Though enslaved, Sally Hemings helped shape her life and the lives of her children, securing for them an almost 50-year head start on emancipation. Born in 1773 to an enslaved woman and her owner, she came to Monticello as a toddler after the death of her father, John Wayles, and was inherited by Thomas Jefferson through his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. As a young girl she served as nursemaid to Jefferson's daughter Maria, and in 1787, at age 14, she accompanied Maria to France, where she reunited with her brother James, earned wages, learned French, and lived in a place where she was free. According to her son Madison Hemings, she became pregnant there and agreed to return to enslavement at Monticello only after negotiating extraordinary privileges for herself and freedom for her future children. Over the next 32 years she raised four children who survived to adulthood—Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston—preparing them for eventual emancipation. Thomas Jefferson fathered at least six of her children, and he ultimately freed all of Sally Hemings's children, but no other enslaved family unit. Beverly and Harriet left Monticello in the early 1820s and passed into white society; Madison and Eston were freed in Jefferson's will, left Monticello in 1826, and later settled in Ohio, with Eston eventually moving to Wisconsin, taking the surname Jefferson, and passing into white society, while Madison remained in the black community. Sally Hemings herself was never legally emancipated; after Jefferson's death in 1826, his daughter unofficially freed her by giving her time, and she lived in Charlottesville with Madison and Eston until her death in 1835. Her grave location is unknown.