DNA evidence from Thomas Jefferson’s hair reveals the truth about his relationship with Sally Hemings
Researchers said DNA from Jefferson’s hair and 16 living descendants shows a 99.96% chance he fathered at least one of Sally Hemings’s children.
- On Tuesday, Smithsonian scholar Richard Kurin released a study confirming a 99.9% probability that President Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman he held at his Monticello estate.
- Decades of debate prompted the genomic investigation, as previous studies relied on Y-chromosome markers which could not definitively rule out other male relatives, such as Jefferson's brother, Randolph Jefferson.
- Researchers utilized an innovative technique to extract DNA from rootless hair samples found in the Jefferson Bible, allowing scientists to analyze autosomal DNA rather than the limited male-line lineage used previously.
- Genetic evidence definitively links the descendants of Madison Hemings and Eston Hemings to Jefferson, with odds of less than one in 1,000 that he was not the biological father.
- Kurin described the findings as a "capstone" to years of research, potentially allowing descendants of both Martha Wayles Jefferson and Hemings to view themselves as part of one complex American family.
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95 Articles
DNA evidence from Thomas Jefferson's hair reveals the truth about his relationship with Sally Hemings
After spending years reconstructing DNA fragments, scientists have revealed the most compelling evidence to date that Thomas Jefferson also fathered children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman.
The genetic material does not lie: the third US president, Thomas Jefferson, had children with a slave with a very high probability. The analysis reveals a lot about the past – and also about the present.
A NEW DNA study, analyzing hair from Thomas Jefferson and his descendants, has confirmed with 99.96% certainty that the former US president had children with enslaved woman Sally Hemings.
Local 3 News
KEZI 9 NewsIn 2011, when opening a Bible that had belonged to Thomas Jefferson, the staff of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History discovered a reddish blond hair pressed between the pages. It is suspected that that hair belonged to Jefferson himself...
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