Mary Hemings Bell
When Thomas Jefferson was in Paris as the United States Ambassador to France, Mary Hemings worked for a man named Thomas Bell who lived in Charlottesville, Virginia.  She brought her children Joseph and Betsy with her.  She had two more children at Bell's house.  In 1792, Mary Hemings asked Thomas Jefferson to sell her to Bell, and he did.  Historian Annette Gordon-Reed says this was a normal thing for Jefferson to do: To sell an enslaved person so they could live in the same place as someone else in their family.  She writes that Jefferson knew Bell was the father of Hemings' young children but did not talk about it.  He wrote to his manager, Nicholas Lewis, saying to "dispose of Mary according to her desire, with such of her younger children as she chose." He meant that Bell could buy Mary Hemings and his own children but not Mary Hemings' other children.  They could not stay and live with Bell and their half-siblings.  They had to go back to Monticello without their mother.