Aaron Burr’s Secret Wife
Mary Emmons and her Black Descendants
There are a few similarities between Mary Emmons and Sally Hemings. No pictures exist of either woman born into enslavement. Mary was associated with Aaron Burr, and Sally with Thomas Jefferson. At one moment, both men were tied in electoral votes to become President of the United States. Alexander Hamilton hated Burr more than Jefferson and swung the tide in Jefferson’s favor. Burr later killed Hamilton in a duel.
There is a book about Mary Emmons, The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr, by Susan Holloway Scott. Unfortunately, with so much truth available to be told, hers is primarily fiction, making up what she didn’t know and changing what was inconvenient. The illustration on one of her editions shows a woman of color, but barely. All the depictions of Sally Hemings do so also. In Susan Holloway Scott’s novel, Mary Emmons was born in Haiti. Scott’s book made her the product of a mother from India and a British soldier who raped her. Maybe making her half-white made her more palatable despite how she got there. The real Mary Emmons was born in Calcutta with no known British soldier involved. She was sold into slavery at a young age and later sent to Haiti.
Despite references elsewhere to Mary Emmons as a maid, she was enslaved, not a domestic, free to come and go as she pleased. Emmons was…
