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However, Jefferson had no acknowledged male descendants so it was necessary to examine the DNA of his closest relatives. Jefferson's uncle, Field Jefferson, had sons and his descendants are alive today. Five of them agreed to have their blood drawn so it could be compared with the blood of the male descendants of Sally's son, Eston Hemings.

The results of Dr. Foster's study, published in Nature (November 5, 1998), found a match (see chart) on the Y-chromosome between the descendants of Eston Hemings and Field Jefferson. Scientists note that there is less than a one percent probability that this is due to chance. The study does not prove that Eston Hemings's father was Thomas Jefferson, only that Eston's father was a Jefferson. Short of digging up Thomas Jefferson's body, and doing direct DNA analysis on the tissues, the issue will remain ambiguous. [However, a separate study of Jefferson's Monticello visits finds they coincide so closely to Hemings's pregnancies, that even without DNA, the probability of his being the father is 90 percent or more. With DNA, it is far higher, perhaps 99 percent --not proven, certainly, but as close to proven as most history ever gets.]

Foster's findings also gave the lie to more than a hundred years of historians' claims that one of Jefferson's nephews, Peter or Samuel Carr, fathered Hemings's children: DNA testing excluded both of the Carrs from the list of possible fathers.

Explore the Is It True? section of this site for more on the DNA tests.

		3. When did interracial marriage become legal in all fifty U.S. states?
			·  1800 ·  1864 ·  1918 ·  1998