ACT III: The Scholars Commission

Time: 1998 to the present

hen the DNA evidence comes out in the press as conclusive proof of Thomas Jefferson’s parentage, Karyn’s Jefferson research isn’t right at the top of her brain. But of course she remembers the brother.

She writes a letter to the Raleigh News & Observer, which finds its way to Herbert Barger, a Jefferson family historian. He, too, has come to the conclusion that Randolph is the more likely father of Hemings’ children. He points out that all of Hemings’ children conceived in the U.S. appear to have been conceived between Randolph’s two marriages and that, at the time, there were several potential Jeffersons in and around Monticello, including Randolph’s sons.

On January 8, 1999, the journal Science prints an article titled, "Which Jefferson was the Father?" bringing forth Barger’s argument that the most likely father of Eston Hemings (Sally Hemings’ youngest son) is not Thomas Jefferson, who was 65 at the time Eston was conceived, but rather Jefferson’s brother Randolph, 12 years his junior. The authors also mention that Barger helped locate living members of the Jefferson family and persuaded them to donate blood to a DNA study.

Coincidentally, Thomas Traut’s journal club brings up this article in their weekly meeting. Having seen his wife work through the question of the Jefferson-Hemings liaison for over a decade, he’s become interested in the topic himself. He rushes home to show the article to Karyn.

As a scientist, Thomas Traut explains the DNA evidence to Karyn, and subsequently to other Thomas Jefferson scholars. Since no DNA was available from Thomas Jefferson, scientists used blood extracted from descendents of his paternal uncle, Field Jefferson. That means Thomas Jefferson was only one of about two dozen male descendents believed to carry the Jefferson family Y chromosome, placing Thomas and Randolph as equally likely suspects.

homas Traut’s DNA knowledge and interest on the subject lands him a spot on the Scholars Commission on the The Jefferson-Hemings Matter, formed by a group of Jefferson scholars shortly after the 1998 DNA testing. While a major contributor to the group, Karyn does not make the commission, which consists solely of full professors.

The scholars collaborate on the topic for over a year and find additional material including a previously published study listing Randolph Jefferson as the father of "colored" children by his own slaves. They unanimously agree that the allegation of whether Thomas Jefferson is the father of Sally Hemings’ youngest child is by no means proven. Not everyone agrees, though, on the likelihood of whether it was in Thomas Jefferson’s nature to have an affair with a servant. In his dissenting opinion, Paul Rahe, professor of history at the University of Tulsa, writes, "Despite the distaste that he expressed for the propensity of slaveholders and their relatives to abuse their power, Jefferson either engaged in such abuse himself or tolerated it on the part of one or more members of his extended family."

Karyn argues that while Thomas Jefferson was born into slavery, he did not create it. As he writes in Notes on Virginia, "In the very first session held under the Republican government (of Virginia), the assembly passed a law for the perpetual prohibition of the importation of slaves." This, he felt, would stop the increase of "this great political and moral evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a complete emancipation of human nature."

So did Thomas Jefferson have one or more children by his slaves?

"I believe he did not," Traut says. "But I also don’t want anybody to think I’m denying the horrors of slavery."

[Curtain down.]

Karyn Traut participates in the Carolina Speakers program.