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New genetic research spanning over a decade provides the most compelling evidence to date that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman in his household.
New genetic evidence strengthens the long-rumored connection between Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the United States, and Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman in his household.
New Genetic Evidence Links Jefferson and Hemings
Scientists have revealed the most compelling evidence to date that Jefferson fathered children with Hemings, according to research detailed in a new book and a preprint paper. The findings come from a DNA investigation spanning more than a decade. The research found a 99.96 percent probability that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally Hemings children. The study was published Sept. 21 on the preprint platform bioRxiv and has not yet been peer-reviewed.
The book, titled History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings and Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery, was written by Richard Kurin and published Sept. 22. Kurin is a distinguished scholar and ambassador-at-large at the Smithsonian and senior author of the paper describing the methods that connected the former US president to Hemings descendants. The investigation began in 2011 when staff at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History opened a Bible that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson.
Inside, they discovered a reddish-blond hair pressed between the pages. That hair, suspected to have belonged to Jefferson himself, launched the DNA investigation. Kurin and his team were initially disappointed to find the Bible hair was not the smoking gun they expected. They compared its DNA with that of a living woman who was a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson mother along the family female lineage.
They expected to find identical mitochondrial DNA, which is genetic material specifically inherited from the maternal side. But their hopes were dashed when the two samples did not match. Still, they were able to access other hair samples that records attributed to Thomas Jefferson. These hairs, including a lock clipped at his deathbed, were in a packet provided by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello.
Historic DNA Samples Reveal Family Connections
They had not previously been available for analysis. The scientists reconstructed and compared historic genome sequences of Jefferson and Hemings with DNA collected from 16 living individuals. These included multiple descendants of Eston and Madison Hemings, two of Hemings sons. Hemings had four children who lived to adulthood, but only Eston and Madison claimed Jefferson as their father.
The researchers also collected genetic material from multiple confirmed samples of Jefferson hair held in the Smithsonian collection. They compared that with DNA from descendants of multiple lineages: Jefferson and his wife Martha, Jefferson brother Randolph, and Eston and Madison Hemings. The analyses found matches across genomes that linked Hemings descendants to Thomas Jefferson. Matches in the DNA suggest the chance that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally Hemings children was 99.96 percent.
Previously, a genetic study from 1998 led by the late Eugene Foster, a retired pathology professor at Tufts University and the University of Virginia, claimed to prove Jefferson parentage of Hemings children. That study found a rare haplotype, a combination of genes, in the Y chromosomes of males descended from Thomas Jefferson uncle. That same haplotype existed in descendants of Hemings too.
However, many experts questioned Foster claim for one very important reason, Kurin told CNN. He didn't have Thomas Jefferson DNA, Kurin said. He didn't have something to directly compare living descendants of the Jefferson family to Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings and others that might have been the descendants of Thomas Jefferson. Critics of the 1998 study said Foster evidence merely connected Hemings descendants to a male in the Jefferson lineage, and not necessarily to the former president.
Larger DNA Samples Strengthen Genetic Conclusions
I thought, if we can get Thomas Jefferson DNA, we could use that as the source of comparison to various descendants, and really firmly solve the question, Kurin said. What made this study so powerful is that researchers were not just comparing two genomes, said Eadaoin Harney, a senior population geneticist at the 23andMe Research Institute. Instead, they collected DNA samples from multiple people from different branches of the family tree. Harney was not involved in the new research.
In genetic analysis, larger sample pools provide more robust conclusions, Harney said. By studying the patterns of DNA sharing across all of these individuals, it became possible to disambiguate exactly how the descendants of Sally Hemings were related to Thomas Jefferson, she told CNN in an email. While the new book and paper focus on genomic data of well-known historical figures, these methods are also broadly useful for illuminating the obscured history of enslaved people.
That has been a focus of Harney own research. In a 2023 study of enslaved and free African Americans from Maryland, Harney used DNA analysis combined with other biomolecular and archaeological techniques to uncover individuals ancestry and places of origin. The data also suggested links to people who still live in Maryland. Historical records are full of gaps, particularly when it comes to documenting the lives of people who occupied less privileged places in society, she said.
This is particularly true for enslaved Africans and African Americans, who are often only described in historical records as property. Genetic analyses, such as those used in the new Jefferson study, can help restore connections that were lost because of slavery, Harney added. The same tools can be applied to study the many enslaved people whose lives were never well documented, and help reconnect them with their descendants.
Scientific Evidence Confirms Jefferson Relationship
Whispers about Jefferson sexual relationship with Hemings, who was 30 years his junior and a half-sister to his wife, have endured for centuries. The new genetic evidence strengthens that connection, turning long-standing rumor into scientific confirmation. The findings provide a long-missing puzzle piece regarding Jefferson relationship with Hemings.
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CTVToronto:DNA evidence from Thomas Jefferson’s hair reveals the truth about his relationship with Sally Hemings 
CP24:DNA evidence from Thomas Jefferson’s hair reveals the truth about his relationship with Sally HemingsThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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