Dr. Hardwick,

It is true that I gave Dr. Foster the names of Jefferson males who
descended from Thomas Jefferson's grandfather, Thomas Jefferson II, thus
they all shared the same Jefferson DNA as did TJ's brother, Randolph,
who I believe to be the father of Eston Hemings. It was a descendant of
Eston, John Weeks Jefferson whose DNA matched the blood of the 5
Jeffersons tested. But naturally it would match...the Eston family had
ALWAYS claimed descent from "a Jefferson", meaning Randolph. That was to
be expected BUT Dr. Foster did not tell Nature Journal, Monticello, the
media and our citizens SO it was a BIG media event and one that did
great damage to Mr. Jefferson. Dan Jordan at Monticello continues to
cling to the old biased original test Chaired by an oral history
specialist.

NO, the Jefferson men descended from Thomas Jefferson II are white and
recorded Jefferson lineage. In an earlier post I alluded to a slave,
Sandy, that TJ inherited.   

As a Jefferson Family Historian, for many years (the reason that Dr.
Foster chose me),I believe I have a pretty accurate genealogical picture
of the Jeaffreson/Jefferson family from the West Indies. Not all
Jeffersons are related to the Presidential Jeffersons as shown by DNA.

I will leave to you historians to discuss all the slavery and other
factors of TJ's personal life, BUT I am the authority on the
Jefferson-DNA Study and there is nothing related to this study that I am
not aware of. I am aware of who benefits by confusing the public and
publishing books using old MEDIA hype for confusing the public. May I
trust that you are NOT teaching the "TJ's guilty" theme at JMU? 

Herb Barger, Jefferson Family Historian

  
As I understand the DNA evidence, science has confirmed that the father
of one of Sally Heming's children was someone descended from Thomas
Jefferson's paternal grandfather.  Obviously, that person might be
Thomas Jefferson--but it could also be any of several other individuals
as well.

We will never know for certain, it seems to me.  For one thing, it seems
quite possible that the group of men descended from Thomas Jefferson's
grandfather included men who were themselves enslaved.  Given the
prevalence of miscegenation in Virginia, how can we rule out the
possibility that Jefferson had half-brothers or cousins who were slaves?
It is not much of a stretch at all to imagine that Jefferson's father,
uncles, or grandfather had children by enslaved women. As is the case
with so many other plantation families in Virginia, our genealogies for
the Jeffersons are partial and incomplete, precisely because sex between
enslaved women and their owners or overseers was so common.

And that, ultimately, is the point, isn't it?  White men rather
routinely had sex with their slaves.  Even if Jefferson himself did not
engage in sex with Hemings--a big if--he surely had to know it was
happening.  And he did nothing about it.  Jefferson is damned either
way. And the larger point is that this is necessarily true, because
Jefferson was a slave owner.  Jefferson's moral plight was no different,
really, than that of any other slave owner, for reasons that he himself
well understood.  Slavery corrupted everyone who came into contact with
it.  Jefferson himself knew this, and wrote eloquently about it in NOTES
ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA.  So on this issue there is no "out" for the
man.  Like Patrick Henry, Jefferson saw slavery for what it was, and did
nothing, because (as Henry put it), owning slaves was "convenient."  

The dispute over the ancestry of Hemings' children, it seems to me,
rather perversely distracts our attention from the deep hypocrisy at
Monticello.  Monticello was built on a lie.  As much as Jefferson tried
to hide slavery from view, slavery permeated the very bones of the
house, as well as the life he crafted for himself there.  If slavery
contradicted the high ideals that Jefferson, at his best, so elegantly
articulated, we should not forget that it was Jefferson who laid the
foundation for the pro-slavery argument of the 1820s and 1830s.
Jefferson pointed the way, in his discussion of the laws of Virginia, to
reconcile slavery and Lockean liberalism.  

More charitably, Jefferson illuminates the condition of slaveowners--and
by extension all of us--who lived enmeshed in social institutions that
enveloped their lives in ways they could not fully grasp.  For all the
subtlety and clarity of his thinking, Jefferson never seemed able to
internalize his understanding in ways that informed his actual day to
day behaviour.  Like almost all of his peers, Jefferson never managed to
come to grips with the day to day evil in which he participated.  If the
very best men and women that 18th century Virginia produced could not
pull off this feat, then perhaps we are asking too much of them?  And if
that is true, then what does that have to say about us?  Is it not
possible that we, too, live our lives enmeshed in social institutions,
and reified power relations, whose evils we dimly perceive, and with
which we grapple ineffectually?  
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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