Part of a series of articles titled People of the California Trail.
Article
Thomas Woodson, the California Trail
Images/Library of Congress
Thomas Woodson – California Trail
By Angela Reiniche[1]
Thomas Woodson first appears in the documentary record in an 1807 deed from Greenbrier County, Virginia. More than a century and a half later, in the 1970s, Woodson’s descendants reconnected for the first time in generations. They found that their versions of the family’s history were essentially identical, and they all agreed on one crucial point: Thomas Woodson was the first child born to Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman in the Jeffersons’ household.
Contemporary documentary evidence supports the notion that, around 1790, Hemings gave birth to a son named Tom who bore a striking resemblance to the country’s third president, Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, one newspaper account referred to him as “our young mullato [sic] president.” Yet besides the family oral tradition, scholars have found no documentary evidence of Thomas Woodson’s relationship to Hemings—or, for that matter, to Thomas Jefferson; indeed, the results of a 1998 DNA study suggests that Woodson was not related to Jefferson. Woodson’s background will likely remain a matter of debate among scholars.[2] It is also unclear whether Woodson was enslaved or free.[3]
Likewise, Woodson’s association with Monticello remains a mystery. If he did grow up there, it would explain the variety of skills—reading, writing, carpentry, cartography, music, and even nautical crafts—he was able to acquire at a relatively young age. As a part of Thomas Jefferson’s household, he would have been exposed to a number of notable visitors; Woodson would have been between ten and twelve, for example, when Meriwether Lewis spent time at Monticello as Jefferson’s private secretary. This begs yet another question: if Woodson grew up at Monticello, when did he leave—and why? Woodson family oral tradition suggests that he might have quarreled with Jefferson, who sent him to a plantation owned John Woodson (Jefferson’s relative by marriage) in 1802—hence Thomas’s last name. Another family theory holds that Jefferson gave his son money that enabled him to leave Monticello quietly and start a life elsewhere.[4]
In any case, Thomas Woodson resurfaced in 1806 on a Virginia farm owned by the planter James Kinkaid. His future wife, Jemima Price, had been relocated with her family to the same area after the death of their owner in 1788. Price’s mother and sister were manumitted in 1803 and 1805, and Jemima appears to have lived as a free woman in the county (although there is no evidence that her manumission papers were ever filed).[5]
Woodson and his wife welcomed their first son in 1806 at a place called Brushy Ridge, near Lewisburg. According to his descendants, Thomas (hereafter referred to by his first name) used the land to graze cattle. Around 1820 or 1821, the family made its way to Ohio, settled in Chillicothe, and rented a farm there for nine years. In 1830 they moved to Jackson County, Ohio, where they (and others) bought land that became a well-known Black community named Berlin Crossroads. In an interview with historian Shirley Ann Moore, Constance Moore Richardson—Thomas’ six-times great-granddaughter—theorizes that he started using the Jefferson surname as he moved farther west. Interestingly, Woodson’s descendants are unsure exactly why Thomas undertook the grueling overland journey; perhaps, as Richardson posits, the Far West would have allowed Thomas to escape speculation about his lineage.[6]
Thomas outfitted in St. Louis and made his way to Independence in 1846, where he jumped off onto the trail, California bound. His party was led by William Henry Russell, but Thomas parted ways with that group before reaching the Kansas River. (A fellow traveler noted that Thomas was just one of six single men in Russell’s party, suggesting that was one of the reasons for his removal from the company.) On 19 May 1846, Thomas—perhaps using his more famous surname by that point—joined a new wagon train under the leadership of Methodist minister James Dunleavy. Owing to the party’s lack of an official chronicler, few details are known about Thomas’s overland trek to California.[7]
At some point in his life Thomas had studied cartography, and he decided to draw his own map while trekking west. He started work on it as soon as he joined Dunleavy’s group, detailing all the streams and springs upon the road, as well as the daily distances, courses, and camps made by the party. Thomas’s map demonstrated his vast knowledge of the West’s flora, fauna, and geography. He accorded names to places not already named by other cartographers and, in some cases, assigned new names to some places that already had them; for example, his map was the first to call the Truckee River by its current name. He calculated the distances between points, counseled emigrants on the safest and most appropriate modes of travel, and provided a list of necessary provisions; for example, he advised travelers crossing the Salt Lake Valley that “water is more important than grass” and that the journey was “not entirely a pleasure trip.” (He also recommended traveling in small parties.) Though Thomas’s map is extremely precise, it is unlikely he made it for a geographical society. Instead, it seems he intended it as a guide for emigrants concerned with the practicalities of overland travel—shelter, safety, and sustenance.[8]
Despite his involvement with western emigration, Thomas eventually moved back to Ohio and resumed using the name Woodson. His wife Jemima died in 1868, and Thomas himself died eleven years later in Jackson County, Ohio.[9] Despite the intrigue surrounding his parentage, Thomas is also remembered for his mapmaking—which aided many emigrants on the treacherous journey to California. As an African American cartographer and guidebook author, his experiences offer a unique counterpoint to those of the many enslaved men, women, and children who crossed the Plains with their enslavers.
[1] Part of a 2016–2018 collaborative project of the National Trails-National Park Service and the University of New Mexico’s Department of History, “Student Experience in National Trails Historic Research: Vignettes Project” [Colorado Plateau Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CPCESU), Task Agreement P16AC00957]. This project was formulated to provide trail partners and the general public with useful biographies of less-studied trail figures—particularly African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, women, and children.
[2] Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, “Appendix K: Assessment of Thomas C. Woodson Connection to Sally Hemings,” Thomas Jefferson Foundation, https://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/appendix-k-assessment-thomas-c-woodson-connection-to-sally-hemings. (Quoted text from 1802 article in the Richmond Recorder.)
[3] Shirley Ann Moore, Sweet Freedom’s Plains: African Americans on the Overland Trails, 1841-1869 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 90.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., 90-91.
[7] Ibid., 91-92.
[8] Ibid., 92-93.
[9] Ibid.
Last updated: March 9, 2023