New DNA Testing Using Hair Attributed To Thomas Jefferson Strengthens Evidence That He Fathered Children With Sally Hemings
New DNA analysis using preserved hair attributed to Thomas Jefferson is providing the strongest genetic evidence yet that the nation’s third president fathered children with Sally Hemings, a Black woman he enslaved at Monticello.
The findings come from a 15-year investigation led by Smithsonian scholar Richard Kurin, who worked with geneticists, genealogists, historians and descendants of both the Jefferson and Hemings families. Researchers reconstructed portions of Jefferson’s genome from preserved hair and compared the DNA with samples from living descendants of Hemings’ sons Madison and Eston.
Kurin said the analysis showed a 99.9% chance that Jefferson fathered a child with Hemings. The research is detailed in his new book, History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery, released Sept. 22.
DNA Builds On Generations Of Black Family History
For descendants of Sally Hemings, the findings add scientific evidence to a family history that had been preserved for generations even as Jefferson’s paternity was disputed by historians and members of his acknowledged family.
Madison Hemings publicly identified Jefferson as his father in an account published in 1873. Monticello considers his testimony and the oral histories of Hemings descendants critical pieces of the historical record.
The latest findings also go further than a landmark 1998 DNA study.
That research found that a male-line descendant of Eston Hemings shared the same Y-chromosome pattern as male descendants of the Jefferson family. However, because the Y chromosome was shared by multiple Jefferson men, the study could establish that Eston’s father was a Jefferson male but could not independently identify Thomas Jefferson as the father.
Researchers working on the new project were able to recover more than half of Jefferson’s genome from authenticated hair samples and compare it with DNA from Hemings descendants, according to Kurin’s account of the investigation.
Monticello Already Considered Paternity Settled
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which operates Monticello, concluded in 2018 that Jefferson’s paternity was a “settled historical matter.”
The foundation cited the 1998 DNA findings alongside Madison Hemings’ testimony, family oral history, documentary records and evidence showing Jefferson was at Monticello during the likely conception periods of Hemings’ children. Its historical research concludes Jefferson fathered at least six children with Hemings, four of whom survived into adulthood.
Jefferson never publicly acknowledged Hemings or her children as his own.
Research Draws Questions Over Publication Process
The new investigation has also faced criticism over how the research was handled.
Hemings descendant Mary Brady-Atkins withdrew her DNA sample after raising concerns about the research appearing in a book before publication in a scientific journal. Researchers said her information was removed from the analysis and that its removal did not materially alter their findings.
A scientific paper detailing the work has remained under review as coverage of Kurin’s book and the DNA analysis began appearing this month.
For descendants who participated in the project, however, the findings carry significance beyond the scientific debate.
Clara Lee-Nutt, a descendant of Madison Hemings whose DNA was included in the research, said the evidence gives her greater certainty when explaining her family’s history to future generations.
More than two centuries after Hemings’ descendants began carrying that history forward themselves, the latest DNA evidence offers another scientific link to what their families had long maintained.
