Dr. Ken Wallenborn’s Minority Report (1999)

A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint (Excerpts)

I. Formation of the TJMF Research Committee and Early Concerns

“In December 1998, Daniel Jordan, the president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation (TJMF), appointed a nine person in-house committee to evaluate the DNA study that had just been reported by Dr. Eugene Foster in the journal Nature… The committee was asked to review all of the pertinent information related to the Jefferson-Hemings controversy and recommend how this new information should be incorporated into the historical interpretation at Monticello.”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.55) 

“After the committee was a little less than one third of the way through our deliberations, I went to see Dan Jordan, the President of the TJMF. The reason was that I had become very upset at what was happening in the committee. I informed him that there were not many friends of Thomas Jefferson on this committee, and that the committee had already reached their conclusions. Further, I told him that I sensed a strong power play aimed at the TJMF to force them to accept something that was politically correct and not historically accurate.”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.57) 

II. Committee Deliberations

“When the committee was assembling for one of its meetings in February 1999, the head of the Archaeology Department at Monticello dropped a packet of papers on the table next to me and said (and this is exactly how another member of the committee and I recollect it): ‘I’ve got him!’ He repeated this statement again and then explained his ‘Monte Carlo Simulation.’ This just seemed to be an inappropriately enthusiastic remark for someone who is working at Thomas Jefferson’s home. When his article was listed in Appendix I of the TJMF Research Committee Report and simultaneously published in the William and Mary Quarterly in January 2000, it contained a serious and glaring error that had been pointed out to him. This error was his statement that the “molecular geneticists found the Jefferson Y-haplotype in recognized male-line descendants of Thomas Jefferson”! He should have said, descendants of Field Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s uncle. Why the TJMF allowed this significant error to be published in their report and in the W&M Quarterly remains unanswered. Future historical researchers will possibly quote this erroneous statement and think that the DNA sample came directly from Thomas Jefferson’s direct descendants and that this cinches the case in the Sally Hemings paternity story.”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.63) 

III. Statements on Standards of Proof

This statement is presented as recalled by Dr. Wallenborn in his contemporaneous account.

“While I was pointing out… that you could not use something as proof if you did not have reliability of this proof, I was shocked to hear… Peter Onuf… say (and this is accurate to my best recollection): ‘We don’t need proof. We are historians. We write history the way we want to.’ It is ironic that Mr. Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Professor of History at Mr. Jefferson’s University but has been quoted as saying, “Sometimes I hate Thomas Jefferson...” In addition, he wrote a paper entitled “The Scholar’s Jefferson” for the William and Mary Quarterly in which he used the phrase, “Thomas Jefferson, Monster of Self-Deception” (William and Mary Quarterly, Volume L, 1993, pp. 671—699.).”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.62-63) 

IV. Treatment of Historical Evidence 

“As the committee began to throw out most of the evidence that would exonerate Mr. Jefferson, it became even more obvious that they were following Annette Gordon-Reed’s lead… The majority of the committee then proceeded to dismiss the other eyewitness accounts… because they were ‘problematic.’”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.57-58) 

Note: Monticello Overseer Edmund Bacon said it was not Jefferson who was the father of Sally Hemings’ child, but another man: “I have seen him come out of her mother’s room many a morning when I went up to Monticello very early.” (Edmund Bacon, statement as recorded in Hamilton W. Pierson, 1862)

“Bacon’s observations are certainly valid information and strongly suggest that another male was having a sexual liaison with Sally Hemings.”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.60) 

V. Limits of DNA and Statistical Evidence

“Sally Hemings’ presence at Monticello is not accurately recorded and her presence or absence cannot be proven as also coinciding with Mr. Jefferson’s presence. And because it is impossible to determine the timing of the presence or absence of other males with the Jefferson DNA haplotype at Monticello, we have no way to compare the probability… The evidence just is not there for vital comparison studies.”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.61) 

“Because no accurate records were kept of these other Jefferson male visits to Monticello, no comparisons can be performed… the picture really becomes muddled.”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.61)  

VI. Alternative Jefferson Paternity Candidates 

“These events happened more or less two hundred years ago and only four or possibly five people (Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, Randolph Jefferson, Peter Carr, and ? Samuel Carr) would have known the truth about the paternity question.”
(Wallenborn, Minority Report, April 12, 1999, p.1) 

VII. Standards of Proof and Historical Certainty

In A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint, Dr. Wallenborn provides a formulation that he argued more accurately reflected the evidentiary limits:

“After almost two hundred years of study including recent DNA information, it is still impossible to prove with absolute certainty whether Thomas Jefferson did or did not father any of Sally Hemings’ children.”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.64) 

In his Minority Report (April 12, 1999), he states:

“The results of the DNA studies enhance the possibility that Thomas Jefferson was the father… but the findings do not prove that Thomas Jefferson was the father… This is a very important difference.”
(Wallenborn, Minority Report, April 12, 1999, p.5) 

VIII. Handling of the Minority Report

“On Monday, April 12, 1999, I sent the original signed report to Dianne Swann-Wright, chair of the DNA Study Committee, and personally gave another signed copy to Dan Jordan… As it turned out, the chairperson did not acknowledge receiving the report, and I later discovered… that she had not shared my dissenting report with the other members of the committee. No discussion of the dissenting report was held…”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.64) 

“As we were leaving the meeting, I asked several of the members of the committee what they thought of the Minority Report. To my surprise, they said that they had never seen it!!”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.65) 

“As it turned out, the Minority Report was not shared with the interpretive staff at Monticello nor with the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Board of Trustees until I began to circulate it after the press conference held by the TJMF on January 26, 2000.”
(Wallenborn, “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint”, p.64) 

IX. Final Conclusions of the Minority Report

“The results of the DNA studies enhance the possibility that Thomas Jefferson was the father of one of Sally Hemings children, Eston Hemings, but the findings do not prove that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Eston. This is a very important difference.”
(Wallenborn, Minority Report, April 12, 1999, p.5) 

“There is historical evidence of more or less equal stature on both sides of this issue that prevents a definitive answer as to Thomas Jefferson’s paternity of Sally Hemings’ son Eston Hemings…”
(Wallenborn, Minority Report, April 12, 1999, p.5) 

“In regards to the historical interpretation of Thomas Jefferson and his family, Monticello, and slavery at Monticello, The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation should continue to present a properly weighted historical interpretation to visitors. As new historical evidence is found, it should continue to be incorporated into interpretive presentations. However, historical accuracy should never be overwhelmed by political correctness, for if it is, history becomes meaningless.”
(Wallenborn, Minority Report, April 12, 1999, p.5) 

“The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation should continue to seek the truth. If the truth is not known, it should be so stated.”
(Wallenborn, Minority Report, April 12, 1999, p.5) 

“The minority feels that it would be improper to accept that portion of the DNA Study Committee’s report that says ‘the DNA study when combined with the multiple strands of documentary and statistical evidence, substantiates Thomas Jefferson’s paternity…’ The historical evidence is not substantial enough to confirm nor for that matter to refute his paternity of any of the children of Sally Hemings. The DNA studies certainly enhance the possibility but to repeat, do not prove Thomas Jefferson’s paternity.”
(Wallenborn, Minority Report, April 12, 1999, p.5)   

Key Takeaways

• The DNA evidence does not identify a specific individual

  The 1998 study links Eston Hemings to the Jefferson male line, but does not distinguish among Jefferson males.

• The central issue is “possibility vs. proof”

  Dr. Wallenborn’s Minority Report repeatedly emphasizes that the evidence may support possibility, but does not establish proof.

• Alternative Jefferson males were not excluded

  The Minority Report highlights the absence of comparative evidence regarding other Jefferson-line males.

• Standards of historical proof were disputed

  The disagreement was not only about conclusions, but about the evidentiary threshold required to reach them.

• A formal dissent existed at the time of the decision

  The Minority Report was written during the committee’s deliberations and reflects internal disagreement within the official review process. 

Why the Wallenborn Minority Report Matters

Dr. Wallenborn’s Minority Report and his chapter “A Committee Insider’s Viewpoint” are contemporaneous documents created during the committee’s deliberations.

They record a dissenting perspective from within the official review process itself.

Whether one agrees with his conclusions or not, these documents demonstrate that the interpretation of the 1998 DNA evidence—and the historical conclusions drawn from it—were the subject of active disagreement at the time.

Readers are encouraged to examine the full text of both the Minority Report and Monticello’s Research Committee’s final report and evaluate the evidence directly.