Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. John Wayles Eppes was an attorney, a United States Representative and a Senator from Virginia. One of the planter class, he married his first cousin Maria Jefferson, the youngest surviving daughter of Martha Wayles Skelton and Thomas Jefferson. After her early death following the birth of her third child, Eppes was a widower for five years before marrying Martha Burke Jones from North Carolina. Descendants of his slave Betsy Hemmings, who was with his household from the age of 14, say that Eppes as a widower took her as a concubine when she was about 21