Commentary from the Scientific Community
1998
NBC News footage, 9 August 1998
Scientists at Oxford in England are tracing DNA strands that run through male relatives of both Jefferson and Hemings to find whether the two findings are really related, but the answers won't be absolute. (lower third: Mark Stolorow, DNA Expert) “None of this [DNA] testing will be able to state definitively that these individuals are related directly to Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson."
(Mark Stolorow is currently an Associate Guest Researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology)
1999
Thomas Jefferson Off the Hook? [SCIENCE]
“Contrary to headlines that splashed across the country in November, there is no conclusive proof that former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegitimate child by his slave Sally Hemings. At least five of his family members are candidates for paternity of Sally’s child, researchers admit in a letter in tomorrow’s issue of Nature.”
The Thomas Jefferson Paternity Case [NATURE]
“…the authors did not consider all the data at hand in interpreting their results. No mention was made of Thomas Jefferson’s brother Randolph (1757-1815), or of his five sons. Sons of Sally Hemings conceived by Randolph (or by one of his sons) would produce a Y-chromosome analysis identical to that described by Foster…Further collaborative data (for example, the whereabouts of any of those who might have been involved at conception) are needed to confirm that Jefferson did indeed father his slave’s last child, as claimed in the title. We know Thomas Jefferson was there, but how about Randolph Jefferson and his sons?” [Dr. David M. Abbey]
Source link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/16177
“…any male ancestor in Thomas Jefferson’s line, white or black, could have fathered Eston Hemings.… Plantations were inbred communities, and the mixing of racial types was probably common. As slave families were passed as property to the owner’s offspring along with land and other property, it is possible that Thomas Jefferson’s father, grandfather, or paternal uncles fathered a male slave whose line later impregnated another slave, in this case, Sally Hemings.” [Dr. Gary Davis]
Source link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/16179
“It is true that men of Randolph Jefferson’s family could have fathered Sally Hemings’ later children. Space constraints prevented us from expanding on alternative interpretations of our DNA analysis, including the interesting one proposed by Davis. The title assigned to our study was misleading in that it represented only the simplest explanation of our molecular findings: namely, that Thomas Jefferson, rather than one of the Carr brothers, was likely to have been the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson…. We know from the historical and the DNA data that Thomas Jefferson can neither be definitely excluded nor solely implicated in the paternity of illegitimate children with his slave Sally Hemings.” [Dr. Eugene Foster et al]
Source link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/16181
Which Jefferson Was the Father? [SCIENCE]
“Y chromosome data cannot be used to identify individual paternity within the Jefferson clan. That’s a job for historians,” Foster says. But that’s not how it sounded in the headlines on the initial Nature report and on an accompanying comment by geneticist Eric Lander of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and historian Joseph Ellis of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. The Foster article was titled: “Jefferson fathered slave’s last child,” and the comment included a heading that said: “Now, DNA analysis confirms that Jefferson was indeed the father of at least one of Hemings’ children”…. Nature staffer Rosalind Cotter agrees that “the whole thing really was rushed through.”
“...[Foster] and his colleagues decided, he says, that they needed to respond publicly to several other points made by critics. One of these is Herbert Barger of Fort Washington, Maryland, a genealogist and husband of a Jefferson family descendant. He helped locate living members of the Jefferson family and persuaded them to donate blood to the DNA study. Not only did the authors neglect to mention his help, Barger says, they completely ignored a plausible theory he advanced. Barger argues that the most likely father of Eston Hemings is not Thomas Jefferson, who was 65 at the time Eston was conceived, but Jefferson's brother Randolph, 12 years his junior, who lived 20 miles away. Other candidates, Barger suggests, are Randolph's sons, all of whom lived near Monticello, visited from time to time, and had the same Y chromosome as their father and uncle. Barger notes that one unsubstantiated account mentions that Randolph's son, Isham, spent his adolescence at Monticello, and that one contemporary recalled that Randolph liked to party in the slave quarters at night.”
Journal article raises a question of credibility [naturalSCIENCE]
“Rather than accept the authority of the editor of Nature or some other journal in the determination of scientific truth, both the media and the public at large should be skeptical about all scientific claims until they have been evaluated, not only by peer-reviewed journals but also in the open forum of scientific and public discussion. In particular, the public should be skeptical about scientific claims that support political interests. When such claims lack intrinsic scientific significance (as in the case of those made in the Foster paper), their publication in a scientific journal should be recognized for what it is: an abuse of the scientific press. [March 19, 1999]”
2002
Jury out on Jefferson’s alleged descendants [NATURE]
“Your News report “Jefferson’s descendants continue to deny slave link” states that Thomas Jefferson’s descendants have decided that the descendants of his slave Sally Hemings cannot join their family club, despite DNA evidence published in Nature suggesting that he fathered at least one of her children. In fact, that evidence suggests no specific Jefferson. The story also asserts that insistence on conclusive proof that the father was Thomas “cuts no ice” in academia. In fact, 13 noted scholars from 12 universities reviewed the historical and DNA evidence and unanimously found the paternity “by no means proven”. This ‘Scholars Commission’ — convened by the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society but acting independently — criticized Nature for fostering misunderstanding of DNA evidence in the wider historical debate.”
2004
Constructing Ethical Guidelines for Biohistory [SCIENCE]
“Often, investigators fail to pose an investigative question capable of resolution by genetic testing. For example, Eugene Foster’s 1998 comparative Y-chromosomal study of the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings was intended to establish whether the president had fathered Hemings’ children. Yet the study protocol was inappropriate for determining the paternity of Hemings’ children—the only possible conclusion was that some of Jefferson and Hemings male-line descendants had common relatives.”
2009
Fundamentals of Forensic DNA Typing [textbook]
“[The 1998] study of Jefferson lineage DNA demonstrates one of the major disadvantages of Y-chromosome DNA testing, namely that results only indicate connection to a male lineage and are not specific to an individual like autosomal STR profiles can be. While a Jefferson Y-chromosome match exists between his descendants and those of Sally Hemings, the matter can probably never be definitively-solved by Y-chromosome information alone.”
2011
Did DNA Finger Bin Laden? [National Journal]
But does the government have earlier DNA that, for certain, came from bin Laden? Not likely, and so the next-best source is a sibling. And in that case, says Stephen Quake, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor of applied physics and bioengineering at Stanford University, all the DNA analysis will say for sure is that the dead person is one of the many sons of Osama bin Laden’s father. One factor could make things easier: Osama bin Laden was the only child whom his mother, Alia Ghanem, had with his father. That could make it easier to triangulate any tissue samples with samples from half-siblings. It is not an exact science, however. DNA was used to establish that Thomas Jefferson was related to the descendants of his former slave, Sally Hemings. In that case the Y chromosome, which is passed down with very little change from father to son over the generations, was used. But all that the DNA indicated in the end was that descendants of Jefferson’s paternal uncle have the same Y chromosome as a male-line descendant of Eston Hemings, the youngest son of Sally Hemings. The research could never finger Jefferson individually with complete accuracy. “You are still dealing with probabilities,” Quake said.
2025
Petition seeks to prove Thomas Jefferson’s lineage [WKRN.com]
…“[Jefferson’s] brother (Randolph) was visiting Jefferson around the time that Eston Hemings was conceived,” said Dr. Thomas Holland, a professor at Middle Tennessee State University. “That was the child that Sally Hemings had that starts this chain.”
Holland has an expertise in forensic anthropology. He explained how Y-STR DNA, which focuses on the male Y chromosome, can help determine who is the father and is only inherited male to male in a family….
Dr. Holland told News 2 that obtaining DNA will probably be one of the easier parts of the petitioner’s endeavor. “A good lab can probably get DNA,” he explained. “The DNA technologies are very good nowadays, the labs are very robust. He can probably get DNA out of the bone.”…
Holland added the process will most likely cost at least $10,000 and will take several months. However, the results could change one of America’s founding fathers’ legacies.