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| Critta Hemings Wayles, like her younger sister Sally, was fathered by John Wayles and would live her life at Monticello apparently working as a nurse, likely also a future midwife to the children therein. It was a common practice on slave plantations to have at least one slave woman with skills and tasks to help owners account and care for the slave population during birth and illness. Our view is that she likely was an apprentice to a woman such as Betty Hemings or an older sister like Mary or Bett. http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Critta_Hemings_Bowles
It is a point of interest to us as to which woman or women at Monticello did Jefferson assign the needed function of mid-wife and/or nurse? Physicians were hired when needed but day to day care was not provided by physicians; and, the newly imagined fable based on "Gone With The Wind" that White women and/or Plantation Mistresses somehow had functional responsibility to slaves in birthing, illnesses and death, ... is completely without foundation in a society wherein White woman never ever laid their hands on the bodies of non-Whites, especially Black males.
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