Jefferson-Hemings controversy

Thomas Jefferson

The Jefferson-Hemings controversy concerns the question of whether there was an intimate relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his mixed-race slave, Sally Hemings, that resulted in his fathering her six children of record. The question has been of interest because of his stature, primarily, but also because of his writings against slavery and against miscegenation. The controversy started as early as the 1790s. Jefferson's descendants told historians in the mid-nineteenth century that one of his late Carr nephews had fathered Hemings' children. Historians generally asserted this denial for nearly 180 years. While some historians of the late twentieth century started reanalyzing the body of evidence, for many consensus was not reached until after reporting of the results of a DNA analysis in 1998: they showed a match between the Jefferson male line and a Hemings descendant, and no match between the Carr line and the Hemings descendant.

In the 21st century, historians have generally accepted the conclusion about Jefferson's paternity. On a popular level, no major historian argued against the television mini-series Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000), based on a relationship between Jefferson and Hemings; by contrast, twenty years earlier, a Jefferson biographer and a historian who was a direct descendant went to the president of CBS to convince him to drop a similar project. Exhibits at Monticello, as well as its recent publications about Jefferson and his times, and other new works published by a variety of scholars, use the new consensus as giving new insight into Jefferson and the Hemings family. It also has inspired new works on the interracial society of the times and since. The National Park Service online biography of Jefferson also notes this consensus about his paternity. But, some historians continue to publish works arguing against Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children.

Background

Jefferson became a widower at age 40 in 1783, and remained so to his death in 1826. He is believed to have had a relationship with Sally Hemings that lasted nearly four decades, until his death, and six children with her. As the Monticello Website says:

"Through his celebrity as the eloquent spokesman for liberty and equality as well as the ancestor of people living on both sides of the color line, Jefferson has left a unique legacy for descendants of Monticello's enslaved people as well as for all Americans."

"Based on the documentary, scientific, statistical, and oral history evidence, the TJF Research Committee Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (January 2000) remains the most comprehensive analysis of this historical topic. Ten years later, TJF and most historians now believe that, years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings.

In the antebellum period, the Hemingses would have been called a "shadow family." Sally Hemings was three-fourths white and believed to be a half-sister to Jefferson's late wife, as her father was also John Wayles. As a widower, Wayles had six children by his 12-year liaison with his mulatto slave Betty Hemings; the youngest was Sally. As the historians Philip D. Morgan and Joshua D. Rothman have written, this was one of numerous interracial relationships in the Wayles-Hemings-Jefferson families, which were also common in Virginia. Often succeeding generations repeated the pattern.

Colonel John Wayles Jefferson
Son of Eston Hemings Jefferson, grandson of Thomas Jefferson

Hemings' children were seven-eighths European in ancestry and legally white according to Virginia law of the time. (The "one-drop rule" did not become law until 1924.) Of the four who survived to adulthood: William Beverley, Harriet Hemings, Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings, all but Madison eventually identified as white and lived as adults in white communities.

In 1997, Annette Gordon-Reed published a book that analyzed the historiography of the controversy, demonstrating how historians since the nineteenth century had accepted early assumptions and failed to note all the facts. Since 1998 and the DNA study, most historians have accepted that the widower Jefferson had a long intimate relationship with Hemings, and fathered six children with her, four of whom survived to adulthood. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF), which runs Monticello, conducted an independent historic review in 2000, as did the National Genealogical Society in 2001; both were among those that concluded Jefferson was likely the father of all Hemings' children. Scholars have based their conclusions on interpretation of historical evidence and the 1998 DNA study which showed a match of the Jefferson male line with a descendant of one of Sally Hemings' children. Prominent historians and biographers such as Joseph Ellis, Andrew Burstein and Philip D. Morgan have said that such studies had led to their accepting his paternity. Since then, Jeffersonian scholarship has changed to acknowledge his paternity, and other scholars have studied the interracial societies of many plantations and nearby towns. Some scholars, however, continue to argue against Jefferson's paternity, suggesting Randolph Jefferson as a candidate, although he was never seriously proposed before the results of the DNA study.

Controversy

As early as the 1790s, neighbors talked about Jefferson's connection to Hemings. In 1802 the journalist James T. Callender, after being refused an appointment to a Postmaster position by Jefferson and issuing veiled threats of "consequences," reported that Jefferson had fathered several children with Sally Hemings. Jefferson never responded publicly, but his family denied the allegation. Others privately or publicly made the claim. Elijah Fletcher, the headmaster of the New Glasgow Academy (Amherst County, Virginia) visited Jefferson in 1811 and wrote in his diary:

"The story of black Sal is no farce — That he cohabits with her and has a number of children by her is a sacred truth — and the worst of it is he keeps the same children slaves — an unnatural crime which is very common in these parts."

The controversy has been over the family's and historians' denial of Jefferson's paternity for nearly 200 years, and disagreements over how to interpret historical evidence related to the issue. Jefferson's daughter Martha reportedly told her son Thomas Randolph that Jefferson had been away from Monticello for 15 months before one of Hemings' children was born. In 1868 Randolph repeated this assertion in a letter to the historian Henry Randall. Randolph wrote that the source of the rumors of Jefferson's paternity was the strong physical resemblance of Hemings' children to his grandfather:

"she [Hemings] had children which resembled Mr. Jefferson so closely that it was plain that they had his blood in their veins."

Randall wrote that Randolph told him that the late Peter Carr, Jefferson's nephew and a married man at the time, had fathered Hemings' children, as explanation for the 'startling' close resemblance that every visitor to Monticello could see. Gordon-Reed noted that Randolph was violating a strong social taboo against naming a white man as the father of slave children. She suggested he would only have done so for a more compelling reason: to protect his grandfather. Because of the social taboos about this topic, Randolph requested and Randall agreed to omit any mention of Hemings in his three-volume Life of Thomas Jefferson (1858). But, Randall passed on the Randolph family testimony to the historian James Parton, and suggested that he had personally seen records supporting it - but no such record existed. Randall's 1868 letter relating Randolph's family account was a "pillar" of later historians' assertions that Peter Carr was the father and that Jefferson was not.

In 1873, the issue received renewed attention: an interview with Sally's son, Madison Hemings, about his life as a slave at Monticello was published in an Ohio newspaper. Hemings claimed Jefferson as his and his siblings' father. He said that, when they were still in Paris and Sally Hemings was pregnant with his child, Jefferson had promised her to free her children when they came of age if she would return to the United States with him. Israel Jefferson, also a former slave of Monticello, confirmed the account of Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children in his own interview published that year by the same newspaper.

In 1874, the historian James Parton published his biography of Jefferson. He used an ad hominenm attack on both Hemings and the journalist who interviewed him, attributing the content to the political motives of the latter. He and other critics essentially discounted the content of the memoir and attributed to Hemings' a range of negative motives for telling his story. (But, the 20th-century historian Merrill Peterson noted Hemings' details about events early in his life were mostly accurate.) In his work, Parton repeated the family's oral history about a Carr paternity and the assertion that Jefferson was absent during the conception period for one of Hemings' children.

Succeeding 20th-century historians, such as Merrill Peterson and Douglass Adair, relied on Parton's book as it related to the controversy. In turn, Dumas Malone adopted their position. In the 1970s, as part of his six-volume biography of Jefferson, Malone was the first to publish a letter by Ellen Randolph Coolidge, Randolph's sister, who claimed the late Samuel Carr (also a married man), rather than his brother Peter, had fathered Hemings' children. (She appeared to have gotten the family story wrong.)

Briefly, the above 20th-century historians and others, such as Joseph Ellis and Andrew Burstein, "defended" Jefferson on the following grounds based on the Jefferson/Randolph family testimony: he was absent at the conception of one Hemings child, and the family identified Peter or Samuel Carr as father(s) of Hemings' children.) In addition, because Jefferson expressed antipathy to blacks in his writings, combined with his perceived moral character, these historians determined he would not have had such a relationship. But, the prevalence of such arrangements among planters was well known. In addition, Sally Hemings was three-quarters white, described as "mostly white" and "decidedly attractive", and was his beloved wife's half sister. Historians discounted accounts from former slaves, including Madison Hemings, without cross-checking the facts to determine whose account was best supported by the evidence. For instance, Madison Hemings' account was supported by the fact that Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings' children, although he was deeply in debt. Hers was the only family whose members were all freed; Harriet was the only female slave he ever freed.

In her book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), Annette Gordon-Reed wrote,

"It is my belief that those who are considered Jefferson scholars have never made a serious and objective attempt to get at the truth of this matter. . . The failure to look more closely into the identities of the parties involved, the too ready acceptance and active promotion of the Carr brothers story, the reliance upon stereotypes in the place of investigation and analysis, all indicate that most Jefferson scholars decided from the outset that this story was not true and that if they had anything to do with it, no one would come to think otherwise. In the most fundamental sense, the enterprise of defense has had little to do with expanding people's knowledge of Thomas Jefferson or the other participants in the story. The goal has been quite the opposite: to restrict knowledge as a way of controlling the allowable discourse on this subject."

Facts

In 1953 Jefferson's Farm Book was published, after having been rediscovered. Its records of slave births, deaths, purchases and sales provided researchers with considerable data about the slaves' lives at Monticello.

In 1968 the historian Winthrop Jordan noted that Jefferson was at Monticello "nine months prior to each birth" of Hemings' children, during a 13-year period when he was often away for months at a time. Fawn McKay Brodie also made use of this information in her biography of Jefferson, which contributed to her conclusion that he had fathered Hemings' children. The source for the birth dates of the children is Jefferson's Farm Book.

No records document where Sally Hemings was during her conception periods, but women slaves generally did not travel much. There is no record of her having been assigned to another of Jefferson's children.^{[citation needed]}

Dumas Malone documented Jefferson's activities and residencies through the years. It was his documentation that showed Jefferson was at Monticello for each of Hemings' conceptions, and she never conceived when he wasn't there. Martha Randolph, Jefferson's daughter, had made a deathbed claim that Jefferson was away for a 15-month period, during which one of the Hemings' children was conceived. This was disproved by Malone's documentation; Jefferson was at Monticello at the time of conception.

In 2000, a statistical analysis of the conception data and Jefferson's residencies found a 99 percent chance that he was the father of all her children. This analysis, commonly referred to as a Monte Carlo study, was done by the head of archaeology at Monticello. In 2001, the Scholars Commission Report of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society criticized it, as they said Neiman had not accounted for the possibility of multiple fathers. Before their report, in the previous 180 years historians had made no suggestion that Hemings had more one partner for her children.

The Hemings children were named for people in the Randolph-Jefferson family or important to Jefferson, rather than for people in the Hemings family. When mixed-race children were sired by the master, they were frequently named after people from his family. Jefferson gave the Sally Hemings family special treatment: the three boys while young had very light household duties. At working age, they were each apprenticed to the master carpenter of the estate, the most skilled artisan. This would provide them with skills to make a good living as free adults.

Most importantly, Jefferson freed all the Hemings children; theirs was the only slave family to all go free from Monticello, and Harriet Hemings was the only female slave he ever freed. He allowed Beverley (male) and Harriet to "escape" in 1822 at ages 23 and 21, although Jefferson was already struggling financially and would be $100,000 in debt at his death. He gave his overseer money to give to Harriet for her journey. Jefferson avoided publicity this way, but the gentry at the time noted the Hemingses' absences; the Monticello overseer Edmund Bacon mentioned in his memoir that people were talking about Harriet's having left, saying that she was Jefferson's daughter. In his 1826 will, Jefferson freed the younger brothers Madison and Eston Hemings, who were approaching the age of 21. To enable them to stay in Virginia, Jefferson's will petitioned the legislature for permission for them and three older Hemings males to stay in the state with their families. (Such legislative approval was required by laws related to manumission and free blacks.) Jefferson freed three older males related to Sally Hemings; they had each served him for decades, unlike her sons, who were just coming of age. Jefferson's daughter Martha Randolph gave Sally Hemings "her time" after Jefferson's death, and she lived freely with her two younger sons in nearby Charlottesville for nearly a decade.

Based on assertions by Jefferson's grandchildren after his death, for 180 years historians had said that Peter or Samuel Carr were the likely father(s) of all of Sally Hemings' children. In 1997 Annette Gordon-Reed identified errors of fact in the Jefferson family testimony, noted that Randall had suggested he had seen material which did not exist, and showed that Parton, Malone, and Peterson had failed to assess critical evidence. She noted the significance of Jefferson's actions related to the Sally Hemings' family, which he took for no other.

New evidence in DNA study

The Jefferson family assertion about the Carrs was conclusively disproved in the 1998 DNA study (see below) that tested the Y-chromosome of direct male descendants of the Jefferson male line (Jefferson had no acknowledged male descendant), the Carr line, and Eston Hemings. It showed no match between the Carr and Hemings' lines, but there was a match between the rare Jefferson family haplotype and that of the Hemings descendant.

At the announcement of the results, the biographer Joseph Ellis, who in 1996 had denied Jefferson's paternity, said in an interview,

"It's not so much a change of heart, but this is really new evidence. And it - prior to this evidence, I think it was a very difficult case to know and circumstantial on both sides, and, in part, because I got it wrong, I think I want to step forward and say this new evidence constitutes, well, evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that Jefferson had a longstanding sexual relationship with Sally Hemings. Even though the match is only with one of the Hemings' descendants, Eston Hemings, it's inconceivable that Jefferson, who was 65 when Eston was born, would have made a one-night stand here. I think this is a longstanding relationship. When it began and what the character of the relationship is we probably can't know easily or at all. But it was, without question, an enduring one.

While another Jefferson male from his line would have had the same DNA as Thomas Jefferson, no other candidate from his male line had ever been identified as a possible father during the nearly 200 years of the historic controversy. As noted above, the Carrs had been considered candidates. No other Jefferson had the same degree of access to Hemings as did Thomas Jefferson. Critics of the conclusions about Jefferson paternity have suggested his brother Randolph Jefferson as a candidate, or another of the eight Jefferson males who lived within 20 miles. These alternatives have only been proposed since the DNA study results showed a match between the Jefferson and Hemings haplotypes.

DNA study

In 1998 Dr. Eugene Foster with researchers at the University of Leicester tested the Y-DNA of male descendants of the Jefferson, Carr and Eston Hemings lines in an attempt to determine whether Thomas Jefferson or one of the Carrs had fathered Sally Hemings' children. Questions raised by the analysis of Annette Gordon-Reed prompted re-evaluation of the issue.

Researchers tested Y-chromosomal DNA from living male claimed descendants of Jefferson and Hemings. The study concluded that the descendant of Eston Hemings had a Y-chromosome that matched the Y-chromosome of the Jefferson male line. Because the Jefferson haplotype was so distinct, and there was historic evidence supporting Thomas Jefferson's paternity, the study team concluded he was the likely father of Eston.

The president's grandson and granddaughter had identified one of his Carr nephews as the biological father of Hemings' children. Three Carr male descendants of Peter and Samuel Carr, the nephews in question, were tested. The results showed a consensus Carr haplotype for the male line. It was conclusively different from that of the Hemings descendant and the Jefferson male line. Foster said, "The simplest and most probable explanations for our molecular findings are that Thomas Jefferson, rather than one of the Carr brothers, was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson. . ."

Descendants of Thomas Woodson were also tested, as they have had a long family tradition of descent from Hemings and Jefferson. In his 19th-century reports, Callender had referred to a "Tom" as one of Jefferson's children with Sally. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation had earlier written that historic evidence regarding Thomas Woodson did not support his descent from Hemings and Jefferson, but the family has persisted in their belief. The DNA study showed conclusively that there was no match between the Woodson descendants and the Jefferson male line. Four of the five Woodson descendants had a common haplogroup seeming to indicate the common ancestor of Thomas Woodson; it is typical of European origin. The fifth descendant showed a different haplogroup, indicating adoption or illegitimacy in that paternal line (a break in descent between Thomas Woodson and this descendant.) His DNA was also indicative of European origin.

Because the Jefferson male line was found to be the K2 haplogroup (since 2008 referred to as haplogroup T (Y-DNA)), relatively rare in Europe, researchers in 2007 made additional studies to determine if it was represented among other Jefferson-surname males in England. As it was found among other Jefferson males unrelated to Jefferson's family, they concluded that the haplotype had likely become "indigenous" to England after some random, ancient migration. Researchers suggested that the rare haplogroup was most likely carried to Europe and England by ancient migrants. Less likely is the possibility that it was carried by a Sephardic Jew migrating to England in the 15th and 16th centuries from the Iberian peninsula or other parts of Europe.

1998 test

Dr. Eugene A. Foster and a team at the University of Leicester collected the material and conducted the testing in 1998. They announced results in a Nature article in November 1998.

Hemings and Woodson descendants for testing

The team located a male-line descendant of Sally Hemings' youngest son Eston Hemings for genealogical DNA testing. Hemings' eldest son Beverly Hemings had no male descendants. Male-line descendants of Hemings' second son Madison Hemings have been located, but have not been tested. As Beverly Hemings changed his name and passed into white society, his descendants have been lost to history.

In addition, the team located five male-line descendants of Thomas Woodson. They were included because of a persistent tradition held by Woodson's descendants, who maintain that he was born in 1790 as a slave at Monticello and was the eldest son of Jefferson and Hemings. There is no record of Sally Hemings having a surviving child born before 1795, and there is other evidence that opposes the Woodson family claim.

Shown in the figure below is the genetic lineage of the one male-line descendant (H21) of Eston Hemings and the five male-line descendants (W55, W56, W69, W70, and W61) of Thomas Woodson.

Jefferson and Carr descendants

Thomas Jefferson did not have a surviving son from his marriage to Martha Wayles Skelton and thus did not have a claimed direct male descendant as a positive control. The team located male-line descendants of Thomas Jefferson's paternal uncle, Field Jefferson, who had the same Y-chromosomal DNA. Five such descendants (J41, J42, J47, J49, and J50) were located and their DNA was analyzed.

Because of mid-19th c. family testimony by Jefferson's grandchildren that one of his nephews, Peter or Samuel Carr, was the biological father of Hemings' children, historians had long asserted this. To test this tradition, researchers tested three male-line descendants (C27, C29, and C31) of Samuel and Peter Carr.

Results

The results of the 14 descendants are shown. Differences are highlighted with bold font. The five descendants of Field Jefferson (which are proxies for Thomas Jefferson) have nearly identical Y-chromosome DNA alleles, except for a single difference at J50. It is a reasonable assumption that this is a point mutation. The team identified this as the Jefferson family haplogroup.

The Jefferson family had denied his paternity by claiming that his Carr nephew(s) were the father of Hemings' children, a claim adopted by historians. The three Carr descendants studied in the DNA analysis have "closely related haplotypes, with one (C29) showing a single microsatellite unit difference at one locus and a single MSY1 unit difference", probably due to mutation. Their consensus haplotype "differs substantially from the Jefferson family haplotype, even showing a biallelic marker difference, and thus the two families are readily distinguished." They are distinctly different from the Hemings and Woodson descendants. Thus, the Carrs were disproved as the ancestor of the Eston Hemings descendant, and the focus returned to Thomas Jefferson.

The descendant of Eston Hemings has the same set of Y-chromosome DNA alleles as the Jefferson male line (simply, he "carries the Jefferson family haplotype."). This supports the claim that Thomas Jefferson could have been the father of Eston Hemings. It is impossible to prove absolutely that no other Jefferson fathered the child. (1) That would be proving a negative, and (2) any male who had the same Y-chromosome as Thomas Jefferson (other descendants of a common male ancestor) could have been the father, provided that this person had relations with Sally Hemings nine months before the birth of Eston Hemings. But, there is no historical evidence that Hemings had more than one partner.

The study team acknowledged the historical body of evidence and said that the simplest explanation was that Thomas Jefferson was most likely the father. For instance, he was documented at Monticello at the time of each of Sally Heming's conceptions, and she never conceived when he was not there. Other circumstantial evidence supports his paternity (see historiography discussion above).

Four of the descendants of Thomas Woodson have closely related haplotypes. The fifth Woodson descendant has a very different haplotype, indicating illegitimacy or adoption in that paternal line. The consensus Woodson haplotype is distinctly different from that of the Jefferson family haplotype, showing one biallelic marker difference. This disproves the Jefferson male line as ancestors. The Woodson haplotype is similar to the consensus Carr haplotype, but "still differs by three microsatellite steps and ten MSY1 steps." "The biallelic markers, together with the MSY1 code" suggest European origin for the Woodson haplotype.

Family Pedigree Member Bi Allelic Markers Microsatellite STR Mini Satellite MSY1

---

Jefferson:

• J41 0000001 15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7 (3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
• J42 0000001 15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7 (3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
• J47 0000001 15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7 (3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
• J49 0000001 15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7 (3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16
• J50 0000001 15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,16,13,7 (3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16

---

Hemings:

• H21 0000001 15,12,4,11,3,9,11,10,15,13,7 (3)5, (1)14, (3)32, (4)16

---

Carr:

• C27 0000011 14,12,5,12,3,10,11,10,13,13,7 (1)17, (3)36, (4)21
• C29 0000011 14,12,5,11,3,10,11,10,13,13,7 (1)17, (3)37, (4)21
• C31 0000011 14,12,5,12,3,10,11,10,13,13,7 (1)17, (3)36, (4)21

---

Woodson:

• W55 0000011 14,12,5,11,3,10,11,13,13,13,7 (1)16, (3)27, (4)21
• W56 0000011 14,12,5,11,3,10,11,13,13,13,7 (1)16, (3)27, (4)21
• W69 0000011 14,12,5,11,3,10,11,13,13,13,7 (1)16, (3)27, (4)21
• W70 1110001 17,12,6,11,3,11,8,10,11,14,6 (0)1, (3a)3, (1a)11, (3a)30, (4a)14, (4)2
• W61 0000011 14,12,5,11,3,10,11,13,13,13,7 (1)16, (3)28, (4)20

Allele assignments

DYS 393	DYS 390	DYS 19	DYS 391	DYS 388	DYS 389I	DYS 392	DYS 389II	DXYS 156Y
14	24	15	10	12	12	15	27	12

Results of re-testing the original Jefferson descendant samples for additional STR markers were published by King, et al. in 2007. Together with DXYS 156Y (which was not included in the new panel), this gives the extended DNA signature:

DYS 393	DYS 390	DYS 19	DYS 391	DYS 388	DYS 439	DYS 389i	DYS 392	DYS 389ii	DYS 437	DYS 460	DYS 438	DYS 461	DYS 462	DYS 436	DYS 434	DYS 435	DXYS 156Y
13	24	15	10	12	12	12	15	27	14	10	9	11	13	12	11	11	12

(Note: the value of DXYS 156Y was reported as 7 in the original paper. This is believed to translate to 12 in the convention now used by DNA testing labs and online databases).

T (formerly K2) haplogroup

Further information: Haplogroup T (Y-DNA)

Aside from the Hemings controversy, the study team became interested in the Jefferson male line DNA because it was found to belong to K2 (since 2008 called haplogroup T), a haplogroup that is rare for Europeans. Because of this, in 2007 they studied the K2 haplogroup and its distribution in the UK.

The highest concentrations today of the K2 haplogroup are found among the people of the Middle East and Africa, but researchers believe the haplogroup originated in Asia and its dispersal shows the effects of ancient migrations. It has the highest frequencies today among the Fulbe peoples of West Africa. In lower concentrations, it appears in East Africa and in the Middle East.

Researchers wondered about the path of migration to produce the small numbers of K2 individuals who have resided in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. In 2007 King, et al. at the University of Leicester conducted DNA testing through a surname study of people named Jefferson. Testing 85 randomly selected men from the UK with the surname Jefferson, the team found that they could be classified into a number of different haplogroups. This suggests that the surname originated independently several times from different unrelated founders, as is known among family historians and other researchers. (The surname means simply Jeff's or Jeffer's son.)

Two of the 85 men, with paternal grandfathers from Yorkshire and the West Midlands, respectively, and no known familial links to the USA, were found to belong to haplogroup K2 (now T). These two showed a perfect 17/17 match for STR values of the descendants of Field Jefferson. This shows that the rare haplotype existed among other men and families in England, so it confirmed Jefferson's commonly accepted family origins there.

Researchers at Leicester state that the background level of the K2 haplogroup (now called Haplogroup T) in the UK is typical of the random dispersal of small numbers of uncommon haplogroups throughout the world. It could have had any ancient origin of arrival in the UK. "The haplogroup has probably been present for centuries in the 'indigenous' population of western Europe," says Professor Jobling (of the University of Leicester), "and is not exclusive to the Middle East and Africa."

Given known migration patterns, some researchers allow that Jefferson may have had a Sephardic Jewish ancestor from Spain or Portugal, or a more ancient ancestor in Europe with origin in Phoenicia or the Levant. According to limited data from commercial testing of people in the European nations, men in Italy may have the highest frequency of haplogroup T, with as many as 3.9% of Italian males belonging to this haplogroup. Approximately 3% of Sephardi Jews and 2% of Ashkenazi Jews have Y-DNA classified as haplogroup T. Dr. Michael Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona, found an exact match to this sample from DNA of a Moroccan Jew, and close matches from his database with two other Middle Eastern Jews and an Egyptian.

Conclusions

With the Carr nephews disproved and a match for the Eston Hemings descendant found with the Jefferson male line, formerly skeptical biographers such as Joseph Ellis and Andrew Burstein publicly said they had changed their opinions and acknowledged Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children. As Burstein said in 2005,

"[T]he white Jefferson descendants who established the family denial in the mid-nineteenth century cast responsibility for paternity on two Jefferson nephews (children of Jefferson’s sister) whose DNA was not a match. So, as far as can be reconstructed, there are no Jeffersons other than the president who had the degree of physical access to Sally Hemings that he did."

In 2000, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which operates Monticello, issued a report of its own investigation, which concluded in accepting Jefferson's paternity. Dr. Daniel P. Jordan, president of Monticello, committed at the time to incorporate "the conclusions of the report into Monticello's training, interpretation, and publications." These include new articles and monographs on the Hemings descendants reflecting the new evidence, as well as books on the interracial community of Monticello and Charlottesville; and new exhibits at Monticello show Jefferson as the father of the Sally Hemings children. In 2010, the Monticello website noted the new consensus that has emerged on Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children in the decade since those major studies.

In its January 2000 issue, the William and Mary Quarterly published Forum: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings Redux, a total of seven articles noting the changed consensus and the developing new views on Jefferson. Included among them was the results of an analysis by Fraser D. Neiman, who studied the statistical significance of the relationship between Jefferson's documented residencies at Monticello and Hemings' conceptions. She never conceived in his absence.

In May 2000, PBS Frontline produced a program Jefferson's Blood about the issues. It noted in its overview:

"More than 20 years after CBS executives were pressured by Jefferson historians to drop plans for a mini-series on Jefferson and Hemings, the network airs Sally Hemings: An American Scandal. Though many quarreled with the portrayal of Hemings as unrealistically modern and heroic, no major historian challenged the series' premise that Hemings and Jefferson had a 38-year relationship that produced children."

Joseph Ellis, a major biographer of Thomas Jefferson, found his views changed by the DNA studies, and he acknowledged Jefferson's paternity of all of Hemings' children. He has been active in speaking about Jefferson and the place of Hemings in his life, as he thinks it is important to American history.

"For Ellis, Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke, these media dialogues provided dynamic public forums for lessons on Jefferson's place in American history. Eager to evaluate the public's response to the new Jefferson, Ellis's students made trips to poll visitors at Monticello, Jefferson's home in Virginia, and at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Eighty percent of those polled were unmoved by findings they'd assumed all along were fact, says Ellis. Scholars, not the public, it turned out, were the ones taken by surprise."

In the fall of 2001, the National Genealogical Society published a special issue of its quarterly about the Jefferson-Hemings controversy. In several articles, its specialists concluded that, as Helen M. Leary wrote, the historical, genealogical, and DNA evidence were sufficient by standard genealogical standards to conclude that Thomas Jefferson was the father of all of Hemings' children.

Dissenting views

In 1999 the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (TJHS) commissioned its own report. (Its founder and current Director Emeritus Herbert Barger, a family historian, had assisted Dr. Eugene Foster by finding descendants of the Jefferson male line, Woodsons and Carrs for testing for the DNA study.) Its Scholars Commission included Lance Banning, Robert F. Turner and Paul Rahe, among others.

In 2001 it published its report, in which the majority concluded there was insufficient evidence to determine that Jefferson was the father of Hemings's children. Their report suggested that his younger brother Randolph Jefferson was the father, and that Hemings may have had multiple partners. They emphasized that more than 20 Jefferson males lived in Virginia. Paul Rahe published a minority view, saying he thought Jefferson's paternity of Eston Hemings was more likely than not.

In response to a PBS Frontline special on the DNA study in 2000, John H. Works, Jr., a Jefferson descendant and a past president of the Monticello Association, a lineage society, wrote that DNA tests indicated that any one of eight Jeffersons could have been the father of Eston. The team had concluded that Jefferson's paternity was the simplest explanation and consistent with historic evidence, but the DNA study could not identify Thomas Jefferson exclusively of other Jefferson males because no sample of his DNA was available.

In the fall of 2001, articles in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly criticized the Scholars Commission Report for poor scholarship and failure to follow accepted historical practices of analysis, or to give sufficient weight to the body of evidence.

In 2001 the historian Alexander Boulton reviewed both the TJHS report and The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty, published by the TJHS. In the William and Mary Quarterly, he noted that Randolph Jefferson had never been seriously proposed as a candidate by historians before the findings of the DNA study of 1998. It had disproved the Carr connection and showed a genetic match between the Hemings descendant and the Jefferson line. He noted "previous testimony had agreed" that Hemings had only one father for her children, so criticized the idea that she had multiple partners for her children. Jeanette Daniels, Marietta Glauser, Diana Harvey and Carol Hubbell Ouellette conducted research and in 2003 found that Randolph Jefferson had been an infrequent visitor to Monticello.

In 1999, Lucian Truscott IV, a Wayles-Jefferson descendant and member of the Monticello Association, the Jefferson lineage society, invited Hemings descendants to that year's annual meeting. In light of the new material, the Association decided to commission its own report to determine whether it would admit Hemings' descendants to the lineage society. Its focus was whether the Hemings descendants could satisfy the society's requirements for documentation of lineage. In contrast to the conclusions of the certified genealogists of the National Genealogical Society, who examined all the historical evidence, the 2002 report to the Monticello Association concluded the evidence was insufficient to establish Jefferson's paternity. The majority of Association members voted against admitting the Hemings descendants as members of the group.

Truscott IV noted in his 2001 article in American Heritage that the Association did not have such strict documentation standards before the DNA study results were published in 1998. He said at an earlier time, he could as easily have enrolled his cat as his daughter.

Meaning of the controversy

As Andrew Boulton noted, "One of the questions it [the controversy] forces historians today to address is: have we consistently ignored these issues in an effort to "whitewash" our national history? Have we excluded discussions of race and sexuality in an effort to make our historical memory conform to a Jeffersonian rhetoric of equality?"

Search for Common Ground

In 2001, before the Monticello Association vote, Lucian Truscott IV had written:

"I pray that we will be fair to our cousins and to ourselves and to our history and to the memory not only of Thomas Jefferson but of Sally Hemings, and that we will do the right thing. Standing together, we are ancient evidence of the lie at the heart of racism, because in the words of Thomas Jefferson, we were created equal.
We are Jefferson’s children. We are a family."

In 2010, Shay Banks-Young and Julia Jefferson Westerinen (descended from Sally Hemings' sons Madison and Eston, respectively; they identify as African American and white), and David Works (brother of John H. Works, Jr., and descended from Martha Wayles), were honored with the international "Search for Common Ground" award for "their work to bridge the divide within their family and heal the legacy of slavery." The three have spoken about race and their extended family in numerous appearances across the country. After organizing a reunion at Monticello in 2003 of both sides of the Jefferson family, they organized "The Monticello Community," for descendants of all who lived and worked there during Jefferson's lifetime. In July 2007, the 3-day Monticello Community Gathering brought together descendants of many people who had worked at the plantation, with educational sessions, tours of Monticello and Charlottesville, and other activities. It was organized by descendants of both sides of Jefferson's family, as well as of others who had worked there.

Shay Banks-Young, a descendant of Madison Hemings, had grown up with a family tradition of descent from Jefferson. David Works had originally resisted the new DNA evidence, but after he read the commissioned reports, he became convinced of Jefferson's paternity and voted in favor of admitting the Hemings' descendants to the Monticello Association.

Julia Jefferson Westerinen is descended from Eston Hemings Jefferson. After Hemings moved his family to Madison, Wisconsin in 1852, they each took the surname Jefferson and entered the white community. His descendants married and identified as white from then on. In the 1940s, Julia's father and his brothers changed the family oral tradition and told their children they were descended from an uncle of Jefferson, as they were trying to protect them from racial discrimination. In the 1970s, a cousin, Jean Jefferson, read Fawn Brodie's biography of Jefferson and recognized Eston Hemings' name from family stories. She contacted Brodie and learned the truth about their descent. This enabled tracking down the family to gain a descendant for DNA testing. Julia's brother, John Weeks Jefferson, was the Eston Hemings' descendant tested; his DNA matched that of the Jefferson male line.

Current scholarship

In the last decade, many new works related to Jefferson and Monticello, such as those published by Gordon-Reed, Andrew Burstein , Richard B. Bernstein, and Christopher Hitchens, have used Jefferson's relationship with Hemings and paternity of her children as a basis for studying the rest of his life. Other scholars, including some associated with the TJHS, have published works that continue to argue against Jefferson's paternity.

See also

• List of genetic results derived from historical figures

External links

• "The History of a Secret: A chronology of how the Jefferson-Hemings story was long dismissed by historians as legend, lie or worse", Jefferson's Blood, PBS Frontline, May 2000
• "More Britons with Jefferson surname found to be haplogroup K2", BBC - UK
• "Web resources on the Hemings Controversy", Monticello Website (Thomas Jefferson landmark)
• "The Monticello Community", Official Website
• Herbert Barger, Thomas Jefferson - Sally Hemings: the truth about a founding father/ "The DNA Study", n.d., Thomas Jefferson- Sally Hemings blog, articles cited on first page, 2002-2003
• "Famous DNA", International Society of Genetic Genealogy