Thomas Woodson

Quick Facts

Significance:

Traveled the California trail and made significant contributions to cartography of the West.

Place of Death:

Jackson County, Ohio

Date of Death:

1879

Thomas Woodson (T.H. Jefferson) 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. Yet besides family oral history, there is no documentation of Woodson’s relationship to Hemings. In 1998, a DNA study suggested that Woodson was not related to Jefferson, either. It is also unclear whether Woodson was enslaved or free, or how was connected to Monticello (if at all).

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 freed 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). 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. Woodson’s descendants are unsure exactly why Thomas undertook the grueling overland journey, but perhaps (as Richardson posits) the Far West would have allowed Thomas to escape questions about his lineage.

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. 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.

At some point in his life Thomas had studied cartography, and he decided to draw his own map while trekking west. Thomas’s map demonstrated his vast knowledge of the West’s flora, fauna, and geography. He named many important features and places; 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. 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 shelter, safety, and sustenance.

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. 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.

(Special thanks to UNM PhD candidate Angela Reiniche for compiling this information.)

Learn More

Thomas Woodson, the California Trail

The California National Historic Trail