Bell became a good friend of Jefferson. Mary Hemings Bell was the first of Betty's children to gain freedom. When Thomas Bell died in 1800, he left Mary and their Bell children a sizable estate, treating them as free in his will. The property included lots on Charlottesville's Main Street. He depended on his neighbors and friends to carry out his wishes, which they did. Hemings lived in a house on Main Street. Although free, Mary Hemings remained in close communication with her enslaved family at Monticello and gave gifts to her children and others. She was remembered by them many years after her death. As an elderly man, her grandson Peter Fossett recalled how when he was a child, his free grandmother Mary gave him a suit of blue nankeen cloth and a red leather hat and shoes, grand compared to the attire of children of field slaves. She finished her days in Charlottesville. Her grave site remains unknown. American Revolutionary War In 1780, after Jefferson was elected as the governor of Virginia during the American Revolutionary War, he moved his family to the state capitol of Williamsburg, taking along with them a number of slaves, including Hemings. The following year, Jefferson relocated his household to the new capital of Richmond. When British forces led by Benedict Arnold raided Richmond searching for Jefferson, they took Mary Hemings and other slaves owned by him as prisoners of war. After the 1781 siege of Yorktown, Hemings was released from British captivity and returned to being enslaved by Jefferson. In 2007, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) declared Hemings to be a "Patriot of the Revolution" by virtue of her status as a prisoner of war, which automatically qualified Hemings' female descendants as eligible to join the DAR; Hemings was the first slave to be honored as such. Descendants One of Mary's most notable descendants was William Monroe Trotter, who became a prominent Boston newspaper publisher, human rights activist, and a founder of the Niagara Movement, precursor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Trotter was graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1895; in his junior year he became the first man of color to earn a Phi Beta Kappa key there. Trotter was a contemporary of fellow Harvard alumnus W. E. B. Du Bois. In 1896, Trotter earned a master's degree from Harvard, planning