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 ...
> Eston had male Jefferson DNA, not female.
I know. I pointed that out myself in the post — “a Carr (who had Jefferson blood from a female parent, not a male)”. No DNA tests, though, rule out the Carrs as fathers of some or all of the other children.
I just saw an advertisement for “23 and Me” ancestry DNA and it had on one of the Jefferson/Hemings descendants.
Did Jefferson’s daddy have any sons from mixed race slaves? If that were such a rampant practice?
He denies it only after he acknowledged it.
Of course the family was trying to do a little CYA, but they couldn’t deny what so many other people had seen at Monticello.
What had they seen?
Interestingly enough about the Carr brothers: one lived in Maryland. That puts him out of the loop for the most part.
But the other one was thought to have a mulatto concubine who ended up with a 100 acre plot of land carved right out of the middle of the Dabney/Carr land. It was known as “Free State” and was home to many free people of color and mulattos.
One of Jefferson’s close friends wrote in his journals (more than once) about Jefferson’s “example” of white plantation owners having children with slave concubines.
Interestingly, his mentor did.
I read somewhere that that friend was not particularly close or even a friend. I’m thinking I read it in the report by the prominent historians who have not conceded to popular opinion regarding the Hemings children.
My favorite professor signed on to that report. He disliked Jefferson immensely. But he was not moved by the evidence. And his job was to examine all the evidence. He was a very wise old man when I knew him, and I loved him dearly. He wanted to say Jefferson fathered those children. But he didn’t. He taught a lot of negatives about our Founding Fathers based on historical evidence.
I’m on the fence though I lean towards Jefferson doing the dirty with his slave.
But did his daddy?
> He [the grandson] denies it only after he acknowledged it.
He did not acknowledge it. The meaning of his words become clear as the letter continues.
> Did Jefferson’s daddy have any sons from mixed race slaves? If that were such a rampant practice?
I don’t know. Any source of Jefferson male DNA could have accounted for the Eston DNA findings. One event with such a person, possibly just taking a few minutes, is all that’s needed to account for it. As the reviewer I cited earlier said, further research into the presence of that Y-chromosome is needed. (The other children could have been fathered by anybody, though probably light-skinned.)
You quote Tax-chick (”Oh, please. If they weren’t dead, at any age, they were getting busy”), and quote Franklin’s somewhat ribald but amusing work (which many of us will recall from literature classes) — Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress (1745). https://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/51-fra.html
Jefferson, though, was a more reserved person than Franklin, and his conduct reflected that. In response to attacks on his conduct, such as the scurrilous imputations of Callender (which included the Hemings allegations) and to the Federalist campaign attacks, Jefferson wrote the following [spelling of the time not edited], “The inclosed copy of a letter to mr Lincoln will so fully explain it’s own object, that I need say nothing in that way. I communicate it to particular friends because I wish to stand with them on the ground of truth, neither better nor worse than that makes me. you will percieve that I plead guilty to one of their charges, that when young & single I offered love to a handsome lady [believed to be Betsy Walker — when confronted about it a decade later by her husband, Jefferson admitted making improper advances and apologized]. I acknolege it’s incorrectness; it is the only one, founded in truth among all their allegations against me.” [Letter to Rober Smith, Secretary of the Navy, July 1, 1805 http://archive.li/muNfD
So writing at the age of 62, Jefferson acknowledges only one improper affair, and that committed in his youth. Not everyone had the temperament and sexual proclivities of Franklin.
Here’s a link to the whole letter (very short) — https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-2005 .
For those who wonder why we have only private denials of misconduct when the Hemings accusations and others were broadcast in the newspapers of the time, Jefferson says this, “were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of the newspapers, it would be more than all my own time, & that of 20. aids could effect. for while I should be answering one, twenty new ones would be invented. I have thought it better to trust to the justice of my countrymen, that they would judge me by what they see of my conduct on the stage where they have placed me...” [Letter To Samuel Smith, August 22, 1798]
For nearly two centuries that trust wasn’t misplaced. Whether that will continue in the future we’ll see. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-30-02-0346
I think the evidence for Jefferson fathering Eston is strong enough to prove he fathered him at least.
“The meaning of his words become clear...” should be “The meaning of his words becomes clear...” (Sorry, I hate to leave grammatical errors.)
He’s telling you what he saw with his own eyes, but then saying it couldn’t be so and goes on the blame in on the Carr’s.
But then the DNA settles the Carr question.
I call what Jefferson said in my post 355 to the attention of all Free Republic readers —
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3566404/posts?page=355#355 .
While he was president?
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