They Wanted to Pray, Not to Stay

A reunion being held at Monticello this weekend includes descendants of Thomas Jefferson and of his plantation's laborers, artisans, guests and overseers. Some members of the Monticello Association—a group of white Jefferson descendants that owns the graveyard where the president is buried—are still fuming over the Sally Hemings controversy.

A plan to hold a sunrise service today at the Monticello graveyard was turned down by the Monticello Association in May, said [Virginia "Prinny"] Anderson, who made the request and is a member of the association.

Denying access to even hold a service inside the cemetery is "silly," said David Works, who helped organize the reunion. "They still seem to think blacks want to be buried in the cemetery. But they don't. It's all kind of silly. But it doesn't ruin our weekend." [Link]

Where's Harriet Been Hiding?

Craig at GeneaBlogie found this one in his morning paper. A retired college professor in California thinks that his great-great-grandmother, Eliza Jefferson, was actually Harriet Hemings—the long-lost daughter of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings who disappeared and began a new life as a white woman.

When Best attended a Hemings family reunion in 2003 at Monticello, Jefferson's Virginia plantation, the low-key professor created a stir -- his nametag identified him as a descendant of Harriet Hemings. Most people in the extended family had never seen such a claim. Harriet was the one who vanished, forever a mystery woman.

Much is known about the brothers -- Madison, Eston and Beverly -- but Harriet?

"We were all curious about that," recalled Shay Banks-Young, a Hemings-Jefferson descendant in Columbus, Ohio.

Such reunions, featuring 800 or more descendants of Jefferson and Sally Hemings, are noteworthy for being a story in black and white and all shades in-between. While some early descendants shed their ties to Hemings and lived as whites, others, via Sally's son Madison, lived as African Americans.

Said Banks-Young, who identifies herself as African American, "I have more white people telling me they are related to me than black people." [Link]

More Mischief at Monticello?

Thomas Jefferson Clayton II (formerly Ronnie R. Clayton) believes that his great-great-great-great grandfather was "Yellow Tom"—the spitting image and unacknowledged son of Thomas Jefferson.

When TJCII told the new Thomas Jefferson Foundation staff at Monticello, in a telephone conversation, that his grandmother told him he had three grandfathers named Thomas Jefferson, starting with his grandmother Rena Bell Clayton's own father, he was ridiculed and laughed at. Monticello told Clayton that he needed documents to prove these facts instead of only his grandmother's death bed confession.

The Monticello staff also told him that he "would be the first to show documents with Thomas Jefferson's name on them from the 1800s." When Clayton finally was able to "show" them the actual death certificate showing his great grandfather's name as Thomas Jefferson Clayton, he could not explain the look on their faces. [Link]

I think I can explain the look on their faces. After all, you couldn't swing a dead white European male in 19th-century America without hitting someone named "Thomas Jefferson."

Clayton says his family has a "right to a DNA test" to prove that he descends from Jefferson. It's not clear from the article what prevents him from swabbing his cheek and sending his cells off to a genetics lab. Given how widely the rare Jefferson haplotype has been publicized, one would think the guy on CSI could run a sample through his Instamatic Genealyzer and come up with an answer before the next commercial break.

A significant flaw in Clayton's theory is that "Yellow Tom" seems to have been a fabrication of one of Jefferson's political enemies, James T. Callendar, who wrote in the Richmond Recorder in 1802 that “It is well known that the man whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is SALLY. The name of her eldest son is Tom. His features are said to bear a striking though sable resemblance to those of the president himself." Problem is, Sally Hemings didn't have a son named Tom, unless it was Thomas C. Woodson—definitely not Jefferson's son.

[Photo source: American Historical Portraits, William E. Barton Collection of Lincolniana, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library]

Jefferson-Hemings Controversy Settled in Court

From The Kansas City (Mo.) Star of Sept. 27, 2005:

Judge draws line at naming horse after Sally Hemings

Now politics is getting into horse racing — but in a strange way.

A federal judge in Lexington, Ky., has dismissed a lawsuit by a Thoroughbred owner who sued to name one of his fillies after Sally Hemings, the slave who was reputed to be Thomas Jefferson’s mistress.

[snip]

The mother of [Garrett] Redmond’s 2-year-old filly is Jefferson’s Secret, whose sire is Colonial Affair. Redmond thinks the name “Sally Hemings” would be a natural for a horse of such lineage.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Genealogue Exclusive: Thomas Jefferson May Have Fathered No Children

A Genealogue Exclusive [What's That?]

DNA tests released Friday establish that every member of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society claiming descent from the president may actually be descended from his younger brother, Randoloph.

The tests were conducted at the request of purported Jefferson descendants after similar test results in 2000 suggested that several of the progeny of Sally Hemings, Jefferson's slave, were fathered by the president. Skeptics have argued that the 2000 test results prove only that one of Jefferson's close relatives—perhaps Randolph—fathered the children. Hemings descendants have suspected racial motives behind the refusal of some Society members to acknowledge their probable ancestry.

In a stunning development, Geneticrit Associates reported Friday that none of the attendees of the 2004 Jefferson reunion at Monticello could prove their genetic descent from Thomas Jefferson.

"They're all in the same boat," said Geneticrit chief geneticist Norm Lobowski. "We tested samples taken from supposed descendants of Thomas Jefferson and [his uncle] Field Jefferson, and from those of Sally Hemings. All we can conclusively say is that they all share identical Y-chromosome haplotypes. In other words, they all descend from a Jefferson, but I can't say which one."

The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society could not be reached for comment, but a message left on the Monticello answering machine indicates that a vote will be taken at its August meeting to decide whether to rename the Society, "The Randolph Jefferson Heritage Society."