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In 1998, the scientific journal Nature published the results of DNA tests designed to shed new light on questions first asked some two hundred years earlier: Did Thomas Jefferson have a relationship with a woman who was his slave? Did that relationship produce children?
Now, the new scientific evidence has been correlated with the existing documentary record, and a consensus of historians and other experts who have examined the issue agree that the question has largely been answered: Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally Hemings's children, and quite
probably all six. The language of "proof" does not translate perfectly from science and the law to the historian's craft, however. And the DNA findings in this case are only one piece of a complicated puzzle that many in previous generations worked hard to make sure we might never solve.
In this section, FRONTLINE has gathered some of
the key scientific and documentary evidence which has led historians to believe
in Jefferson's paternity, as well as the "dissenting views"
of those who continue to maintain that the evidence is not conclusive. FRONTLINE has also enlisted the help of historians to consider the Jefferson-Hemings relationship in the context of their own time.
The DNA Evidence · Dissenting Views · Jefferson-Hemings in Context
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In November of 1998, following the release of DNA tests which, combined with the
historical record, strongly point to Thomas Jefferson as the father of at least one of Sally Hemings's children, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation formed a Research Committee to verify the findings, gather all relevant evidence, and make a full assessment of the matter. This web version of the final report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings is organized into six sections, evaluating the DNA science and the documentary evidence; listing the "uncontested facts"; and investigating the possible paternity of other Jeffersons, including the Carr brothers, who were long reputed to have fathered Sally Hemings's children. The final section of the report contains the committee's conclusion: that there is a high probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings and probably all six of Sally Hemings's children.
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In 1997, Dr. Eugene Foster, a retired medical professor, began investigating
the possibility of a genetic link between living descendents of Thomas
Jefferson and those of Sally Hemings. He compared the blood from five
descendents of Field Jefferson, Thomas's paternal uncle, with the blood of the
descendants of Sally Hemings, Thomas Woodson, and the Carrs. The DNA was
extracted from the blood samples at the University of Virginia, then sent to
Oxford, England where it was tested by three different laboratories. The
results showed a match [see chart] between the Y chromosomes of the Field
Jefferson descendents and the Eston Hemming descendent, providing strong
support to the theory that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally
Hemings's children. The chances that this match happened by coincidence are
less than .1 percent.
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Just after Dr. Foster's findings were reported worldwide, PBS's Newshour
convened one of the first roundtable discussions on the meaning of the
findings. Listen in real audio (or read the transcript) of the Newshour
discussion with historian Joseph Ellis, who won the National Book Award for
Non-Fiction for his 1997 book, American Sphinx, The Character of Thomas
Jefferson, Annette Gordon-Reed, law professor and author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, An American Controversy, and
Daniel Jordan, president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, a private
group that owns and manages Monticello. While you won't get a heated debate (at
this point, all three discussants all more or less agree), you will get
thoughtful insights into how this new discovery affects our understanding of
Jefferson.
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Why did historians for so long discount considerable evidence in the historical
record which supported the relationship? And why did Jefferson historians
promote an alternative theory involving Jefferson's nephews--a theory which
could have been disproved without DNA? In this text/video report, FRONTLINE
revisits key moments in the history of the Jefferson-Hemings story to see what
was said and why.
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In March of 2000, White MacKenzie Wallenborn MD, one of the members of the
Research Committee that prepared the official Monticello report on
Jefferson-Hemings, issued this "Minority Report" to voice his reservations
about the committee's conclusions. Dr. Wallenborn does not believe that the
combined historical and DNA evidence sufficiently proves Jefferson's paternity.
He writes: "The findings enhance the possibility that Thomas Jefferson was the
father of one of Sally Hemings children, Eston Hemings, but the findings do not
prove that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston"
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This site is a clearinghouse for detailed information, essay, and argument
against any conclusion linking Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in any way
other than simply master and slave. The site includes a critical essay by
Herbert Barger, a Jefferson Family Historian who disagrees with the DNA
findings of Dr. Foster. The site also features Eyler Robert Coates Sr.'s
critical analysis of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Report. There are
multiple links to other sites that present critical opinions of the report and
of the DNA evidence.
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Some of the earliest documentary evidence linking Jefferson and Hemings makes
mention of a first son, conceived in Paris, named "Tom." Many believe this to
be a reference to Thomas Woodson--and Thomas Woodson's descendants have
passionately pressed this conclusion for years and continue to do so. Their
convictions about being Jefferson descendants rest on oral testimony,
passed down independently by separate branches of their family. But the
DNA tests do not support their claims. Since no documentary evidence
places their ancestor clearly at Monticello, the history is at best
inconclusive. This Web Page of the Thomas C. Woodson
Family Association aims to bring together descendants of Thomas and Jemima
Woodson and to promote scholarship pertaining to the Woodson ancestry. The
site contains family history, an internet family tree, discussion boards, and
links to related sites and recent articles.
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Philip D. Morgan, a professor at the College of William and Mary, places the
Jefferson Hemings relationship in the social and historical context of the
early national Chesapeake where relationships between white male slave owners
and their black or mulatto female slaves were not uncommon. Morgan argues that
although each of these relationships was ultimately "a forced embrace," they
ranged in nature from abusive to "the functional equivalent of a loving
marriage." Occasionally these relationships were open, but they were more
often concealed and hidden from public and private scrutiny. Interracial sex
in the Chesapeake "brought whites and blacks close together, blurred the
distinctions between them and broke down barriers," Morgan writes. But
interracial sex was also potentially explosive, "threatening to close the gap
between the free and the enslaved, and producing a group of people whose
position was deeply ambiguous."
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Affairs between slave owners and slaves were "open secrets" in antebellum
Virginia, argues Joshua D. Rothman of the University of Virginia. These "open
secrets" were protected by a societal code that mandated public silence. When
James Callender published the first public telling of the Jefferson-Hemings
story, he broke this code and suffered for it. Callender failed to generate
the response he desired because the accusation--keeping a slave mistress-- was
not a shocking or even an unfamiliar situation to most Virginians. "Callender
never understood that in Virginia and in other parts of the South there were
honorable and dishonorable ways of sharing information about the interracial
sexual affairs of elite men" writes Rothman. When Callender published his
accusation, it was as if he directly confronted Jefferson, and with that he
brought more dishonor upon himself than he could have hoped to bring to
Jefferson.
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What happens when a lie told among family members gets folded into the nation's
history? We will never know exactly how much Jefferson's white family knew
about their slave siblings, but one thing is certain, according to Rutgers
professor Jan Ellen Lewis: the story created by Jefferson's white family that
persisted throughout history--that Jefferson's nephews fathered Sally Hemings's
children--was a lie. The Carrs served as the family lambs, sacrificed by their
Jefferson cousins, while the Hemings's were written out of the family story
altogether. "How are we to reckon the costs entailed upon the Hemings family
first by their father's silence and then by his white family's lies?" asks
Professor Lewis. "Perhaps we just add them to the unpaid bill of race, the
interest still compounding, year after year, day after day."
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