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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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The so-called ‘Jefferson Bible’ only indicates what he appreciated intellectually and philosophically of the teachings of Jesus.
It doesn’t indicate what he may have believed in his heart over his entire lifetime.
I am not a ‘religious’ Christian; but I am a philosophical one. I’m pretty much agnostic about some of the narrative, and I suspect Jefferson may have been, too. He had a very scientific mind, and was probably engaged in a lifelong investigation of Truth.
well, many were implying they faked the results because it is apparently unthinkable that Jefferson could have had sex with a slave.
Who cares
Exactly!
“What difference does it make!”
Don’t worry be happy.
They shoult be happie an jubilant jus to be in this country with all or part of anything it or somebody has had to profer, offer or inject in them.
Jumping the fence is the adage to be used.
Some say that Jefferson regarded the divinity Bible verses of Jesus as “contrary to reason” and “dung”. I don’t know how accurate that is.
Where have they actually PROVEN what they claim in the title?
(People who don’t believe this are not finding it ‘impossible’ that a man had sex with a slave - that happened often. What they find unlikely that this particular man did, and that’s based on what they actually know about him and the lack of proof that he did.)
This article seems like a lot of journalistic sleight-of-hand and propaganda, not science.
BKMK
Female inheritance
In sexual reproduction, mitochondria are normally inherited exclusively from the mother; the mitochondria in mammalian sperm are usually destroyed by the egg cell after fertilization. Also, mitochondria are present solely in the midpiece, which is used for propelling the sperm cells, and sometimes the midpiece, along with the tail, is lost during fertilization. In 1999 it was reported that paternal sperm mitochondria (containing mtDNA) are marked with ubiquitin to select them for later destruction inside the embryo.[61] Some in vitro fertilization techniques, particularly injecting a sperm into an oocyte, may interfere with this.[citation needed]
--------------------------- My reading suggests that Thomas Jefferson could not have passed his mtDNA because that is solely inherited from the mother -- in this case, Sally Hemmings.
There are some disputed cases, but the consensus is that mtDNA descends from the female line.
That was my question as well. We had to do DNA testing on one of our cow families and the breed association sent a test kit that used hair BUT you had to be sure and get the root not just strands. That’s what makes me wonder since it appears all they had was strandsd.
I doubt it as he was close to Thomas Lewis, a devout Presbyterian, brother of General Andrew Lewis, a friend and business associate of Washington. Thomas was involved with the Fairfax Resolves and with Virginia’s establishment of religious liberties. The Lewises [also related to the future explorer] and the relates Patton family were active supporters of establishing churches of different protestant faiths, not just their own, the Tinkling Springs Presbyterian church but also 2 or 3 Lutheran ones. Their ancestry was Huguenot.
As I recall, Jefferson made the Cliff Note’s version with the intent it be used to help in the adoption of Christianity by the Indians. He thought a simpler one with the essentials as he saw them would be easier for them to understand and pass along.
If that is the case it doesn’t fit the leftwing view that virtually everyone was a deist.
Of course the Hemings mitochondrial DNA was passed to her kids. But so was some Jefferson maternal DNA.
The mitochondria at real issue is Jefferson’s own, from his mother, grandmother, great grandmother ad infinitum. That is what they are trying to hang Jefferson’s purported fathering of Hemings’ issue on.
But the Jefferson mitochondrial DNA would have been inherited by a lot of the Jefferson line, and that is the source of the controversy.
Jefferson mitochondrial DNA could have wound up in Sally Hemings children through possibly eight different men who carried Jefferson mitochondrial DNA and may have consorted with Sally Hemings.
Of course Jefferson did.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone .
She was likely treated much better as a result
Still, the father passed a Y chromosome to Hemings’ children which corresponds to a haplogroup in the Jefferson line.
That is not proof that Thomas was the father, it is only proof that A Jefferson Male may have been. There were numerous Jefferson men who could have passed that on, and one of them was often at Monticello and socializing with the slaves.
I think a lot of people who have watched our statues torn down and our history besmirched do care.
Typical Free Republic thread. Half the respondents write from ignorance because the failed to read (or read and didn’t understand) the linked article.
To each his own. I suspect that a person whose view of Mr. Jefferson is affected because he did or did not have a relationship with that woman, might also be someone whose view of Hitler is affected because the Fuhrer reportedly was a vegetarian, detested cigarette smoking, and loved dogs. To invest time in debating the topic would seem to imbue it with far more significance than it deserves. IMHO, FWIW, YMMV, one size never fits all, etc., etc....
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.
There is no DNA proof that Thomas Jefferson was the father. All that has been proven is that he is one of about eight men who MAY have been.
Given what we know of his nature and character, there are others far more likely. But accusing his simple minded brother wouldn’t do the desired damage to one of the greatest minds of the Western early modern period.
In simple terms, the subject is irrelevant to my view of Mr. Jefferson. You obviously do not share my point of view - but by all means, feel free to discuss and/or debate the matter with others (NOT including yours truly ;^) who for some unknown reason consider Jefferson's sex life to be of critical importance...
A person’s manner of sexual conduct is very often an indication of character - or lack of it.
An intellectually brilliant man can also be an amoral sexual profligate. But he’s never going to really be A Man.
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