The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy

by Robert F Turner

  Eston Hemings was reportedly born on May 21, 1808. Fifteen months prior to that would have been in February of 1807. Thomas Jefferson left Monticello on October 11, 1806, and returned for about a month from April 11 to May 13, 1807. He returned again on August 5 of that year, and Eston was probably conceived towards the end of that month. He returned again on May 12, 1808, and presumably was still there on the date Eston was born.

  One does not have to assume that Sally was away from Monticello for fifteen months. Had she been away for any reason for as much as four to six months, if those absences happened to coincide with Jefferson’s two visits, they might not have seen each other—but it would have been for more like eighteen months, not fifteen. That cannot be the answer if Randall’s statement is correct. If Jefferson’s records of his own visits to Monticello are accurate (and there is no reason to doubt them), it is difficult to reconcile Henry Randall’s statement with facts that seem to be reliable.

  I even considered whether the passage of years might have confused Randall, and perhaps the statement was really that Jefferson and Hemings had been separated for fifteen months prior to the conception of Eston. That works better, because if Sally had been present at Monticello when Jefferson left on May 13, 1807, and then had gone elsewhere and remained away through Eston’s conception, the period would round out to about fifteen months. We have virtually no information about Sally Hemings during this period, and just as one can thus argue “there is no evidence she was not at Monticello” it could also be said “there is no evidence she was at Monticello” during those two critical visits. But there is, in fact, neither reason to assume Sally was not at Monticello nor to assume that Henry Randall misstated Martha Randolph’s alleged comment about a fifteen-month separation. Occam would presumably tell us it is simpler to assume that Randall was not telling the truth in this instance.

  There is yet a third possibility (aside from the possibility that the child in question was not Eston at all), and that is that at some point Sally Hemings was sent away for a fifteen-month or longer period. Maria (Polly) died long before Eston was born, and Martha normally returned to Monticello with her father, so we cannot simply assume Sally was sent to serve one of the daughters. However, it is possible that Sally went to live at Edgehill for a year or two during Jefferson’s presidency, and Martha did not bring her back when she returned with the children during her father’s occasional visits to Monticello.

  One original member of the Scholars Commission expressed an interest in doing further research at Jefferson’s Poplar Forest retreat; however, we know that Jefferson visited “Bedford” in September 1807—presumably shortly after Eston was conceived, but overlapping the projected conception window. So if Eston was the child who most resembled Thomas Jefferson, discovering evidence at Poplar Forest that Sally Hemings was there for an extended period would not solve the puzzle.

  I am not optimistic that detailed evidence of Sally’s whereabouts during these relevant years, if it ever was recorded, will be found. It may be an issue worthy of further inquiry by a patient scholar, since if Sally was indeed absent from Monticello for a fifteen-month period prior to the birth of any of her children, that could prove to be very important information in bringing this controversy to an end. The circumstantial case is largely premised upon the assumption of monogamy.168 But until such evidence is found, my own inclination is to discount the double-hearsay account Henry Randall attributes to Martha Randolph through her son Jeff—or at least to give it little probative weight. Perhaps the statement was made and the facts were confirmed by Henry Randall. Perhaps someone was lying in an effort to protect Jefferson’s reputation. It is not in my view necessary to resolve the matter, because there is a wealth of other, more credible, data that make it easy for me to reach the conclusion that it is highly unlikely that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston or any other Hemings child.

  * * *

  Footnotes

  1. I use this term for convenience only, and intend nothing pejorative by it. It refers to those who seek to “revise” the traditional view accepted by historians in the past, and in particular includes Professors Fawn Brodie, Annette Gordon-Reed, Peter Onuf, Jan Lewis, and Joseph Ellis. Professor Ellis seems to use the term in a similar manner. Joseph J. Ellis, Jefferson: Post DNA, 57 (1) WILLIAM & MARY Q. 131 (Jan. 2000).

  2. Unfortunately, the location of the original copy of this document is unknown. This is “unfortunate” because it may have had several names that are rendered as blank lines in the published text—presumably to protect the privacy of individuals.

  3. JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 130–31 n.2 (James A. Bear, Jr., ed. 1967). Bear asserts that Bacon left on October 15 (id.), while Bacon suggests it was either the 7th or 8th (id. at 40). There would seem to be no reason for Bacon to intentionally misstate this detail, and Bear’s comment is almost certainly based upon the fact that Jefferson wrote in his Memorandum Book on October 15, 1822: “Had a final settlement with Edmund Bacon and paid him $41.90 the balance due him in full. … ” 2 JEFFERSON’S MEMORANDUM BOOKS 1390 (James A. Bear, Jr. & Lucia C. Stanton, eds. 1997). The two statements are not necessarily in conflict, as Bacon’s final day of work might have been a few days before he received his final payment.

  4. See, e.g., 2 JEFFERSON’S MEMORANDUM BOOKS 1186. The Betts edition of Jefferson’s Garden Book states that Edmund Bacon was “overseer since 1806 and before that working for him in various jobs. … ” THOMAS JEFFERSON’S GARDEN BOOK 601 (Edwin Morris Betts, ed., 1999).

  5. JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 39–40. Bacon’s figures do not quite add up. Either he or Pierson may have erred in saying he began work “before” Jefferson’s inauguration, and if he started in December of 1801 that would fit. There is a reference in Bacon’s own memo book suggesting he may have returned to live with his father in 1803. If we subtract that year, the figures also work, and there would be no reason for Bacon to mention this relatively minor detail. For present purposes, we need not try to resolve this discrepancy beyond noting there are several possible explanations that do not require one to challenge the veracity of Edmund Bacon.

  6. Id. at 34.

  7. Id. at 34–35.

  8. Id. at 99.

  9. Id. at 101–02.

  10. Id. at 102.

  11. Id.

  12. Id. at 100.

  13. Id. at 102 (emphasis added.). This was not the only name deleted in the original Pierson book in 1862. See, e.g., id. at 76, 77. Pierson sought to justify these deletions by explaining that he did “not like to publish facts that would give pain to any that might now be living.” HAMILTON W. PIERSON, JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO: THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 6 (1862).

  14. Monticello Report, Appendix E at 22–23.

  15. Monticello Report at 4.

  16. Id., Appendix F at 3.

  17. It is true that James Callender, assorted Federalist editors and politicians, and former slaves Madison Hemings and Israel Jefferson (according to anti-Jefferson partisan Samuel Wetmore) made the assertion; but none of them could possibly have had first-hand knowledge of the facts and they do not even give sources for where they heard the allegations.

  18. JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 39.

  19. Id.

  20. Annette Gordon-Reed, Engaging Jefferson: Blacks and the Founding Father, 57 WILLIAM & MARY Q. 181–82 (Jan. 2000) (emphasis added). Ms. Stanton similarly writes: “Overseer Edmund Bacon remembered that, at Jefferson’s request, he provided Harriet with travel funds and put her on the stage to the north.” LUCIA STANTON, FREE SOME DAY 116–17 (2001) (emphasis added).

  21. See Chapter Four.

  22. Monticello Report at 7.

  23. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 223.

  24. BEAR, JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 117.

  25. Lucia Stanton, e-mail response to “Turner Questions,” Dec. 8, 2000, response number 7.

  26. JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 88.

  27. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 126.

 
28. Joshua D. Rothman, James Callender and Social Knowledge of Interracial Sex in Antebellum Virginia, in SALLY HEMINGS & THOMAS JEFFERSON 96 (Jan Ellen Lewis & Peter Onuf, eds. 1999).

  29. Monticello overseer Edmund Bacon writes of her: “I knew Mrs. Randolph as well as I ever knew any person out of my own family. Few such women ever lived. I never saw her equal. I was with Mr. Jefferson twenty years and saw her frequently every week. I never saw her at all out of temper. I can truly say that I never saw two such persons in this respect as she and her father. …Mrs. Randolph was more like her father than any lady I ever saw.” JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 83.

  30. Martha Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson, May 3, 1787, in THE FAMILY LETTERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 39 (Edwin Morris Betts & James Adam Bear, Jr., eds., 1966).

  31. Joseph J. Ellis, Jefferson: Post-DNA, 57(1) WILLIAM & MARY Q. 135 (Jan. 2000).

  32. Reprinted in MILTON E. FLOWER, JAMES PARTON: THE FATHER OF MODERN BIOGRAPHY 237 (1951).

  33. Martha Jefferson Randolph to Ellen Randolph Coolidge (undated), a copy of which is in the author’s possession.

  34. FAWN BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 236 (1974).

  35. See Chapter Eleven.

  36. Obviously the DNA tests have ruled out either Peter or Samuel Carr as possible fathers for Eston Hemings. They tell us nothing about the paternity of Sally Hemings’ other children, and thus the alleged confessions of Peter and Samuel Carr are still important to consider.

  37. BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 238.

  38. FLOWER, JAMES PARTON 236.

  39. See Introduction, Figure 4 on page 37.

  40. Dumas Malone, Jefferson’s Private Life, N.Y. TIMES, May 18, 1974 at 31.

  41. Id. This letter is also reprinted in Monticello Report, Appendix E at 19.

  42. Id.

  43. BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 364.

  44. The Monticello web page describes Ellen as “in many ways the intellectual heir of her grandfather.” Available at http://www.monticello.org/jefferson/breakfast/profile.html.

  45. For example, in an 1856 letter to Henry Randall, Ellen discussed her “poor father’s weaknesses” despite asserting “I loved him much.” She explained: “If I speak at all I must speak the truth, and under the circumstances, can I refuse to speak? Would not my silence lead to wrong conclusions? You are preparatory to giving to the world, your Life of Jefferson, inquiring, as you are bound to do, most minutely and particularly, into all the details of his private life, and in order to understand him, you must understand those by whom he was surrounded.” Ellen Coolidge to Henry Randall, Mar. 27, 1856, Accession #9090, University of Virginia. A few months later, she added in another letter: “I have been very frank, my dear Mr. Randall, in communicating to you family secrets, whenever they were of a nature to throw light upon character, leaving it to your discretion so to dispose of them that while they were of service to you they could be of disservice to none.” Ellen Coolidge to Henry Randall, July 31, 1856, Accession #9090, University of Virginia.

  46. The bracketed “[not]” is in Parton’s book and seems clearly appropriate from the context.

  47. FLOWER, JAMES PARTON 238.

  48. Reprinted in Monticello Report, Appendix E at 38.

  49. For example, following his grandfather’s death he assumed the burden of paying all of Jefferson’s more than $107,000 indebtedness, and was still paying Thomas Jefferson’s creditors forty years after the former President’s death. See, e.g., STANTON, FREE SOME DAY 96, 141.

  50. Again it is necessary to consider the monogamy question: Unless they were confident Sally Hemings had no other partners, it is unclear how they could have known with certainty that they were the father(s) of any of her children.

  51. Cynthia Burton has researched the Carr brothers extensively and has provided valuable assistance in tracking their presence over the years. I am indebted to her for most of this information.

  52. Like his brother Peter, Samuel Carr has been eliminated by DNA tests as a possible father for Eston.

  53. E-mail from Cynthia Burton to the author, dated 4 Mar 2001, 20:17:12 EST, a copy of which is in the author’s possession.

  54. Monticello Report, Appendix F at 3.

  55. Reprinted in id., Appendix E at 16.

  56. See note 45 on page 210.

  57. Thomas Mann Randolph served as Governor of Virginia from 1819–1822, and was also a Colonel. This has caused some confusion among historians between TMR and his eldest son, Colonel Thomas Jefferson Randolph.

  58. Thomas Mann Randolph to Peter Carr, Esq., Dec. 24, 1802, Carr-Cary Family Papers, Accession 1231, Box 1, University of Virginia. The reference to “Mr. Hay” is to an incident on December 20, 1802, in which George Hay, James Callender’s attorney at the time, beat his client repeatedly on the forehead with a walking stick.

  59. JEFFERSON AT MONTICELLO 4.

  60. E. M. HALLIDAY, UNDERSTANDING THOMAS JEFFERSON 86 (2001). See supra p. 71 n.14.

  61. Since we do not know on what day in 1773 Sally was born, and she arrived in London around the middle of the year, there is roughly a fifty-fifty chance that these observations were made before or after her fourteenth birthday.

  62. This observation would appear to require no documentation, but if any is desired the point is conceded by Professor Brodie. BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 238.

  63. See, e.g., Jefferson to Ramsay, July 2, 1787, in 15 PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 637 (1958); Abigail Adams to Jefferson, 11 id. 501, 550 (1955). From his letter to Jefferson, Captain Ramsay comes across as being both honorable and educated. Ramsay to Jefferson, id. 556.

  64. BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 217.

  65. Abigail Adams to Jefferson, June 26, 1787, 11 PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 502.

  66. Id. at 503.

  67. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 161.

  68. Andrew Ramsay to Jefferson, 11 THE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 556.

  69. Banister to Jefferson, id. at 351.

  70. See, e.g., Jefferson to Ramsay, 15 THE PAPERS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 638 (“Her distress at parting with you is a proof how good you have been to her.”).

  71. Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, July 6, 1787, in 11 id. 551.

  72. Sally Hemings is mentioned in the accounts attributed to her son Madison and to Israel Jefferson, but neither account comments upon her talents or abilities.

  73. Richmond Examiner, Philadelphia AURORA, Oct. 1, 1802, at 2.

  74. THOMAS JEFFERSON: THE GARDEN AND FARM BOOKS 247. I have not bothered to try to check the original, and it is quite possible that the erasure reveals enough information to establish that the removed name was not “Tom” or “Thomas.” I doubt that it was. It does now seem clear from the DNA studies that, if there was a “Tom” as described by Callender at Monticello, he was not Thomas Jefferson’s son.

  75. Monticello Report, Appendix K at 2.

  76. The DNA tests examined Y chromosomes seeking matches among male descendants of Sally’s sons and those of descendants of Thomas Jefferson’s paternal uncle and said nothing about Sally Hemings or any other possible mother.

  77. Ellis, Jefferson: Post-DNA at 126–27.

  78. Monticello Report at 6.

  79. The only “sources” for the contention that Sally Hemings conceived a child in Paris appear to be Callender’s unsupported 1802 allegations and the statement attributed to Madison Hemings seventy-one years later.

  80. It should be kept in mind that most Caucasian American men of the era came from European stock and thus would have carried the DNA of a “European male.”

  81. Obviously, Thomas Jefferson’s great grandfather in England (or one of his male ancestors) might have produced a number of different lines of male descendants who were unknown to each other, and if any of these had emigrated to America and fathered sons, their male descendants would presumably have carried the same DNA Y chromosome as Thomas Jefferson.

  82. Monticello Report at 9.

  83. My own sense is that Eston was probably fathered by a member of the Jefferson family
, but the possibility of a slave father must nevertheless be recognized as at least a theoretical possibility.

  84. See the discussion of this issue on pp. 91–93.

  85. Ellis, Jefferson: Post-DNA at 125.

  86. Id. (Emphasis added).

  87. See Chapter One.

  88. Again, if one assumes that Thomas Woodson was Sally’s child, he is ruled out by the DNA tests as being fathered by a Carr.

  89. Stanton, The Other End of the Telescope, WILLIAM & MARY Q. 139–40 (Jan. 2000).

  90. Id. at 140.

  91. Obviously, an element of the offense of “lying” or relating a falsehood is knowledge by the speaker that the information is untrue.

  92. GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS at 217–18.

  93. Id. at 22. (These citations are to the first edition of the Gordon-Reed volume.)

  94. Id. At 285.

  95. However, she does include in her bibliography the most extensive scholarly account of Randolph, Thomas Jefferson and His Unknown Brother (Bernard Mayo ed., 1981). See GORDON-REED, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS 278.

  96. Randolph Jefferson has occasionally been referred to as being a “half-wit.” Professor Brodie describes him at one point in her book as being “less than mediocre in talent and native intelligence,” and at another as being “mentally ill.” BRODIE, THOMAS JEFFERSON 264, 457. James Bear writes: “Randolph emerges, at best, as an unenlightened and simple dirt farmer. … ” Bear, Preface, THOMAS JEFFERSON AND HIS UNKNOWN BROTHER vii (Bernard Mayo ed., 1981). In volume two of his 1951 biography, Nathan Schachner writes that Randolph’s “mind was limited and his world circumscribed to the narrow confines of his daily routine. His elder brother treated him always with tenderness and respect, and helped him patiently in all the minutiae that troubled the younger man. Randolph would scrawl illiterate little notes to Thomas, in which the loan of a gig loomed larger than the deaths of his sisters. …Thomas would reply simply and kindly, speaking of small, everyday events that were within the scope of Randolph Jefferson’s limited understanding.” 2 NATHAN SCHACHNER, THOMAS JEFFERSON 923 (1951). Yet Randolph briefly attended the College of William & Mary and managed his own plantation (with frequent advice from his older brother). Candidly, Randolph may have suffered somewhat from unfavorable comparisons to his truly brilliant elder brother. Having “half” the “wit” of Thomas Jefferson did not necessarily make him that far below the national norm. It does seem clear that he was not heavily focused upon ideas, and there is reason to believe he would not have especially enjoyed sitting around Monticello after dinner listening to Thomas expound upon the latest scientific theories or on political developments in Europe.