Posted on 07/03/2017 6:20:40 PM PDT by Bodleian_Girl
Archaeologists have discovered an area in Thomas Jefferson's plantation home that was once the living quarters of Sally Hemings - a slave with whom he is believed to have had six children. Her room, which was built in 1809 and was 14 feet, 8 inches wide and 13 feet long, was next to Thomas Jefferson's room. However, the bedroom went unnoticed for decades and the area was even made into a men's bathroom in 1941.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4662350/Archaeologists-Sally-Hemings-room-Monticello.html#ixzz4lozvk7ZB Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
In those times it could take as long as a year or more to go from North Carolina to New Jersey - have that from a family record.
fltr
I’m not that well versed in who is who. And when you shake it all down, to quote that great scholar and theologian Hillary Clinton; “What difference, at this point, does it make?” I guess Tom Jefferson, like everyone else, had feet of clay. He, never the less, in his higher moments, contributed greatly to the Founding of our Nation, under God; and to getting it up to speed and solidified on the footing which made it unique in all the world, to this day; save Israel, perhaps. Blessings on your Holiday. This not only Independence Day. It also just happens to be Pentecost. Praise Jesus.
This is an impressively lengthy collection of words that could just as easily been compressed to four: “I agree with her.”
You and I have crossed swords before. But that is about the best recap of this issue I have read. Good Job.
Have you seen my repeated acknowledgement that a Jefferson is certain to have fathered the Hemmings children in question? Just not that likely to have been Thomas Jefferson, in my opinion.
Also, could you please provide the portrait or engraving to which this female resembles? Because she doesn’t look all that much like the images of Thomas Jefferson that I recall, she looks more like George Washington to me.
I love TJ, but he had a passionate nature. When he was an ambassador he had a very intense affair with a married woman...he wrote some very heartfelt prose about that one.
>> The evidence is not sufficient to prove paternity in a court of law <<
Depends on the exact charges (civil or criminal), the damages alleged, the abilities of both the prosecutor and the defense counsel, the mindset of the judge and the colective IQ of the jury.
But anyway, here’s my summary:
1. Beyond a reasonable doubt? No way.
2. Clear and convincing evidence? Not quite, but almost.
3. Preponderance of the evidence? Probably so.
False. Please stop perpetuating this lie.
[I’m about to make several posts, please wait until I finish posting before responding.]
> The DNA is irrefutable and demonstrates that the children of Sally Hemmings (or at least one or two children) are descended from Thomas Jefferson or, conceivably, his brother Randolph.
Or from any male having the same Y chromosome as Thomas’s paternal uncle Field Jefferson, who was the Jefferson whose descendants were actually tested. Researchers involved in the DNA study have flatly denied that the attribution to Thomas Jefferson is “irrefutable”. The initial claims were overstated.
Wikipedia — “According to an initial report on the findings of a 1998 DNA study which tested the Y-chromosome of direct male-line descendants of Eston Hemings, and other related tests, there is a near 100% certainty that Thomas Jefferson was the biological father of Eston Hemings. These initial claims (that the DNA findings were definitive and conclusive proof of Thomas Jefferson’s paternity) were later retracted by the lead researcher in the case, acknowledging that in fact the DNA testing itself seemed to prove only a one in eight (12.5%) genetic probability of Thomas Jefferson’s paternity.[52][53]”
“After the initial news headlines, it later emerged that conclusive DNA proof had only been made of the near 100% certainty that Eston Hemings was the son of one of 8 different potential paternity candidates within the Jefferson family, one of whom was Thomas Jefferson, which proof the lead researcher, Eugene A. Foster, later clarified.”
“In the Monticello Commission’s report on the paternity question, Dr. David Page, one of the committee’s scientific case reviewers, recommended that additional research needed to be done into ‘the local population structure around Monticello two hundred years ago, as respects the Y chromosome,’ before entirely ruling out the possibility of the paternity of any of the other 7 potential paternity candidates.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson%E2%80%93Hemings_controversy#1998_DNA_study
When it comes to DNA proof, I don’t see why they even need to limit it to eight “known” Jefferson candidates. At this late date it will be hard to know how much of that Y-chromosome was in the — as “one of the committee’s scientific case reviewers” put it — “local population structure around Monticello”. Even mulatto slaves branching off from the Jeffersons in previous generations could have contributed to the Eston Hemings descendant line. All it would have taken was one person (and a few minutes access to Sally Hemings).
True, the other children were said to have a Jefferson family resemblance, but that doesn’t prove specific paternity. As we’ve seen many times on the Maury Povich show — not from hearsay but with photos of the children right in front of us — candidates for paternity who look like the child often turn out not to be the father. When potential candidates are relatives, appearance helps even less.
> It is important to note that the narrative was created long before the DNA report. Indeed, the narrative was widely published as early as at the turn of the 19th century.
Among the charges that received the most contemporary attention was the one about the child who was conceived in Paris (far away from other persons besides Thomas with Jefferson family male DNA), the supposed descendant of whom, according to the scientific tests, turned out not to have any Jefferson family DNA.
> We have her [Sally] by some accounts acting as the mistress of Monticello in many respects.
Please quote those passages and sources (acts beyond being a glorified maid). Even if he’d been having sex with her — bearing in mind the mores of the time — I find that hard to believe.
> Against this accumulation of very persuasive evidence there is virtually nothing to the contrary.
Try this for one voluminous account of that virtually nothing — https://jeffersondnastudy.com/rebuttal-to-tjmf-report/
I agree that there are a good many indications that Thomas Jefferson was the father, but to my eyes they don’t rise to the level of convincing proof.
> You [nathanbedford] and I have crossed swords before. But that is about the best recap of this issue I have read.
Nothing wrong with the style, but see my previous responses to the content.
He was a fairly old man at the time and a highly accomplished public figure. I can believe this far more of a randy younger male relative who had not yet learned self control than I could of him.
If you want to think the worst of a Founding Father, be my guest but I’m sure you’ll understand why I don’t care to join you.
What is fascinating however is the attitudes of those who are so stridently opposed to the possibility. Why do you think they so greatly fear the chance that TJ boinked the servant?
Yes, it’s like they deny that sex is possibly the strongest force after gravity that humans face. He’s widowed, a single woman is sleeping inches from him, they are alone... seriously??? He Would Not have done it? Where is human nature here?
Best illustration of this is in W. Somerset Maugham stories, like the Rain (if I have the name right, the one about the Pastor and the prostitute on a pacific island). Human nature, people.
She was half white and alone all night next to him. She was his owned property.
Love your photos. The resemblance is uncanny in these descendants, “white” or “black.” We are all the same. I hate dividing up by race.
It is not thinking the worst about a founding father!!!! People left to propinquity, with or without vow of marriage and fidelity elsewhere, HAVE SEX. it’s dishonest to not know this happens. And since in his case there was no marriage, I don’t even see a sin, other than the moral yet unlisted sin of owning other people, which we are forced to accept as a part of history.
I think no less of him unless he raped her every time, which I doubt. There must have been mutual feelings. They were a couple. I don’t have problems with it.
You’re engaging in speculation. Knock yourself out.
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