Anne--

I answered this in my reply to Herb.  But I think it is sufficiently interesting to merit a direct response here as well.

We know that one of SH's children (Eston, if I recall correctly) was not fathered by one of the various men descended from TJ's grandfather.

We also know that one, and perhaps more, of SH's children *was* fathered by a Jefferson.

Taken together, those two facts suggest one of two things:  

Either the two men had completely different parents (ie., one of them was not a child of SH); or, if both of them were born to SH, then SH had children by two different men.

As I hope is clear, I am attempting to cut through the various arguments about *interpretation* to lay out the evidence we have available to us, and about which we can reasonably agree, pertinent to the paternity of SH's children. 

I have read the various reports and books, but I do not own them in my library--so I am doing this all from memory.  If I make errors, I am quite happy to be corrected.  

I think, once we are done hashing out this project of mine, we will discover that the range of facts on which we can agree is rather thin on the ground--that the whole brouhaha surrounds the inferences we draw from the evidence available, rather than the evidence itself.  Since the evidence itself is just not all that robust, I truly do think the best we can do is to make qualified statements.  

I do not think it is fair or correct to make the unqualified statement "Jefferson absolutely *was* the father of some of SH's children."  Such a statement, it seems to me, over reaches the evidence we have available to us.

All best,
Kevin

---- Original message ----
>Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:27:29 -0400
>From: Anne Pemberton <[log in to unmask]>  
>Subject: Re: What we know about Sally Hemings  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Kevin,
>
>A question: Do we know as a certitude that Sally Hemings had children by 
>more than one man?
>
>Anne
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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