Herbert,

I am in other discussion groups including small history book discussions, 
and am going to recommend Jefferson's Children as an upcoming reading. I'm 
the only Virginian in the discussion, and will be interested to see how many 
others share the interest in TJ.

I will finish reading the book before recommending it to the group, so if 
there is more there than I've seen so far, I don't see why you object to the 
book or, for that matter to "oral history" and its importance in "black" 
families.

If the piece of historic evidence with Madison Hemmings name with the entry 
"This man is a son of Thomas Jefferson.", whoever wrote it surely wanted to 
include that information in some record. Where was this form found, who 
wrote it, when, etc. It is a neat handwriting.

Also, as far as I've read so far, the writer is not establishing that Eston 
and Madison have the same father, but that Madison was a son of Thomas 
Jefferson. Was the entry reference to Madison's status in the community? 
What do we know about the "oral history" in a community? Is that as "not 
history" as family "oral history"?

Anne



Anne Pemberton
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http://www.erols.com/apembert
http://www.educationalsynthesis.org 

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