James Hemings
When James Hemings lived in Paris, Jefferson paid him as if he were a free man.  Historian Annette Gordon-Reed says this could be because Jefferson did not want anyone to know Hemings was an enslaved person.  The laws of France in the 1770s and 1780s did not allow people to keep slaves in France.  People who brought slaves to France had to either send them out of the country or free them within a certain time.  Enslaved people who knew about this law could go to the admiralty court and ask the French government to say they were free.   The judge at the admiralty court for Paris almost always agreed that the person was free.  Gordon-Reed says James Hemings could have stayed in Paris if he had wanted to.  There were about 1000 black people living in Paris at the time, and French aristocrats liked to employ them.  Hemings could have worked as a chef or cook.