that Jefferson summoned Edmund Bacon to the White House and instructed him to sell Frances and Davy in Alexandria, Virginia. According to steward Étienne Lemaire, they approached Jefferson and “wept, begged, and made good promises, and made such an ado, that they begged the old gentleman out of it.”⁶ 

At the end of Jefferson’s presidency in 1809, Frances returned to Monticello where she helped Edith run the kitchens. In 1824, Massachusetts Representative Daniel Webster described her cooking, “in half Virginian, half French style, in good taste and abundance.”⁷ At Monticello, Frances had seven more children with Davy. 

When Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, there was an enormous debt to settle. As a result, on January 1, 1827, Frances and her infant son, Bonnycastle, were sold to University of Virginia professor, Robley Dunglison. Davy was also purchased by Dunglison in 1829 and they lived in quarters at the University of Virginia’s Pavillion X.⁸ It remains unknown what happened to Frances and Davy after Dunglison’s 1832 resignation from the university.