Madison Hemings' 'Testimony' on Thomas Jefferson's Paternity of All of Sally Hemings' Children

Madison Hemings' 1873 testimony implicating Jefferson as his father and the father of all of his mother's other children is today taken unquestioningly as true. The narrative at Monticello is based almost wholly on the truth of that testimony. Yet that testimony is circumstantial and has serious flaws, which the TJ Foundation refuses to acknowledge. Is their narrative mere myth? I argue that that is so.

[Coldsummer]

The one thing that strikes me about this story is Sally Hemings was three quarters white which if she did breed with Thomas Jefferson(a White man) Those kids would look pretty white at that point in which case their maternal lineage could have been hidden.

[MissingOurMissingPod]

The question isn’t why Monticello would lie, but why would Madison?

I’m sure you have (as have I) had your parents tell you stories about you when you were a child, extended family, etc. that we never thought to question. I’m the child of a Greek immigrant & I know who my family is because of what I was told by my father & uncles. I met my grandmother, but I can’t remember her. I do have documents going back to our island to the mid 1800s & I’ve no reason to believe the people in the parish registers who match my family’s oral history aren’t my family. Or at least the Greek archives confirm them to be. We’ll never have the DNA to know whether everyone matches up biologically, but we take it as fact.

I have no skin in this game. I can believe that TJ was Eston’s father, but as you point out, we don’t really know one way or another, esp regarding the rest of them. I can believe this for Eston based on the dates that have been presented and other evidence. The Carr brothers were implicated heavily by, Ellen Randolph Coolidge, not (in my opinion), because it was true, but to deflect it being rumoured to be Jefferson. She had no way of knowing DNA would prove that to be wrong 150+ years later. If anyone had a reason to deny & shift blame, she certainly did.

While James Callender (sp?) was basically a mudslinger, he did write about the slaves who appeared to look white long before Madison said anything at all. Thomas Jefferson was still alive when it happened. I wouldn’t call him reliable, but the point I am trying to make is that Madison didn’t technically start the idea that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with slaves. The same author gives the name Sally. Of course there could have been a number of slaves called Sally or Sarah. That on its own is not proof either.

There is another family that are Jefferson descendants who are also related to the Hemings family. I believe (I’m sorry, I don’t have the information off hand) it was one of Jefferson’s great nephews or something of that nature. The time frame puts them as being impossible to be Sally of TJ’s children, but the area I believe there seems to be reasonably good circumstantial evidence is that the Hemings family was closer to TJ & his family that other enslaved families. The mother Elizabeth was the cook & her children specifically, even as they got older, were the only ones who seemed to have varying degrees of more freedom than many of his other slaves.

I share your questions in many regards re: all of Sally Heming’s children, but I am inclined to believe Eston likely was TJ’s son. Will we ever know with 100% certainty? I doubt it. Unless DNA advances in our lifetimes to the point that we can figure out a person’s line without having the DNA of TJ himself, we’ll never have proof. I appreciate the fact that you think critically about the holes in this issue, though I don’t think there is another person who seems to be a good candidate for Eston’s biological father when looking at the available relatives… unless of course there is a slave of unknown name who was also fathered by a Jefferson male, in which case, we’re certainly unlikely to ever find out.

Edit to add: Eston’s family didn’t actually know they were descendants of black people when they were tracked down for the DNA testing for 4 generations. In that regard, I find it interesting that they matched them Hemings relatives (Madison’s side) and the Jeffersons. That seemingly lends more credibility to the idea that what Madison said was true for Eston & presumably himself & the others based on that being what he was told. Eston’s family had little to gain or lose by doing the DNA stuff. It’s just something to consider when people who didn’t know the same oral history ended up fitting what was said, it does lend credibility since, if anything, one could argue they had more to lose with the people who wouldn’t look at them in the same way knowing they had some black blood.