Peter Carr

Peter Carr (January 2, 1770- February 17, 1815), was born in Goochland County to Dabney Carr and Martha Jefferson Carr. He was the nephew of Thomas Jefferson and had a close relationship with his uncle throughout his life. Jefferson provided Carr’s early education and prepared him for his studies at William & Mary, where he studied from 1786 through 1789. While at the school, Carr was a private student of George Wythe. He studied law, however, not under Wythe, but in 1790 under the guidance of his uncle. He was admitted to the bar in 1793 and engaged in a short-lived practice of the law. Although he inherited slaves and land in 1794, he lived at Monticello until 1796. Carr Married Esther Smith Stevenson in 1797 and settled down at the Carrsbrook estate in Albemarle County in 1798.

Carr was a lifelong Jeffersonian Republican. Although he was unsuccessful in his first bid for election to the Virginia House of Delegates, he won election in 1801, 1802, 1803, and 1807. Although Carr was a member of the majority party, his personality may have alienated the voters as “[a] supporter . . . urged Carr to display less pride and more familiarity with the voters.” One historian notes that “[d]espite his widely acknowledged gifts, Carr failed to realize Jefferson’s hopes for a distinguished legal or political career, at least in part because of the self-indulgence, corpulence, and ‘extreme indolence’ of which he stood accused in an otherwise affectionate memoir by a much younger cousin.”

In 1814, Carr joined in the defense of Richmond from the British. He never saw battle and returned to his estate. On February 17, 1815, Carr died at Carrsbrook, shortly after he had written his uncle about his various illnesses. It is likely that he was buried at Monticello.

After death, Carr’s most enduring legacy was that of scandal. Because of his closeness to Thomas Jefferson and his time living at Monticello, it was he that was believed to have been the father of Sally Hemings’ children. In an 1868 letter, Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge states that “Col. Randolph informed [her] that Sally Henings [sic]the mistress of Peter, and her sister Betsey the mistress of Samuel – and from these connections sprang the progeny which resembled Mr. Jefferson.” Despite suspicions that Jefferson was the father, Peter Carr was widely believed to be the father of Heming’s children until the publication of Annette Gordon-Reed’s work on the subject and a 1998 DNA analysis.