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.”
:^)
Considering the situation in TJ’s time as laid out in previous comments, if he indeed took Sally Hemmings to wife, as it were, he was married to her in all but legality. She was a common law wife as was a legal relationship until a few decades ago except about Virginia’s slave laws and Jefferson’s debt which made formal marriage or emancipation impossible. It is highly unlikely that he would have used the master/slave relationship to force her to comply with his desires.
If it was Thomas, it is not a big deal. He would have been engaged in a legitimate marriage if it were possible under the laws at the time.
Understood. But this article contends that Sally Hemming’s descendents have Jefferson’s mitochondrial DNA which according to the current understanding of mammalian biology is impossible, making this study irrelevant.
p
I don’t think Thomas Jefferson would have been at all interested in a slave girl so young. It was completely out of character. Another dimension that would argue against it is that Hemings was his dead wife’s half sister. There were still issues of ‘affinity’ in the minds of people of Jefferson’s time.
When you study Thomas Jefferson in any depth, and in context of his era, the affair makes no sense at all. Some men did have affairs with slave women, but it’s not a given that they all did; and Thomas Jefferson did not.
Thank you for this post. I was unaware of the social and legal bind that Jefferson was in.
“There is a legend that he promised his wife not to remarry.”
He may have. But if he wished to and she accepted when they married she would have had to leave the state and Jefferson’s home. So the promise was a mute point.
Jefferson freed only five enslaved individuals in his will—all members of the Hemings family—and allowed two others to effectively walk free without pursuit. Because Jefferson died heavily in debt (owing over $107,000), the remaining ~130 enslaved people were auctioned off in early 1827 to pay off his creditors. So he kept Hemmings as a slave until his death to protect her.
wy69
“There is a legend that he promised his wife not to remarry.”
He may have. But if he wished to and she accepted when they married she would have had to leave the state and Jefferson’s home. So the promise was a mute point.
Jefferson freed only five enslaved individuals in his will—all members of the Hemings family—and allowed two others to effectively walk free without pursuit. Because Jefferson died heavily in debt (owing over $107,000), the remaining ~130 enslaved people were auctioned off in early 1827 to pay off his creditors. So he kept Hemmings as a slave until his death to protect her.
wy69
“You’d think the left would honor him over it instead of pillage him over it.”
There is no honor among thieves. The left will eat their own. Jefferson strongly pushed for the addition of explicit protections for individual liberties, federalism, convincing Madison to support a bill of rights, which eventually became the first ten amendments. This is the basis for the main attack by the left on the Constitution and it’s creation of what they called basic rights. And the left hates those. A lot of historians credit, too much, the writing of the Constitution to Jefferson. He was very contributory, but was out of the country most of the time it was penned. But TDS can also be used with Thomas.
wy69
Smithsonian, noted for outright lies, distortions, disinformation and misinformation not to mention omitting critical facts in heir fictionalized magazine.
Jefferson was in France during the time that the Constitutional Convention was being held and they didn’t have a zoom connection.
A lot of people are very concerned about the way this study was done, not least of them Hemings’ oldest living descendent. She has ended her association with the Smithsonian and Kurin’s book. A big question people are asking is why the book was made available before the study would even be publicly peer- reviewed:
“Jefferson was in France during the time that the Constitutional Convention was being held...”
I got my informaton here:
Note this section:
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787
wy69
Jefferson seems to have had too much faith in the integrity of judges.
“Jefferson seems to have had too much faith in the integrity of judges.”
Interesting your thoughts on that. In my reading, I found just the opposite. A fascinating article for that is here:
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=2982
In other reading I found that Jefferson’s skepticism toward judges stemmed from several core political and philosophical beliefs. Jefferson strongly objected to the doctrine of judicial review—the idea that the Supreme Court has the final say on whether laws are constitutional. He advocated for a “tripartite” (or departmental) theory of the Constitution. He believed each branch of government had an equal right to interpret the Constitution for itself. In an 1820 letter to William Jarvis, Jefferson warned that treating judges as the ultimate arbiters would “place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
Jefferson believed that because federal judges are appointed for life and are not subject to elective control by the people, their power is inherently dangerous. He famously argued that judges have the same flaws and thirst for power as anyone else. (He wasn’t far from wrong here as this has surfaced over the last 75 years many times)
As he grew older, Jefferson watched the Supreme Court, led by his political rival Chief Justice John Marshall, continually expand the power of the federal government at the expense of the states. Jefferson colorfully described the federal judiciary as “the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working underground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric.”
He displayed his mistrust of judges with his presidency. Once in office, Jefferson and his allies fought back by repealing the Judiciary Act of 1801 to eliminate those new judgeships put in by the Madisan administration and attempting to impeach hostile judges.
As far as I can find, he felt judges were capable of harming the federalist theology and agenda. So to elimnate the possiblity of moving away from each goverenment particle being able to interpret the Constitution themselves, he tried to get the judicial portion leashed and muzzled.
wy69
It appears that he became more critical after observing courts over the years. “Live and learn.”
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