DNA Proof Confirms Thomas Jefferson Fathered Children With Sally Hemings
- According to new scientific proof reported by the Smithsonian Institution, President Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his enslaved chambermaid Sally Hemings, and their bloodline continues to endure across...
- The project required a sprawling genealogical effort that involved compiling extensive family lineages and tracking down a lost grave in rural Virginia.
- The genetic findings build upon decades of historical investigation into a presidential paternity dispute, which sparked the nation's first presidential sex scandal when a Federalist newspaper criticized Jefferson...
According to new scientific proof reported by the Smithsonian Institution, President Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his enslaved chambermaid Sally Hemings, and their bloodline continues to endure across the United States. Richard Kurin, a fifty-year veteran of the institution, launched a top-secret genetic study into the long-standing paternity dispute in 2011, utilizing hair samples and genomic sequencing to map Jefferson’s DNA alongside the genetic profiles of Hemings’s descendants.
The Smithsonian Genome Study and Research Methods
The project required a sprawling genealogical effort that involved compiling extensive family lineages and tracking down a lost grave in rural Virginia. Kurin and his team extracted DNA from hair samples to sequence Jefferson’s genome, subsequently comparing those results with the genetic profiles of descendants of Sally Hemings. The research faced friction ahead of its formal release, including criticism from a Hemings descendant interviewed by The Chronicle of Higher Education who withdrew from the study due to concerns over the commercial publication of a book prior to a peer-reviewed scientific paper. Despite the pushback, the Smithsonian confirmed that the resulting paper has undergone peer review and is being cleared for publication.
Historical Context and Prior Paternity Disputed Milestones
The genetic findings build upon decades of historical investigation into a presidential paternity dispute, which sparked the nation’s first presidential sex scandal when a Federalist newspaper criticized Jefferson for engaging in the liaison. Historians largely dismissed the affair as slander for over a century until the 1950s rediscovery of an 1873 interview with Madison Hemings, a Black carpenter who stated he was Jefferson’s son. Scientific consensus shifted significantly in 1998, when scientist Eugene Foster published a DNA study showing that a descendant of Sally Hemings shared a Y chromosome with descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his wife, Martha Wayles.
Annette Gordon-Reed, a historian and law professor, advanced the historical record further with her award-winning 2008 book, The Hemingses of Monticello, which argued that a relationship was the only plausible interpretation of available historical records. My ideal was for people to make a decision ‘on the papers,’
Gordon-Reed told the reporter, referencing a legal term for evaluations based strictly on written testimony. Monticello later dedicated an exhibition to Sally Hemings following the publication, though skeptics continued to theorize alternative explanations, such as suggesting the President’s brother could have been the father.
