Chat room spy irks descendants - woman says she wanted Hemings kin out of Jefferson reunion

ROANOKE, Va. – Relatives of reputed Thomas Jefferson mistress Sally Hemings say their Internet chat group was infiltrated by the head of the Jefferson family association, who pretended to be a 67-year-old black woman.

But Nat Abeles says the real spy was his wife, who admitted to the subterfuge to help in her husband's efforts to keep the slave descendants out of the annual Jefferson reunion this weekend.

"This started out as a prank," said Paulie Abeles of Washington D.C., who participated for eight months in the Yahoo! message board created for Hemings family members.

"It might have been somewhat unethical. It might have been childish ... but I really think I was working in the best interest of the majority of the family members to make the reunion a calm and civilized gathering."

The admission has rankled members of both families on the eve of the family's annual reunion at Jefferson's hilltop estate in Charlottesville.

Even though the Hemings clan was formally excluded from membership last year, some members of the Jefferson family Monticello Association continue to invite slave descendants to accompany them at the group's annual cocktail party and cemetery visit.

David Works, who claims to be a sixth-generation grandson of the union of Jefferson and Hemings, said he has asked federal authorities to investigate the matter.

"This isn't a fraternity house panty raid – this is serious," said Mr. Works, who supervised the Internet group and traced messages to Ms. Abeles' computer.

Ms. Abeles said she was curious in August when she found out the Hemings family was communicating through an Internet group, but she thought her name would have made it difficult to be included.

So Cassandra Mays-Lewis was born. In her Yahoo! profile, Ms. Abeles made Cassandra a descendant of Jefferson's blacksmith and slave Joe Fossett, describing herself as having an interest in black genealogy. In her messages, she played the part of an elderly woman, stricken with emphysema, thanking Mr. Works for his "kind attentions to an old woman."

Ms. Abeles said she never told her husband about Cassandra until a few days ago when Mr. Works discovered she was a fake. Instead, Ms. Abeles said she informed her husband of the Hemingses' conversations by having Cassandra send him e-mails.

"The information itself was quite valuable," Mr. Abeles said. "They were planning on all kinds of ways to get people in and trying to trick people into making inappropriate comments."

Lucian Truscott IV, a Jefferson descendant who believes the Hemings family should be recognized, said it is clear from the Internet messages that the real impostor was Mr. Abeles, not his wife.

"He's using his wife as a human shield," said Mr. Truscott, who usually invites the Hemings family to come to the reunion en masse.

Mr. Truscott said that when the Hemings family started discussing the reunion on the Yahoo! site about three months ago, Mr. Abeles promptly told the Jefferson family they were only allowed to bring two guests each.

When Mr. Truscott tried to accommodate the few dozen Hemingses by getting invitations from other Jefferson family members, including some who weren't planning on attending the event, Mr. Abeles countered by telling association members they had to be present to bring guests.

Then Mr. Truscott thought of using junior members – teenagers planning on attending the event with their parents – to sponsor the Hemings family. Again, Mr. Abeles said that only full members were allowed to bring guests.

"Every time we'd think of a way to get the Hemingses there, he'd come up with a new rule," Mr. Works said.

"It really was a stupid thing to do," said Ms. Sim, 33, a writer who lives outside Charlottesville. "Because you have the president of the association, who could have asked to join the list. ... It feels like a mockery."

Ms. Sim, who says she is descended from a Sally Hemings sibling, finds some poetic justice in the fact that, if only for a few days in cyberspace, a Hemings descendant was president of the Monticello Association.

Jefferson's nephews were not the fathers of Hemmings children that is easily shown to be false. That was a claim concocted years after J's death by his daughter and others attempting to deflect criticism of her father by those pointing to Sally. They tried to claim Jefferson was the children's father as the evidence clearly shows.

As you said Sally was Martha's half sister. She was 1/8 black. Jefferson had promised Martha on her deathbed never to remarry. Sally and his affair was not one of explotation of a slave by a master but was a long-lived loving affair of 30 yrs. I am not a Jefferson fan by any means but do not point to this as one of his major faults. Sally was intelligent, discrete, spoke French and probably looked a great deal like his wife.

Her children and relatives were highly favored by J. and were the only slaves freed by Jefferson or his estate. One of her sons was taught to play the violin (which J also played) and the only reason she was not freed was that at the time of his death freed slaves HAD to leave Virginia. Since her relatives were there she did not want to leave MOnticello.

DNA is not the evidence of proof that is significant. And I agree the story a few years ago that "proved" paternity was ludicrous as science or evidence. No serious researcher believes that testing another Jefferson's DNA is proof of Jefferson's paternity. The proof lies in the fact that Sally ONLY conceived within the time periods when Jefferson was at MOnticello (or France) and that all her children were freed when no other house servants were. Actually no slaves were freed who were not connected to the Hemings family.

Then there was the visual evidence of resemblence of the children to Jefferson marked by many contemporaries including red hair. And the highly favored treatment of the family.

The fact that one of her sons was taught to play the violin at Monticello (and allowed to have one to play) is to me the sort of little detail which (while irrelevent in court perhaps) rings too true for this story to be false.

I love the fact that his favored character assassin turned against him and spread the story. It may have been the only time he was telling the truth.

Hemings kin attend Monticello event
But slave's descendants were only invited guests

BY CALVIN R. TRICE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER May 04, 2003

CHARLOTTESVILLE - About 20 descendants of slave Sally Hemings milled about the historic estate of her owner, Thomas Jefferson, as the annual reunion of his family got under way yesterday.

Unlike last year, the Hemings descendants arrived at Monticello only as invited guests - not as potential members of the Monticello Association, the private club of Jefferson's descendants.

About 80 people in all drank spirits and ate hor d'oeurves at the reception, which opens the association's annual meetings.

DNA tests have linked Thomas Jefferson's family to at least one of Sally Hemings' children. Still, the association voted overwhelmingly last year to keep the Hemingses out of the Jefferson club.

In the wake of that perceived snub, Hemings descendant Michele Cooley considered her family's presence a victory.

"We have developed a foundation that is unifying for Monticello members, the Hemings family and the Woodsons," said Cooley, of Baltimore.

Cooley and her sister, Lisa Cooley, had to wait 30 minutes after the start of the reception at 6 p.m. because their sponsor in the association had not arrived.

Lisa Cooley linked their presence to the cause of the civil-rights movement for which their grandfather, Petersburg lawyer Robert H. Cooley Jr., had fought.

"It's about the ability to walk in through the front door," Lisa Cooley said.

Rules of sponsorship have been the center of heated exchanges among Monticello members during the weeks leading up to this weekend's gathering. That discussion led to a roil over an Internet impersonation that will probably result in an attempt to oust Nathaniel Abeles as association president.

Last year, Lucian Truscott IV, an association member from Los Angeles who embraces the Hemings claim, invited 26 Hemings family members to the reunion as guests. Since then, Abeles and the group leadership limited guest invitations to two per member.

In recent weeks, Abeles chided certain Jeffersons over plans to get the Hemings family members to this year's meeting as guests. Abeles had learned of plans to get Hemings invitations for children of Monticello members and adult members who couldn't attend.

John H. Works Jr., a former president of the Monticello Association, called attempts to draw Hemingses to the annual gathering disruptive, especially in light of last year's vote.

"This is not appropriate behavior. They're trying to create issues that really don't exist," Works said. The fact that there were so few Hemingses at the event showed that most Monticello members don't want a deluge of the Hemingses at their private functions, he added.

He and Truscott got into an animated debate in front of the Jefferson mansion over rules and past recriminations during the taping of a television interview.

Guest rules will likely play a prominent role during the association's business meeting today at the downtown Charlottesville Omni.

Abeles learned about invitation plans from discussions on a private Yahoo! Internet chat group for Monticello members and the Hemings family. Last week, the moderator of the group, Jefferson descendant David Works, discovered that a group member claiming to be a Hemings descendant was an impostor. Works traced the impersonation to Abeles' computer.

Abeles claims his wife, Paulie Abeles, had infiltrated the group and monitored discussion for eight months without telling her husband about the ruse. The impostor, using the name Cassandra Mays-Lewis, forwarded e-mail to Nathaniel Abeles, the president claims.

Abeles said his wife confessed to the impersonation after Works confronted the president about the trace. Abeles said he forced his wife to resign from the chat group Thursday. He issued Works a letter of apology to the chat-group members Friday.

Works and Truscott, both association members and Hemings sympathizers, dismiss Abeles' explanation. They believe he lied about his own impersonation and should be removed as president.

Works will present to the membership a series of e-mails issued to chat-group members over a three-hour overnight span from Abeles' computer. Some used the president's name. Others used the fake "Cassandra Lewis" identity, Truscott said.

Another point of contention has been the family's traditional visit to their ancestral gravesite, where only Jefferson descendants can be buried. Abeles has barred non-Monticello members from participating in today's visit on the property near the Jefferson mansion. His opponents vowed to disregard that rule.

The Hemings issue has been ongoing for five years. In 1998, DNA tests lent credence to a long-held suspicion that Jefferson fathered some of Hemings' children. The tests showed that a Jefferson male fathered Hemings' youngest son, Eston.

The results did not conclude that Jefferson himself was the father, but included him among about 24 Jefferson men who lived in Virginia at the time who could have fathered Eston Hemings.

Contact Calvin R. Trice at (540) 574-9977 or ctrice@timesdispatch.com

http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/MGBJHAQDAFD.html

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