New DNA analysis adds evidence Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings

Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, kept more than 600 enslaved people who cultivated tobacco and mixed crops at Monticello, his primary home and plantation near Charlottesville, Virginia. Allegations that he fathered children with Hemings emerged in the late 1700s and early 1800s and have been debated by family members, biographers and historians for more than two centuries.

Kurin and his team were not the first to turn to genetics. In the late 1990s, pathologist Eugene Foster and colleagues analyzed Y chromosome markers from Jefferson family descendants and a descendant of Eston Hemings, Sally Hemings' youngest son. Foster found contemporary descendants with the Jefferson Y chromosome and a descendant of Eston Hemings, Kurin told NPR's Michel Martin for Morning Edition. Kurin said that coupling historical evidence with that DNA evidence convinced most historians and many people that Jefferson was the father of Hemings' children. Others objected that the results could point to any Jefferson male, such as a cousin, brother or nephew.

The case also raised questions about consent and power. Kurin told NPR that some people said Hemings was enslaved, so the relationship had to be coercive and by definition rape because she could not consent. Others, he said, described Hemings as a young woman 30 years younger than Jefferson who had tremendous agency.

Kurin enlisted Beth Shapiro, a MacArthur fellow who works with ancient DNA from extinct species, and Richard 'Ed' Green, an expert in paleogenomics and forensic genomics. Both are at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Kurin said the project focused on scientific evidence without moralizing or judging Jefferson.

The investigation began with strands of hair found in Jefferson's personal Bible. About five years in, Kurin and his team discovered those strands did not belong to Jefferson. Kurin kept looking. He returned to Monticello and pulled from a packet of hair that was not in the initial inventory. The packet was labeled as Jefferson's hair, cut the day he died, July 4, 1826.

'A rich lock of hair,' Kurin said. 'You open up the packet, and here is Thomas Jefferson's hair, like a nice lock of hair staring in the face — looked very rich and that hair yielded DNA. The key to sequencing his DNA.'

With the new DNA sample, Kurin said the results appeared conclusive. 'We know that there are descendants of Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings that have a whole lot of Thomas Jefferson DNA,' he said, referring to Sally Hemings' two youngest surviving sons. 'You actually had Hemings descendants that had more Thomas Jefferson DNA than the known Jefferson descendants.' He added that he would not make it a rule that the Hemings necessarily have more, but that they certainly had more than was expected. Asked whether the findings answer the question of whether Jefferson fathered children with Hemings, Kurin said yes. 'The DNA speaks for itself.'

The researchers identified descendants of Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings, but not of Sally Hemings' other surviving children, Harriet Hemings and Beverly Hemings. Kurin told NPR that Harriet and Beverly, a girl and a boy, ran off from Monticello. Jefferson let them leave in 1822, and they went to Washington, D.C., passed as white and had families, so nobody knows about their descendants.

Kurin hopes to make Thomas Jefferson's genome publicly available, which could help others trace connections to his family. A scientific paper is currently under review for publication.