Hi Henry,

Since you are writing a book, and you mentioned the Woodsons, I thought 
you might be interested in knowing (but you probably already do) that 
the Woodson Cemetery is located in Jackson County, Ohio, on a highly 
visible knoll at the intersection of SR 32 and SR 327 in southeastern 
ohio.  The area where the Woodsons lived is now called Roads, or Berlin 
Crossroads.  We were always told that an old house that was still 
standing in the 1970's at the intersection in Roads was a stop for the 
Underground Railroad. 

Take care,
Ruth

Henry Wiencek wrote:

> I do hope the esteemed members of this list are NOT tired of the 
> Hemings story because I am writing a book about Jefferson and his 
> slaves, which will have a section on the Hemings family. I have done a 
> lot of new research and made some fresh discoveries about Monticello.
>
> Let me try to summarize the story quickly, in a "non-partisan" 
> fashion; and those who are not interested can just hit "Delete" right 
> now.
>
> Thomas Jefferson was alleged to be the father of Sally Hemings's 
> children in newspaper articles  in 1802 by the political journalist 
> James Callender (who had a grudge against Jefferson), in oral 
> histories, in letters, and a diary entry. All this evidence has been 
> subject to dispute for two hundred years and continues to be debated.
>
> In the 1850s, Jefferson's grandchildren Ellen Randolph Coolidge and 
> Thomas Jefferson Randolph admitted privately that Hemings had children 
> who closely resembled Thomas Jefferson, but they said the reason for 
> the resemblance was that the children had been fathered by Jefferson's 
> nephews Peter and Samuel Carr, the sons of his sister.
>
> In the late 1990s Dr. Eugene Foster, with the invaluable aid of 
> Herbert Barger, obtained blood samples for DNA testing from male-line 
> descendants of Field Jefferson, an uncle of Thomas Jefferson. Thomas 
> Jefferson himself had no surviving legitimate male children. On the 
> Hemings side, Foster obtained samples from a male-line descendant of 
> Eston Hemings, the youngest son of Sally Hemings.  These two lines of 
> DNA matched, proving that Eston Hemings had been fathered not by a 
> Carr but by some male of the Jefferson family. After analyzing the 
> historical evidence, Monticello's scholars concluded that Thomas 
> Jefferson was the most likely member of his family to have fathered 
> Eston and that Thomas Jefferson was very likely the father of all of 
> Sally Hemings's children.
>
> That would seem to be the end of the story, except that a number of 
> researchers, notably including Herbert Barger, Cynthia Burton, and 
> Rebecca McMurry, raise the possibility that Eston's father could have 
> been TJ's brother Randolph or some other Jefferson. The Monticello 
> scholars, and others, think this is unlikely, but the debate continues.
>
> Herbert Barger has proposed trying to get a DNA sample from the 
> remains of another Hemings who is buried in Kansas, the son of Madison 
> Hemings. Madison was Eston's brother.  The living Hemings descendants 
> have not granted permission.
>
> According to Jefferson's plantation records, Sally Hemings had one 
> daughter and three sons who survived (Harriet and Beverly, who were 
> allowed to leave Monticello in 1822; and Madison and Eston, who were 
> freed in Jefferson's will).  But according to oral history and other 
> documentation, there was another son--the first-born "President Tom," 
> made notorious by James Callender's articles. According to an oral 
> history, this Tom was whisked away from Monticello in the wake of the 
> scandalous press reports and given a new identity as Thomas Woodson.
>
> Today's Woodson family is descended from an actual Thomas Woodson, who 
> died in 1879 in Ohio and whose birth date is not known.  His 
> descendants have long claimed that he was the son of Thomas Jefferson 
> and Sally Hemings. They claim he was conceived when Jefferson and 
> Hemings were in France and was born at Monticello in 1790.  Nothing in 
> Jefferson's Farm Book or other Monticello records verifies Woodson's 
> birth or presence at Monticello. Foster's test showed no match between 
> the DNA of Jefferson's family and Woodson's descendants.
>
> In the interest of brevity I have left out a lot, but I think that's a 
> fair gist of the story in a very small nutshell.
>
> Henry Wiencek
> Charlottesville
>
>