It seems to me and perhaps a lot more, that you are not interested in
finding the truth, just rely on hear say and hand me downs. Don't you
believe in the use of modern technology such as DNA samplings?

Bill Bryant





----- Original Message -----
From: "Bodman, James" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 1:13 PM
Subject: Re: Jefferson-Hemings-Woodson DNA Study


> Would someone please explain to me why the Jefferson-Hemings paternity
issue
> is so important?  Is the issue so important because a hidden motive is
> behind this argument?  It appears to me, that many people forget that
Thomas
> Jefferson was neither a God nor perfect.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Judy Baugh [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2001 12:26 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Jefferson-Hemings-Woodson DNA Study
>
>
> Was anyone denying the obvious about those thousands of mulatto children
> born before emancipation?  The fact that many white men had sexual
relations
>
> with slave women does not prove that any one man did, however.  Neither
> that,
> nor strong personal opinion, have any probative value in regard to the
> paternity
> of Sally Heming's children.
>
> "Papa says, Mama knows" is an amusing little aphorism, but not universally
> true.
> If it was, one would never see billboards advertising 1-800-WHOSDAD in
> letters
> ten feet high.  The only absolute proof is in the DNA.  However, western
> society
> as reflected in its legal code has long afforded children born within
> wedlock a strong
> presumption of true paternity, while holding the claims of unacknowledged,
> illegitimate
> paternity to a higher standard of scrutiny and proof (one that's
> increasingly transcendant
> of the subjective and circumstantial thanks to developments in genetic
> technology). Is
> there some valid reason why the descendants of Patsy Jefferson, Martha
> Jefferson,
> and/or Sally Hemings should be considered exceptional to that?
>
>
> It seems to me that the salient issue is what information from the results
> of the DNA
> study will be incorporated into the general and enduring public awareness
> about our
> third president.  Will the well-obscured fact that he may *not* have been
> the father
> of any of Sally Hemings' children be a part of that?  Or will we firmly
> hypostatize a
> relationship that may never have existed?
>
>
> Rgds.,
> Judy Baugh
>
>
> Harold S. Forsythe wrote
>
>
> One may doubt paternity in any case. As the old saying goes: "Papa says,
>
> Mama knows." That the white Jeffersons would be so sure of their own
> paternal descent from the great founder, but so
>
> doubtful about the often mocked paternity of self-described black
> descendants of Thomas Jefferson, has always seemed to me
>
> about everything but actual descent.
>
> As Joel Williamson so powerfully depicted in The Crucible of Race and New
> People, the increasing number of mulattoes in the
>
> ante-bellum South was a subject often remarked upon. No one claimed that
> black men were responsible for this mixing, given
>
> who they would have to have reproduced with to produce mulattoes. Now, in
> the antebellum South, elite white men had the
>
> most ready access to enslaved women of African (and Native American)
> descent. They, after all, owned these women.
>
> I really do not want to offend descent people, who have believed in the
> purity of an ancestor. I do not want to undermine the
>
> moral consciousness of present day southerners. But what this debate
> constitutes, to my mind, is a denial of what slavery and a
>
> slave- based society really was. It was a system where the wealthiest and
> most honored men and women in the society owned
>
> the bodies and labor of another entire class of people. This implications
of
> this ownership claim are staggering: involving
>
> ownership of offspring, accumulated fruits of labor, and quite often of
> total sexual access. This latter was not a privilege
>
> necessarily extended to the 3/4 of the white population who did not own
> slaves; as the southern folklore often implies. Sexual
>
> access, like control over labor and ownership of children, was a privilege
> of slaveownership.
>
> Face it!
>
>
>
> Harold S. Forsythe
>
> History & Black Studies
>
> Fairfield University
>
>
>
>
>
> Date sent: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 10:45:16 -0600
>
> From: Judy Baugh
>
> Subject: Re: Jefferson-Hemings-Woodson DNA Study
>
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Send reply to: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
>
>
>
>
>
> I believe "fiasco" refers to the widespread conclusion, based on the
> findings of the initial Jefferson DNA
>
> study (as reported in 'Nature', 1998), that TJ sired one or more of Sally
> Hemings' children.
>
>
>
>
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