Assessing the Arguments
We began our inquiry by trying to identify all of the arguments and evidence in support of the proposition that Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more of Sally Hemings’ children. We then looked carefully at the facts surrounding each of these allegations, and reached general conclusions on each. We then looked at evidence suggesting that Thomas Jefferson was not the father of any of Sally’s children, and, after a careful review of the totality of the known evidence, we drew our individual conclusions and took a vote.
The DNA Tests
We are in full accord that much of the public has been misled about the significance of the DNA tests performed by Dr. Eugene Foster and his colleagues and first reported in the journal Nature in November 1998. While the tests were professionally done by distinguished experts, they were never designed to prove, and in fact could not have proven, that Thomas Jefferson was the father of any of Sally Hemings’ children. The tests merely establish a strong probability that Sally Hemings’ youngest son, Eston, was fathered by one of the more than two dozen Jefferson men in Virginia at the time, seven of whom there is documentary evidence to believe may well have been at Monticello when Eston was conceived.
Dr. Foster has cooperated fully in our inquiry and has readily acknowledged that the DNA tests do not suggest that Thomas Jefferson was Eston’s father as opposed to someone like his younger brother Randolph or one of Randolph’s sons. Indeed, every knowledgeable authority we have consulted, including other scientists who conducted the tests, has denied that these tests could possibly have distinguished among the male members of the Jefferson family in determining the paternity of Eston Hemings. These tests compared nineteen markers on the Y chromosomes of fourteen individuals: five living male-line descendants of two sons of Thomas Jefferson’s paternal uncle, who was assumed to have the same Y chromosome as Jefferson’s father and thus of Jefferson himself; three male-line descendants of three sons of the paternal grandfather of Peter and Samuel Carr;1 five male-line descendants of two sons of Thomas Woodson; and one male-line descendant of Eston Hemings. The results showed a match between the haplotypes of the Jefferson descendants and the Eston Hemings descendant, but no other matches. In plain words, they showed that a descendant of one of Sally Hemings’ children carries Jefferson genetic markers, not those of the Carr brothers, which effectively rules out the possible paternity of Sally Hemings’ youngest child by any of the Carr brothers and points to some male Jefferson as his likely father. As we discuss below, the circumstantial case against some of Thomas Jefferson’s relatives appears significantly stronger than the case against him.
The most important results from the DNA testing may well have been the determination that Thomas Woodson, long thought by many to be the “Tom” referred to by James Callender in 1802 as having been conceived by Sally Hemings in Paris and having a strong physical resemblance to the President, could not have been the son of Thomas Jefferson. Subsequent DNA testing of descendants of a third Woodson son confirmed the earlier results. Most of us believe this goes far towards undermining any remaining credibility of the original Callender allegations.
Madison Hemings’ 1873 Statement
Nearly half a century after Thomas Jefferson’s death a highly partisan newspaper editor in Pike County, Ohio, published an article alleged to be based upon an interview with Sally Herrings’ second-youngest son, Madison. In the story, Madison is said to have claimed that Thomas Jefferson fathered all of his mother’s children. This was followed shortly thereafter by an interview attributed to Israel Jefferson, another former Monticello slave, who corroborated Madison Hemings’ story. There is no record that Sally Hemings or any of her other children ever alleged that Thomas Jefferson was their father.
There are many problems with Madison’s story. He alleged that Thomas Jefferson became sexually involved with Sally Hemings in Paris, and when she refused to return to Virginia with him he promised to grant her special privileges and to free all of her children when they reached the age of twenty-one. Madison could not personally have known this information, and he provides no source for his alleged statements. Some sentences in his account pertain to aspects of Jefferson’s background that occurred long before Madison was born and that had been mentioned in published biographies of Jefferson. Several unusual words can be traced directly back to the 1802 Callender attacks on Jefferson, including the identical misspelling of a name.
Madison was also reported as saying that Dolley Madison was present at the time of his birth, and numerous reliable documents strongly suggest that this statement is false. Much of the information in the subsequent article attributed to Israel Jefferson is clearly false, and indeed he alleges recalling events that occurred before he was born. Thomas Jefferson’s detailed records do not support Israel’s claim to have held a position of great trust at Monticello, and Israel’s allegation that his job included kindling Jefferson’s fire each morning is expressly refuted by reliable sources published prior to his statement. On balance, the two alleged statements are clearly seriously flawed and do not outweigh the contradictory eyewitness accounts of others that exist on many of these issues.
The Correlation Between Thomas Jefferson’s Visits to Monticello and Sally Hemings’ Conceptions
Although Thomas Jefferson was absent from Monticello roughly half the time when Sally Hemings was having children, he appears to have been there when most and perhaps all of her children were conceived. (He was absent for most of the conception window for her son Beverly.) Several of us found this to be the most compelling evidence of a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, and thus it received extensive consideration during our deliberations.
We believe that the simplest explanation for the long-known coincidence of Thomas Jefferson’s return to Monticello and Sally Hemings’ pregnancies is that Monticello was normally kept locked during Jefferson’s absence, and thus his return would prompt visits to the mountain by numerous friends and relatives—including other candidates for the paternity of Sally Hemings’ children such as the President’s brother, nephews and cousins.
The Visitation-Conception Issue and the Monte Carlo Study
None of us was impressed by the “Monte Carlo” statistical study published in the William & Mary Quarterly and appended to the Monticello report, which for inexplicable reasons postulated both that there could only be a single father for all of Sally Hemings’ children and that rival candidates to Thomas Jefferson would have had to arrive and depart on the exact same days as did the President. The assumption of random behavior by Jefferson’s friends and relatives also makes little sense to us, as they would certainly have been far more likely to visit after he had returned from extended absences in Washington or elsewhere. Some of the data used in this study for the days Thomas Jefferson was at Monticello during the weeks before and after the conception of Eston Hemings were also inaccurate.
Our inquiry suggests not only that there is no serious evidence that Sally Hemings was monogamous, but there is very credible eyewitness testimony that she was often sexually involved with a man other than Thomas Jefferson. The Monte Carlo study and many other arguments on this issue are premised on the assumption that one man must have fathered all of Sally Hemings’ children. There is reasonably credible evidence based upon eyewitness testimony that Jefferson’s nephews Samuel and Peter Carr admitted paternity of at least some of Sally Hemings’ children, and the DNA tests show only that they could not have been the father of Eston. Even without considering Thomas Jefferson’s advanced age (sixty-four) and health, if the question is changed from trying to place a single suspect at Monticello nine months prior the birth of all of Sally’s children to simply trying to identify the Jefferson men who were likely to have been in the Monticello area when Eston Hemings was conceived, the statistical case for Thomas Jefferson’s paternity of Eston, based upon DNA evidence alone, falls below fifteen percent.
The Allegation that Sally Hemings and Her Children Recei
ved “Special Treatment” at Monticello
At first glance, one of the most powerful arguments in favor of Jefferson’s paternity is the claim that Sally and her children received “special treatment” from Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. This claim overlooks the fact that virtually all of the children and grandchildren of Betty Hemings (Sally’s mother) received special treatment at Monticello; and, within that family, Sally and her children appear to have received less favorable treatment than many. The widespread belief that Thomas Jefferson freed all of Sally’s children when they reached the age of twenty-one is also simply not true.
Indeed, other than appearing upon various lists of Monticello slaves recording such things as clothing and blanket distribution (where Sally was treated exactly like her siblings), Sally and her children receive less frequent mention in Jefferson‘s records than most of her siblings. Princeton University Press recently published two volumes totaling more than 1,400 pages of Jefferson’s Memorandum Books, containing thousands of entries documenting his financial transactions and the like. Sally’s sons Madison and Eston share a single listing, indicating that on December 11, 1824, they sold 100 cabbages to Thomas Jefferson for two dollars—the same rate he paid other members of the Hemings family at that time.
Except for a brief period in Paris, when Sally’s two dollars a month salary was far less than her brother or any of Jefferson’s other servants were receiving, neither Sally Hemings nor any of her children received either a salary or recorded gifts from Thomas Jefferson—unlike many of her relatives. One of the clear reasons for Madison Hemings’ obvious bitterness in the 1873 story in the Pike County Republican was that his alleged “father” (Thomas Jefferson) had never given him or his siblings any special attention—in sharp contrast to the loving attention Jefferson displayed towards his grandchildren by his daughters.
Even had Jefferson given special consideration to Sally’s children, this would not have been proof that he was their father. First of all, by blood they were legally “white” (and, along with Sally, appeared as free whites in the 1830 Albemarle County census following Jefferson’s death), and they were also quite possibly Thomas Jefferson’s relatives. Sally was alleged by some to be the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife Martha, and her children would also have been President Jefferson’s nieces and nephews if their fathers had been either one of the Carr brothers or a member of Randolph Jefferson’s family.
One of the greatest myths of this controversy is the allegation that Jefferson freed Sally Hemings and all of her children in his will or when they reached the age of 21. In reality, Sally’s first child to reach that age was Beverly Hemings, who finally ran away from Monticello at age twenty-four. Her only daughter to reach twenty-one ran away that year, but reportedly returned and was later given money and put on a stage for Philadelphia by Jefferson’s overseer at Thomas Jefferson’s request. We have no evidence of how old Harriet was at the time, or why this was done, but she was probably well past her twenty-first birthday; and the explanation for facilitating her departure may well have been Jefferson’s well-documented human compassion rather than fulfillment of a promise allegedly made in Paris to Sally Hemings.
It is true that Sally’s two youngest children, Madison and Eston, were freed in Jefferson’s will. But according to the alleged “treaty” negotiated in Paris, Madison should have been freed when he turned twenty-one, well before Jefferson even wrote his will. He was twenty-two before he was actually given his freedom. More importantly, three other male members of the Hemings family (most of the brothers and nephews of Sally Hemings remaining at Monticello when Jefferson died) were freed in that will, and each of them received far more favorable treatment (including such things as money, tools, and homes on Jefferson’s land) than did Sally’s sons—who received no additional benefits and were required to work for Sally’s brother, John Hemings, for a year before receiving their freedom. Two of Betty Hemings’ sons were legally manumitted by Thomas Jefferson in the 1790s. Of her seven male descendants known to have been at Monticello at the time of Jefferson’s death, all but two of them were freed in his will and a sixth (Sally’s brother Peter) turned up as a free citizen of Albemarle county shortly after apparently being purchased by a relative for one dollar. We don’t know why Sally’s nephew Wormley Hughes, brother to Jefferson’s most trusted (and most rewarded in his will) slave, was not freed, but he remained a trusted slave in the family of Jefferson’s daughter and was eventually freed by her. Sally Hemings was not freed by Thomas Jefferson; and we are skeptical both that Sally Hemings would not have bothered to demand her own eventual freedom while negotiating the freedom of children she would not start having for more than five years, and that Thomas Jefferson would have made no provision for her freedom had they really been lovers for decades. The freedom granted to Sally Hemings’ sons in Jefferson’s will is consistent with his treatment of most other male descendants of Betty Hemings, and might also be warranted by the fact that, once freed, they were probably legally white under existing Virginia law.
The Physical Resemblance of Some of Sally Hemings’ Children
to Thomas Jefferson
There are at least ten possible fathers for Sally Hemings’ children who could have passed down genetic material that might produce children physically resembling Thomas Jefferson and who are thought to have visited Monticello regularly during the years Sally Hemings was having children. Historically, the most common suspects were Peter and Samuel Carr, sons of Thomas Jefferson’s sister Martha and his best friend Dabney Carr. Subsequent to the DNA tests, the most probable candidate for paternity of Eston Hemings was likely Randolph Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s much younger brother, or perhaps one of at least four of Randolph’s five sons. A little more than two weeks before Sally is estimated to have conceived Eston, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Randolph and informed him that his twin sister, Anna Scott Marks, had just arrived for a visit and that “we shall be happy to see you also.” It is reasonable to assume that Randolph, a widower, would have brought his five sons (four and perhaps five of whom were 17–27 years of age) for the visit, and any of them could have also passed along Jefferson DNA that would have been consistent with Dr. Foster’s DNA study and could have produced children resembling Thomas Jefferson.
The Original Accusations of James Thomson Callender
The 1802 allegations of a Jefferson-Hemings sexual relationship are highly unpersuasive. Callender was notorious for taking a small truth and multiplying it into a large falsehood. In this case, his “truth” was the existence of several light-skinned slaves at Monticello. This fact had been observed by European visitors as early as 1796, when Sally Hemings’ first known child was an infant; and Sally and her siblings were presumably the basis of the stories. Callender was correct in noting that Sally had given birth to several light-skinned children, but his primary focus was on a ten- to twelve-year-old boy named “Tom,” who was said to bear a “striking resemblance” to President Jefferson. For nearly two centuries, scholars who gave any credence at all to Callender’s allegations assumed that “Tom” was Thomas Woodson, whose descendants have long asserted that this was the case. We have reached no conclusions on whether Thomas Woodson was the son of Sally Hemings. It would seem strange, if there was no “Tom” at Monticello fitting this description in 1802, that one of Jefferson’s defenders would not have made the point—and at least one of them admitted there was such a child. There is no evidence of any other “Tom” who might fit this description, nor is there any evidence other than Woodson family oral history that Tom Woodson was ever at Monticello. The DNA tests have shown conclusively that Thomas Woodson could not have been Thomas Jefferson’s child, but did not address his possible biological relationship with Sally Hemings.
The Oral History of Sally Hemings’ Descendants
Part of the case for Thomas Jefferson’s paternity of Sally Hemings’ children is based upon oral history passed through many generations of three families. While oral history can be a usefu
l, and is often a neglected, source of historical knowledge, in this case some of the family traditions are in conflict both with the DNA evidence and with each other.
For example, the assertion in the Research Committee report of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation that “The family history of Sally Hemings’s descendants, transmitted orally over many generations, states that Hemings and Thomas Jefferson are their ancestors,” is only partly accurate. In fact, these statements are believed to have been passed down by one known line of Sally’s children, the descendants of Madison Hemings. Since we already know that Madison is alleged to have made this claim in 1873, we need not rely on oral history as authority. However, since Madison did not provide a source for his claim, it is difficult to establish whether it is true or not; and the fact that he presumably told his children as well as a newspaper editor obviously adds nothing to the credibility of his basic account.
The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy Page 3