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Posted on 09/23/2026 1:49:08 PM PDT by JSM_Liberty
It was a rather dreary October afternoon in 2011 when I turned to my computer to watch a rough cut of Jefferson’s Secret Bible, a documentary for the Smithsonian cable television channel. I was the Under Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and the film was about the conservation of a precious artifact, a book known as the “Jefferson Bible” that would soon go on display at the National Museum of American History. After his retirement to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson had carefully cut out selected passages from Greek, Latin, French and English versions of the Bible, then pasted them in four parallel columns on loose sheets of paper and had them bound into a volume. I watched the re-enactor who played America’s third president use a small razor-sharp penknife to select his chosen biblical passages by candlelight. As I imagined trying to accomplish the task myself, I thought, “I’d probably cut myself over and over again.” That was when another, much bigger thought dawned on me. I emailed Harry Rubenstein, the curator at the museum leading the project: “Given all of that cutting and pasting Jefferson did on the Bible—have we ever looked for any possible transfer of biological material from which we could extract DNA?” ...
His response was swift: “We found a couple of hairs in the book.”
I told Rubenstein what I’d realized. If we had Jefferson’s hair and scientists could find a way to sequence his DNA, we might be able to solve one of the most enduring mysteries in American history: Did Thomas Jefferson have children with the enslaved Sally Hemings?
Jefferson and his beloved wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, had six children, but only two—Martha and Maria—survived past early childhood. When his wife became fatally ill, Jefferson is said to have promised her he’d never remarry. She died in 1782, at the age of 33. ... Historians would debate Madison’s account for the next century, but there was no physical evidence until 1998, when the pre-eminent scientific journal Nature published a research report. The paper’s principal author, Eugene Foster, had been unable to access Jefferson’s remains or analyze his DNA. Instead, he focused on the Y chromosome that is passed down from fathers to sons. He obtained DNA samples from living male-line descendants of Thomas Jefferson’s paternal uncle (because Thomas Jefferson had no sons with Martha who survived infancy), as well as others thought to be descendants of Sally Hemings. A descendant of Sally Hemings through her son Eston had the same Y chromosome type as the Jefferson males—meaning his ancestor was a Jefferson. ...
Because Foster and his team didn’t have Thomas Jefferson’s actual DNA, their analysis could not determine with scientific certainty which Jefferson had been Eston’s father.
...
On May 18, 2017, we heard from Shapiro. “Hi team TJ! We got a mitochondrial match!!!” her email began. The mtDNA from one of the latest historical Monticello hair samples—also clipped by Trist on the day of Jefferson’s death, in 1826—matched Janet McWilliams’ mtDNA. “These are the very preliminary results that we JUST got about ten minutes ago. But I had to share with you guys!” After more than six years of finding hairs; identifying descendants; and collecting, sequencing and analyzing DNA, we finally had strong genetic evidence that the new Monticello hair, not the Bible hair, was Jefferson’s. ...
The next morning, my wife, Allyn, and I drove to see Clara and Pete. The consummate host, Clara served us fresh lemonade on her balcony overlooking the C&O Canal. It was a sunny morning and, for me, an emotional one as I delivered the news. I showed Clara a printout of a DNA chart and told her that she shared a whopping 5 percent of her DNA with Thomas Jefferson. “Clara, you have an extraordinary amount of Thomas Jefferson’s DNA,” I explained. “More than anyone else we sampled. This is overwhelming evidence that you are indeed the great-great-great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.”
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This is an excerpt, but I forgot the check the box
YATJSHT Yet another Thomas Jefferson Sally Hemings Thread
Who cares?
Did Horizontal sleep with Willie? See? No big deal.
I don’t buy it. The story has never made any sense in terms of what we know of Jefferson and his nature.
Keeping locks of hair was very common in the old days. I have locks of hair from numerous ancestors. The only one I can be certain of is the one I personally cut of my grandmother’s hair the night she died. Some others could be my father’s, his brother’s (who died in infancy), an aunt’s, or someone even further back.
So, what’s the big deal? When this would have happened Mr Jefferson was not married, and couldn’t marry her for fear of her, at least, being forced to leave the state if he freed her. Sally Hemings was an enslaved woman owned by Thomas Jefferson at his Monticello plantation in Virginia and because of the laws and realities of chattel slavery, they could not legally marry.
A 1691 colonial law made interracial marriage illegal and banished any white person who intermarried with a Black or Indigenous person. Therefore, a freed Black woman could legally marry a free Black or free man of color, but not a white person.
In Virginia, a 1792 law imposed heavy fines and jail time on interracial couples, as well as the ministers who performed the ceremonies. The Virginia General Assembly passed a strict manumission statutes requiring any enslaved person freed to leave the Commonwealth of Virginia within one year. So for her safety and sercurity, he couldn’t free her either.
wy69
The science is fascinating.
Did the relationship affect Jefferson’s views? Perhaps...
Michelle Obama’s ancestors owned slaves
Many, many moons ago, we CANCELED the Smithsonian Magazine about the same time we canceled National Geographic, Scientific American, and all the other crapola.
If you want a real historian, try Robert Zimmerman at Behind The Black - http://Behindtheblack.com. While his forte for 30+ years is aerospace, rocketry, space, astronomy, he also reviews great books about history. He has written many books. Every day there is something new on the website. There are really smart people who comment on the articles and add a lot to the discussion.
When the hair they thought was most likely Jefferson’s showed no match, what did they do?
Went looking for more hair samples in Monticello!
And when those hair samples were found to be mostly degraded, what did they do? Use new and novel methods to reconstruct the the DNA to find what they believed to be 25% of Thomas Jefferson’s DNA!
And they got the result they wanted all along, and a great story for publication
Is this science? Or is this experimenter bias and pseudoscience?
He freed Sally's children in his will but not Sally herself--but she apparently spent her last years living with one or another of her own children. Jefferson was in debt so he was limited in how many slaves he could free.
Barack Obama’s mother had ancestors who owned slaves. Supposedly she was also descended from John Punch, the first African to be sentenced to life-long servitude in Virginia, in 1640.
They wanted it to be true, so they made it true.
It’s magic.
Does a hair sample provide DNA, or do you need the root?
Apparently you really need the follicle to have any chance of getting usable nuclear DNA. (People saving loved ones’ hair in the old days didn’t pull it out by the root.)
“They wanted it to be true, so they made it true.”
Exactly! They would manufacture whatever they needed to get the story they wanted.
Then whose hair do you think it is in Jefferson’s book that has DNA that matches with descendants of slaves that are at least know to be related otherwise through mitochondrial DNA from previous work?
Jefferson was known to look the other way when one of his slaves ran away, if he was assured that they were doing alright on their own.
This story doesn’t seem any different to me than the previous indications that A Jefferson Male fathered Hemings’ children.
My money has always been on Randolph.
“ The consummate host, Clara served us fresh lemonade on her balcony overlooking the C&O Canal.”
Answer is not “firmly in hand” or it would be clearly stated in the headline or many paragraphs containing unrelated fodder such as quoted above.
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