John Wayles

Who was John Wayles?

John Wayles was a planter, slave trader and lawyer in the Virginia Colony. He is historically best known as the father-in-law of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States.

Wayles is widely believed to have taken his mixed-race slave Betty Hemings as a concubine after being widowed the third time; he had six children with her, of whom the youngest was Sally Hemings. The children were three-quarters European in ancestry and half-siblings to his two daughters by his first and second wives. A year after her marriage to Thomas Jefferson, his oldest daughter Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson inherited the Hemings family and 125 other slaves, along with 11,000 acres and debts as part of her father's estate.