Study Refutes Claim that Jefferson Fathered Mulattos
Source: Associated Press | April 11, 2001
Study Refutes Claim that Jefferson
Fathered Mulattos
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – A commission of scholars Thursday disputed claims that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings, and said the evidence points instead to Jefferson’s younger brother.
The findings resulted from a yearlong study commissioned by a group of Jefferson admirers convinced that the third president’s reputation is being besmirched.
The report comes more than two years after DNA tests showed that Hemings’ youngest son, Eston Hemings, was fathered by a Jefferson male.
“The circumstantial case that Eston Hemings was fathered by the president’s younger brother is many times stronger than the case against the president himself,” the commission said in a summary of its 450-page report.
With one dissenter on the 13-member commission, the scholars bolster their case for the brother, Randolph Jefferson, by noting that:
A slave’s memoirs assert that Randolph Jefferson often spent time playing the fiddle and dancing with the slaves when he visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home.
Thomas Jefferson had invited Randolph – who lived about 20 miles away – to visit Monticello shortly before Hemings became pregnant with Eston.
Descendants of Eston Hemings passed down the story that Eston was fathered by “Thomas Jefferson’s uncle.” Both of Jefferson’s paternal uncles had died before Eston was conceived, but the report points out that Jefferson’s daughter Martha referred to Randolph as “Uncle Randolph.”
Sally’s childbearing years probably corresponded to the years in which Randolph was a widower.
The findings contradict a January 2000 report by scholars at Monticello that scientific and historical evidence shows the president probably fathered one and possibly all of Hemings’ children.
The new commission included Jefferson scholars at such universities as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, and Virginia.
“The biggest surprise to me was how weak the case really was,” said commission chairman Robert F. Turner, a University of Virginia professor.
Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor at the New York Law School who was not a commission member but whose book, “Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: an American Controversy,” makes a case for the relationship, said of the new findings: “It’s an interpretation. People will just have to read the Monticello report and my book and this and reach their own conclusions.”
The scholars said there is no record of Hemings or her children, other than Madison Hemings, ever alleging that Jefferson was the father. Madison made the claim in an 1873 newspaper interview in Ohio.
The report acknowledged Monticello’s claim that Jefferson was home when Hemings’ children were conceived, but noted that that is also when he had visitors, including Randolph.
“Whatever one thinks of Jefferson’s character, there can be little doubt that he was deeply concerned about his reputation,” the report said. “Yet we are asked to believe that Jefferson would have entrusted his reputation to the discretion of a 15- or 16-year-old child” – Hemings’ age when the relationship is said to have started.
“If he did that, he was essentially a child-molesting rapist, and that is far from what we know of him,” Turner said.
A dissenting report by Paul Rahe, a professor of history at the University of Tulsa, said Thomas Jefferson is the more likely father of Hemings’ children.
“Randolph Jefferson’s known patterns of behavior make him a likely suspect, but Thomas Jefferson is known to have been present and, in Randolph’s case, his presence is only a likelihood,” Rahe wrote.
