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Madison Hemings seems to have claimed that his mother told him that Jefferson was his father. At any rate on the 1870 census the census taker wrote next to Madison Hemings' name that "this man is the son of Thomas Jefferson"--which can only mean that Madison told him that. Whether he was telling the truth about what his mother had told him, or whether Sally was telling the truth if she did say that, are other questions. Fawn Brodie turned up an 1873 newspaper article which reported Madison Hemings' claims (but he admitted that Jefferson never treated him as if he considered him his son).

I don't know what the truth of the matter is, but I could understand Madison Hemings preferring to tell people "I am the son of Thomas Jefferson" instead of "I am the son of Thomas Jefferson's brother."

LOL. Note that the leaders of the Hemings Party are very insulted by such contentions, and have even insisted, logic be damned, that there would be no reason for Hemings' children to prefer claiming Thomas over Randolph as their father.

That 1873 newspaper article sounds like the one from the political activist editor (Westmore?) who some scholars now say, wrote everything in his own words (i.e., not in the sort of language Hemings would have used), and likely projected his own political project onto the son, because the interview supposedlt contained things that the son could not have learned from his mother, but were fromn the likes of Callender.

Another problem for the Hemings Party is that the two sons represent mutually incompatible oral traditions. The one tradition passed on the belief that Thomas was the father, while the other one maintained that another Jefferson male was the father.