JUEL ID/KEY: P47545Sally Cottrell Cole, adult female, born a slave at Monticello. Unlike many African-American individuals involved at the University in this early period, she is an individual about which relatively many details are known. Born around 1800, Sally worked as a maid for Jefferson's granddaughter, Ellen Randolph (P47546). She was hired out to the wife of Professor Thomas Hewitt Key (P43622) (the University's first professor of Mathematics) from 1825 to 1827, at which point she was purchased (for $400) by Key before his return to his native England. His condition of purchase was for her to be immediately freed. Virginia law at the time required freed persons to leave the State within 12 months of manumission ("Unearthing Slavery at the University of Virginia"). No doubt a difficult choice, Sally instead chose to stay in the Charlottesville area, first working for Professor John P. Emmet (P43625) then on her own as a seamstress. Other details known about her include that she was baptized at the First Baptist Church in 1841, and married Reuben Cole, a freed black man, in 1846.   PRIMARY SOURCE INFORMATION 1. References to the Individual in the JUEL Digitized Transcripts(Links below are to JUEL's full-text digital transcripts of primary sources that refer to the individual. If no links display, this indicates that either the JUEL digitized texts have not yet been tagged with the individual's ID/Key, or, that no reference is made to the individual in any JUEL digitized texts, or, that the primary source has not yet been digitized).   NONE YET DIGITIZED 2. Library Call Numbers/Bibliographic RecordsWolfe, Brendan. "Unearthing Slavery at the University of Virginia." Virginia (Spring 2013). Retrieved from http://uvamagazine.org/articles/unearthing_slavery_at_the_university_of_virginia  Return to the List of African American Individuals