A snippet from Monticello.org:
“The claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, a slave at Monticello, entered the public arena during Jefferson’s first term as president, and it has remained a subject of discussion and disagreement for two centuries.
In September 1802, political journalist James T. Callender, a disappointed office-seeker who had once been an ally of Jefferson, wrote in a Richmond newspaper that Jefferson had for many years “kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves.” “Her name is Sally,” Callender continued, adding that Jefferson had “several children” by her.
Although there had been rumors of a sexual relationship between Jefferson and a slave before 1802, Callender’s article spread the story widely. It was taken up by Jefferson’s Federalist opponents and was published in many newspapers during the remainder of Jefferson’s presidency.
Jefferson’s policy was to offer no public response to personal attacks, and he apparently made no explicit public or private comment on this question (although a private letter of 1805 has been interpreted by some individuals as a denial of the story). Sally Hemings left no known accounts.
Jefferson’s daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph privately denied the published reports. Two of her children, Ellen Randolph Coolidge and Thomas Jefferson Randolph, maintained many years later that such a liaison was not possible, on both moral and practical grounds. They also stated that Jefferson’s nephews Peter and Samuel Carr were the fathers of the light-skinned Monticello slaves some thought to be Jefferson’s children because of their resemblance to him.
The Jefferson-Hemings story was sustained through the 19th century by Northern abolitionists, British critics of American democracy, and others. Its vitality among the American population at large was recorded by European travelers of the time. Through the 20th century, some historians accepted the possibility of a Jefferson-Hemings connection and a few gave it credence, but most Jefferson scholars found the case for such a relationship unpersuasive.
Over the years, however, belief in a Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings relationship was perpetuated in private. Two of her children - Madison and Eston - indicated that Jefferson was their father, and this belief has been relayed through generations of their descendants as an important family truth.
That a Jefferson-Hemings relationship could be neither refuted nor substantiated was challenged in 1998 by the results of DNA tests conducted by Dr. Eugene Foster and a team of geneticists. The study - which tested Y-chromosomal DNA samples from male-line descendants of Field Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson’s uncle), John Carr (grandfather of Jefferson’s Carr nephews), Eston Hemings, and Thomas C. Woodson - indicated a genetic link between the Jefferson and Hemings descendants. The results of the study established that an individual carrying the male Jefferson Y chromosome fathered Eston Hemings (born 1808), the last known child born to Sally Hemings. There were approximately 25 adult male Jeffersons who carried this chromosome living in Virginia at that time, and a few of them are known to have visited Monticello. The study’s authors, however, said “the simplest and most probable” conclusion was that Thomas Jefferson had fathered Eston Hemings.
The DNA study found no link between the descendants of Field Jefferson and Thomas C. Woodson (1790-1879), whose family members have long held that he was the first son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Madison Hemings, Sally’s second-youngest son, said in 1873 that his mother had been pregnant with Jefferson’s child (who, he said, lived “but a short time”) when she returned from France in 1789. But there is no indication in Jefferson’s records of a child born to Hemings before 1795, and there are no known documents to support that Thomas Woodson was Hemings’ first child.
The DNA testing also found no genetic link between the Hemings and Carr descendants.
Shortly after the DNA test results were released in November 1998, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation formed a research committee consisting of nine members of the foundation staff, including four with Ph.D.s. In January 2000, the committee reported its finding that the weight of all known evidence - from the DNA study, original documents, written and oral historical accounts, and statistical data - indicated a high probability that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston Hemings, and that he was perhaps the father of all six of Sally Hemings’ children listed in Monticello records - Harriet (born 1795; died in infancy); Beverly (born 1798); an unnamed daughter (born 1799; died in infancy); Harriet (born 1801); Madison (born 1805); and Eston (born 1808).
Since then, a committee commissioned by the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, after reviewing essentially the same material, reached different conclusions, namely that Sally Hemings was only a minor figure in Thomas Jefferson’s life and that it is very unlikely he fathered any of her children. This committee also suggested in its report, issued in April 2001, that Jefferson’s younger brother Randolph (1755-1815) was more likely the father of at least some of Sally Hemings’ children.”
But you conveniently left out the study, the most comprehensive ever by people who WORK AT MONTICELLO and have studied his life. They’re working with PRIMARY SOURCES. At the very least you should be mature enough to admit that there evidence supporting both sides. If you can handle facts that is. Anyway, you believe what you want to believe. When we were homeschooling we studied this government and it’s founders extensively so I know the various evidence pro and con.
The full study is quite compelling. I’m sorry you can’t handle your heroes not being perfect. However, it cannot be said Jefferson had an affair because his wife had been dead for several years. But it’s okay, hon, we’ll just pretend you’re right since you can’t accept that there’s compelling evidence that he fathered Sally’s children. For all we know they may have truly loved each other but that kind of relationship would NOT have been accepted back then.
Keep in mind, his (white) children would be embarrassed by such an affair and that his “black” children DO claim he was their father. Of course, I suppose we should believe the legitimate children because they’re white and Lord knows little slave children (who said he WAS the father) lie. Also, the DNA proves there could be NO link between the Field-Carr side of the family (i.e. the nephews). I think DNA is an established enough science that we can believe it at this point.
Just to be clear, there’s no genetic link between the nephews (Carr) and Hemings. There IS a genetic link between Jefferson and Hemings. You actually stopped before the bullet list that lists the things that we absolutely KNOW to be true one being that she traveled to freaking France with him.
The study is here: http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/report-research-committee-thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings
But again, if you can’t handle the thought of Jefferson actually caring for a black women or that little black children born of a slave and a white father just might be at least as honest as legitimate white children (or that said white children would also have their own reasons for wanting to keep such a relationship secret) then so be it. I don’t see how this makes him any less of a hero. They lived in the same house for decades, is it so hard to think they loved one another, that she was a comfort to him after his wife died?
He was an extremely intelligent man who was well ahead of his time. Imagine the risk to him and yet, if DNA evidence, his records, diaries, and a (slave) children are to be believed it’s actually quite a sweet story. Certainly a man of his stature wouldn’t have had any problems attracting another wife (and was more common than not back then, just to have someone to manage the household affairs) and yet he didn’t.
Cindie