T Jefferson & Sally Hemings
jali...@home.com
>:|>From: jali...@home.com
>:|>Date: 12/29/2001 2:12 PM Eastern Standard Time
>:|>Message-id: <ii4s2usa8tv74ai2l...@4ax.com>
>:|
>:|>>:| Hate to tell you this, BUT - - - they did some DNA on Sally Hemmings
>:|>progeny,
>:|>>:|and there was a match to Jefferson.
>:|>
>:|
>:|>Hate to tell you thus, well actually I don't hate to tell you this at all. I
>:|am aware of the DNA results
>:|
>:|Oh really?
Yep, far more so than you are apparently.
>:|
>:|
>:|>There was a match to "A" male Jefferson.
>:|>
>:|
>:|>The DNA did not come from Thomas Jefferson.
>:|
>:| Wrong!
LOL, are you actually trying to claim they dug up Thomas Jefferson's
remains? LOL, you better think about that one before you answer.
The DNA for the Jefferson sides was taken from descendants of Field
Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's uncle.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
" There were nineteen subjects, which included five descendants of two sons
of Field Jefferson, three descendants of three sons of the Carr brothers'
grandfather, five descendants of two sons of Thomas Woodson, the alleged
first son of Sally, one descendant of Eston Flemings, Sally's last child,
and five control subjects. The blood samples were then hand-carried to
England in December 1997 by Dr. Foster, to a laboratory for testing and
comparison."
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty.
The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 28)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a chromosome the "Y" chromosome that remains constant in males of
a same line. It is only passed from generation to generation by males to
males of the same line.
Thomas Jefferson had no male children that lived to adulthood. They did not
did up Thomas Jefferson's remains. Nor did they locate and dig up the
remains of his one male child that did die young.
Instead they used descendants of Field Jefferson who was Thomas Jefferson's
uncle. Field Jefferson would have had the same Y Chromosome as Thomas
Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's Father, Thomas Jefferson's Grandfather, and
the same Y Chromosome as any surviving males in Thomas Jefferson's direct
line of descendants had he had any that survived.
DNA testing will not establish paternity beyond one generation with any
degree of absolute certainty. It can exclude potential fathers but cannot
identify with absolute certainty a father beyond one generation.
The reason being while in males the Y Chromosome would be present through
many generation all other chromosomes change because the mating of a man
and woman produces new chromosomes.
Example: A paternity test using DNA could pretty well establish that your
son, if you had a son was actually your son, or could prove beyond any
doubt that he wasn't, if in fact he wasn't.
However, your son matures and has children with a woman. The children of
that union would have different DNA than yours, with the exception of that
one Y Chromosome that would be present in any and all male children of that
union.
What the DNA tests in the Jefferson-Sally H. situation proved was that the
odds were 1-100 that a Jefferson male was the father of the last of the
Sally H. children
There were no matches between the Jefferson male line and the Woodson
line, that being the Thomas Woodson line. The descendants of Thomas Woodson
have claimed for decades that Thomas Woodson was the male child that was
conceived by Sally. H. when she was in France with Thomas Jefferson and who
was born shortly after their return from France. It was this Tom , so the
Woodson oral traditions goes, that James Thomson Callender first wrote
about when he wrote about Thomas Jefferson and his mistress slave September
1, 1802., and it was that Tom that was in fact the son of Thomas Jefferson
and Sally H.
Well, the results of the DNA doesn't support that. No Y Chromosome
consistent with the Jefferson line was found in the Thomas Woodson
descendant's blood sample.
The Woodson clan had additional samples tested in 2000 with the same
results. They have since, as a group, dropped attempts to gain burial
rights in the Jefferson cemetery.
During the time period that Sally H. was conceiving children the following
lived at or within 20 miles of Monticello, and visited often when Thomas
Jefferson was there,
They are:
Thomas Jefferson
Randolph Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's brother)
Five sons of Randolph Jefferson who lived at or near Monticello and at
least one male cousin, George (See: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American
Travesty. The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert
Coates, SR., Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 40)
All of the above would have the exact same Y Chromosome.
Jefferson's Uncle, Field Jefferson, had male children, who in turn had male
children. Thus, any or all of those particular Jefferson's, if they ever
visited at Monticello would have been potential, "suspects."
Thus all the DNA test established was that the odds were 1-100 that one of
the males in the Jefferson line fathered at least the last of Sally Hemings
children. The DNA did not and could not identify which one.
To sum it up once more:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) There was no match between the DNA of descendants of Jefferson and
Woodson. This finding was extremely important. It meant that Thomas
Jefferson (or any other Jefferson) did not father Thomas Woodson as stated
in Callender's 1802 article.
(2) There was no match between the DNA of Woodson, Herrings, and Carr
descendants. This meant that neither of the Carr brothers fathered Thomas
Woodson or Eston Herrings. However, it is still conceivable that they could
have fathered one or more of Sally's other children.
(3) A match was found between the DNA of descendants of Field Jefferson and
the descendant of Eston Herrings. This only means that any one of the
Jefferson men previously mentioned could have fathered Eston Herrings, but
it doesn't indicate which Jefferson.
(SOURCE OF INFORAMTION: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty.
The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 30)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>:|>Evidence? It must have been so quiet no one knows about it.
>:|
>:| Funny it seems to have been enough for Jefferson's *white* descendats to
>:|accept the black ones as members of the family.
>:|Guess they don't know as much as *you* huh?
Your claim was:
>Hate to tell you this, BUT - - - they did some DNA on Sally Hemmings
>progeny, and there was a match to Jefferson.
>A much quieter note they found the samematches with the offspring of
>some others of Jefferson's slaves.
>So, I would say there is proof now. The Hemmings family has been welcomed
>by the Jeffersons as family. That does it for me.
My comment
Evidence? It must have been so quiet no one knows about it.
was in direct reply to your
>A much quieter note they found the samematches with the offspring
>of some others of Jefferson's slaves.
You still have not supplied any evidence for the above.
In addition, acceptance is not universal.
>:|
>:|>Actually, I don't have a problem with the fact that Sally H. and J Jefferson
>:|might have been involved sexually, hell even romantically.
>:|
>:| Neither would I if she had been his wife instead of *slave.*
>:|
>:|>But, it has not been proven, which was my point.
>:|
>:| To most of the world it has.
"Most of the world" as you call it was duped by the original misleading
articles published in 98-99.
Follow up articles published giving the "rest of the story" is correcting
that perception, that is for those interested in knowing. Those interested
in believing the worse will continue to hang their hats on the
misrepresentations created with those first articles.
>:|>None of the Sally H. descendants have been allowed burial permission in the
>:|Jefferson family cemetery.
>:|
>:| Don't know if they have integrated the family cemetary, but they have
>:|welcomed the black descendats at family gatherings. You should watch
>:|educational TV more.
Which is not proof.
I prefer to read the work of scholars rather than writers of TV programming
who looks at ratings and drama for audience appeal.
Actually I have here and have read all of the following:
All of the Anti Jefferson was the father works of the likes of Dumas
Malone and other Jefferson scholars.
Thomas Jefferson a Intimate History, Fawn M. Brodie (pro Jefferson was
father work)
A President in the Family, Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas
Woodson, Byron W. Woodson, Sr. (pro Jefferson was father written by a
member of the Woodson clan)
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings An American Controversy, Annette
Gordon_Reed (a pro Jefferson is the father book)
The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty Edited by Eyler Robert
Coates, Sr. (A anti Jefferson is the father works)
The last three mentioned works above all take into account the DNA
results, address other aspects since 1998 including the so called
acceptance by the Jefferson descendants, the Monticello foundation etc.
I suggest you get away from education TV and read the actual facts ,
results and works by scholars on both sides.
>:|
>:| There is vastly more than mere speculation to Jefferson regularly drilling
>:|for oil with Hemmings. And has been for almost 200 years.
Not really
The best that can be said is there is valid evidence on both sides of the
issue. However, the DNA evidence has damaged badly the "he is the father"
crowd.
By two separate sets of DNA tests made on descendants of Thomas Woodson and
both sets ruling any Jefferson out as the father of Thomas Woodson, much of
the circumstantial evidence has been discredited.
There is another Sally Hemings offspring line located. The grave of William
Hemings, son of Madison Hemings, grandson of Sally Hemings has been located
and none of the Hemings defendants seem willing to give permission to have
DNA tests made.
Tom - (Woodson) (1790) was suppose to be conceived by Thomas Jefferson and
Sally Hemings in France. DNA ruled this out.
Harriett - (1795) died in 1799 Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas
Jefferson
Beverly- (1798) son of Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
Unamed daughter (1799) died in infancy Sally Hemings and some believe
Thomas Jefferson
Harriet - (1801) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
Madison - (1805) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
Easton - (1808) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson DNA proves
that there is a 1-100 chance that a male Jefferson did father this child
(rather than a random male from outside the Jefferson line) with Sally H.
but cannot show which Jefferson. There were at the very least 8 potential
suspects.
Michael Furlan
>Tom - (Woodson) (1790) was suppose to be conceived by Thomas Jefferson and
>Sally Hemings in France. DNA ruled this out.
Rather, the DNA evidence did not support the theory that Jefferson was
the father.
A break in the chain farther down the line (a child being fathered by
someone else than the father listed in the genealogical records) would
also be consistent with the DNA evidence.
Cary Osborne
have not read every word) is that Jefferson was in his 60s when
Hemings' last child was born. That being the only one for whom any
possible relation to a Jefferson has been established.
I also have not seen anyone question the motives of national media
which reported that a definite DNA link was established among Hemings
descendants with little or no mention of the actual results. Nor have
I noticed any apologies for their misleading (or downright lying to)
the American public. I suppose "not bashing" dead white men is
unfashionable.
Cary Osborne
Michael Furlan
wrote:
>I suppose "not bashing" dead white men is
>unfashionable.
Of the two possibilities:
1. Jefferson had a long term, possibly loving relationship with Sally.
2. He kept her strictly for the amusement of his relatives.
I think that assumption number 1 is the best possible gloss that you
can put on this situation.
jali...@home.com
>:|On Mon, 31 Dec 2001 13:21:59 GMT, jali...@home.com wrote:
>:|>Tom - (Woodson) (1790) was suppose to be conceived by Thomas Jefferson and
>:|>Sally Hemings in France. DNA ruled this out.
>:|
>:|Rather, the DNA evidence did not support the theory that Jefferson was
>:|the father.
I'm a little confused. What is the difference between
DNA ruled this out.
and
Rather, the DNA evidence did not support the theory that Jefferson was
the father.
>:|A break in the chain farther down the line (a child being fathered by
>:|someone else than the father listed in the genealogical records) would
>:|also be consistent with the DNA evidence.
My understanding is that had there been
>:|A break in the chain farther down the line (a child being fathered by
>:|someone else than the father listed in the genealogical records) would
>:|also be consistent with the DNA evidence.
the real father's Y Chromosome would not have been present. Instead another
male's would have been.
There apprently was such a case in one of the Woodson lines. But in the
other Woodson lines tested where it was know such was not the case, there
still wasn't any matvhes with the field Jefferson line.
Michael Furlan
>I'm a little confused. What is the difference between
>DNA ruled this out.
>and
>Rather, the DNA evidence did not support the theory that Jefferson was
>the father.
"If the chain of Y chromosomes was broken somewhere between Thomas
Woodson and those who believe they are his descendants, Woodson might
still have been Jefferson's son. This might happen if one of the men
in the lineage did not know he was adopted or had a different father
than he thought he had."
http://www.facts.com/tsof/tsof110.htm
The DNA evidence does not rule out that Jefferson was the father of
all the Hemings children.
Whippoorwill
wrote:
>One thing I have not seen mentioned in these postings (admittedly I
This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media. I heard
that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his family but not him
specifically. If she was knocked up by a Jefferson the odds are it
was his nephew.
This is a small part of the American Bolsheviks agenda to tear down
all that is decent in this country. They have been working like
termites to destroy the institutions of this country that gave the
worthless cuckolds a home.
--------
billybobwhite
Michael Furlan
<jturn4...@lycos.com> wrote:
>This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media. I heard
>that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his family but not him
>specifically. If she was knocked up by a Jefferson the odds are it
>was his nephew.
>
>This is a small part of the American Bolsheviks agenda to tear down
>all that is decent in this country. They have been working like
>termites to destroy the institutions of this country that gave the
>worthless cuckolds a home.
If the nephew fathered the children, then it would be Jefferson who
was a cuckhold? <g>
jali...@home.com
>:|On Tue, 01 Jan 2002 11:49:21 GMT, jali...@home.com wrote:
>:|>I'm a little confused. What is the difference between
>:|>DNA ruled this out.
>:|>and
>:|>Rather, the DNA evidence did not support the theory that Jefferson was
>:|>the father.
>:|"If the chain of Y chromosomes was broken somewhere between Thomas
>:|Woodson and those who believe they are his descendants, Woodson might
>:|still have been Jefferson's son. This might happen if one of the men
>:|in the lineage did not know he was adopted or had a different father
>:|than he thought he had."
I would suggest you read the book published recently by Byron W. Woodson,
Sr.
I think you will find that the family has done a pretty thorough job of
documenting their family tree.
Thomas Woodson (BTW there are photographs of Thomas Woodson) and his wife
had 11 children. It appears that 6 of those children were males.
In the original DNA sampling in 1999, Eyler Coates reports in his book "
The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty."The Thomas Jefferson
Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR., Jefferson editions,
Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001)
that five lines of Tom Woodson were tested.
In 2000 an additional test was done at the request of various descendants
of Tom Woodson. Thus making what appears to be all six male lines of the
Woodson family having been tested.
There were no matches to the Jefferson line.
Thus DNA rules out any Jefferson as having been a father of Tom Woodson
The example you give, that perhaps an adoption or illegitimate child, etc
actually did take place in one instance. There was apparently one example
of an illegitimate child. However, that did not have an effect on the other
lines of male descendant.
>:|
>:|http://www.facts.com/tsof/tsof110.htm
>:|
>:|The DNA evidence does not rule out that Jefferson was the father of
>:|all the Hemings children.
Actually it does pretty much do just that in the case of Thomas Woodson.
To sum it up once more:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) There was no match between the DNA of descendants of Jefferson and
Woodson. This finding was extremely important. It meant that Thomas
Jefferson (or any other Jefferson) did not father Thomas Woodson as stated
in Callender's 1802 article.
(2) There was no match between the DNA of Woodson, Herrings, and Carr
descendants. This meant that neither of the Carr brothers fathered Thomas
Woodson or Eston Herrings. However, it is still conceivable that they could
have fathered one or more of Sally's other children.
(3) A match was found between the DNA of descendants of Field Jefferson and
the descendant of Eston Herrings. This only means that any one of the
Jefferson men previously mentioned could have fathered Eston Herrings, but
it doesn't indicate which Jefferson.
(SOURCE OF INFORAMTION: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty.
The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 30)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom - (Woodson) (1790) was suppose to be conceived by Thomas Jefferson and
Sally Hemings in France. DNA ruled this out.
Harriett - (1795) died in 1799 Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas
Jefferson Testing daughters, even if such a grave could be located and
usable DNA harvested would add no information to this debate.
Beverly- (1798) son of Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
If this grave could be located and if usable DNA could be gathered it could
potentially add more information. If Beverly had any male children and
their graves located or if there are any living males from Beverly that
could potentially clarify things some.
Unamed daughter (1799) died in infancy Sally Hemings and some believe
Thomas Jefferson
Harriet - (1801) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
Madison - (1805) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
There is another Sally Hemings offspring line located. The grave of William
Hemings, son of Madison Hemings, grandson of Sally Hemings has been located
and none of the Hemings defendants seem willing to give permission to have
DNA tests made.
Before the original DNA results were published, members who had the legal
authority to give permission to have the remains exhumed gave oral
agreement. After the original DNA findings were made known they refused to
actually sign the legal documents needed to conduct such a exhumation. They
stated they preferred to accept the family oral traditions. Even though the
DNA had trashed had seriously damaged the main and longest known oral
traditions, that of the Woodson family. (So long as the tests were not
done they could always believe their particular line was valid, but if the
tests were done they would be running a risk of having the same results as
the Woodson family received. They weren't willing to find out for sure
Easton - (1808) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson DNA proves
that there is a 1-100 chance that a male Jefferson did father this child
(rather than a random male from outside the Jefferson line) with Sally H.
but cannot show which Jefferson. There were at the very least 8 potential
suspects.
Apparently there were other males lines from Easton but only the one was
tested or showed a match.
jali...@home.com
>:|On Tue, 01 Jan 2002 16:30:31 -0500, Whippoorwill
I assume you are considering him guilty.
Your evidence is?
F. Andrew McMichael
: This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media. I heard
: that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his family but not him
: specifically. If she was knocked up by a Jefferson the odds are it
: was his nephew.
His nephews were never considered as candidates until after the
DNA evidence showed that it had to be a Jefferson male.
: This is a small part of the American Bolsheviks agenda to tear down
: all that is decent in this country. They have been working like
: termites to destroy the institutions of this country that gave the
: worthless cuckolds a home.
This is an interesting statement. In what way does showing that
TJ fathered a child with one of his slaves "tear down all that is
decent in this country?"
--
Andrew McMichael "Today I learned that the
Assistant Editor History Channel is not
Papers of Thomas Jefferson always accurate."
Princeton University -- Joe Bruno in AFU
F. Andrew McMichael
: The DNA evidence does not rule out that Jefferson was the father of
: all the Hemings children.
The important thing about the DNA evidence is that it ruled out the
Carr brothers, and showed that a male within the TJ lineage had to
have done it. The rest of the evidence gathered makes it pretty certain
that Tj was the father of a few of Hemings' kids.
F. Andrew McMichael
: I assume you are considering him guilty.
: Your evidence is?
This isn't a court case. What would TJ be "guily" of? Of doing something
that was widely documented among other slaveholders in the US?
Michael Furlan
>I would suggest you read the book published recently by Byron W. Woodson,
>Sr.
I just ordered it. Thanks for the recommendation!
Michael Furlan
>I assume you are considering him guilty. Your evidence is?
Guilty?
It was perfectly legal at the time to have sex with your female slave
children.
As for evidence, Annette Gordon-Reed's book, plus the DNA evidence are
enough for me.
That Jefferson was the father certainly reflects better on him than
that he ran a whore house for his nephew.
Isn't that what you are suggesting?
Bob Tiernan
On 2 Jan 2002, F. Andrew McMichael wrote:
> Whippoorwill wrote:
> : This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media.
> : I heard that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his
> : family but not him specifically. If she was knocked up by a
> : Jefferson the odds are it was his nephew.
> His nephews were never considered as candidates until after
> the DNA evidence showed that it had to be a Jefferson male.
Perhaps everyone was so preoccupied with only Jefferson
himself. Turns out, apparently, that his nephew was
known to be quite friendly with the slaves in that he
often partied with them.
Bob Tiernan
"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief
energies to trying to prove that the other party
is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed".
-- H. L. Mencken
Michael Furlan
>all that is decent in this country.
You think this is bad? Wait till somebody documents Robert E. Lee's
black "love child." <g>
Whippoorwill
McMichael) wrote:
>jali...@home.com wrote:
>
>
>: I assume you are considering him guilty.
>: Your evidence is?
>
>
>This isn't a court case. What would TJ be "guily" of? Of doing something
>that was widely documented among other slaveholders in the US?
Actually miscegenation was frowned on in slave days. It would be on
par with a dairy farmer having sex with his cows in today's world.
--------
billybobwhite
Whippoorwill
McMichael) wrote:
>Whippoorwill (jturn4...@lycos.com) wrote:
>
>: This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media. I heard
>: that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his family but not him
>: specifically. If she was knocked up by a Jefferson the odds are it
>: was his nephew.
>
>
>
>His nephews were never considered as candidates until after the
>DNA evidence showed that it had to be a Jefferson male.
>
>
>: This is a small part of the American Bolsheviks agenda to tear down
>: all that is decent in this country. They have been working like
>: termites to destroy the institutions of this country that gave the
>: worthless cuckolds a home.
>
>This is an interesting statement. In what way does showing that
>TJ fathered a child with one of his slaves "tear down all that is
>decent in this country?"
"There are none so blind as they who will not see".
Look around you and see the how the culture has deteriorated in the
past 40 years.
I would recommend Pat Buchanan's new book which is reviewed at
www.drudgereport today.
--------
billybobwhite
Whippoorwill
wrote:
Was it Mencken who once said:
"Democracy is also a religion. It is the worship of the jackals by
the jackasses"
--------
billybobwhite
HomerWelch
>
> Michael Furlan (mi...@thecivilwargroup.com) wrote:
>
> : The DNA evidence does not rule out that Jefferson was the father of
> : all the Hemings children.
>
> The important thing about the DNA evidence is that it ruled out the
> Carr brothers, and showed that a male within the TJ lineage had to
> have done it. The rest of the evidence gathered makes it pretty certain
> that Tj was the father of a few of Hemings' kids.
>
> --
>
What is your line of reasoning?
--
Homer J. Welch hjw...@home.com
Troy, Michigan
HomerWelch
Or adultery today?
HomerWelch
I didn't get that impression.
HomerWelch
Is Pat Buchanan part of the deterioration?
J. L. Bell
> This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media. I heard
> that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his family but not him
> specifically. If she was knocked up by a Jefferson the odds are it
> was his nephew.
Let's examine the faulty thinking here.
First, you seem to be having trouble acknowledging that Sally Hemings was
indeed impregnated by a Jefferson male. You agree that "the DNA was consistent
with belonging to his family," yet still want to believe there's some doubt
Hemings was (to use your dismissive language) "knocked up by a Jefferson."
Second, you provide no evidence to back up your statement that "the odds are
it [actually he, meaning the father of Hemings's last child] was his nephew."
That's a matter of faith and prejudice, not evidence.
The evidence is that no Jefferson nephew is documented to have been at
Monticello when Sally Hemings conceived her children; Thomas Jefferson was.
The evidence is that no Jefferson nephew was ever said to be the father of
Hemings's children except the Carr brothers, who have now been eliminated as
father of the youngest and whose supposed responsibility for the older
children never stood up to scrutiny. Thomas Jefferson was said at the time to
have had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings.
The evidence is that Madison Hemings's account of his mother's relationship
with Thomas Jefferson is the only 19th-century statement on this issue that's
fully in accord with the DNA evidence of the 1990s.
It's seems ironic that someone who complains about "American Bolsheviks" as
you do is making statements without evidence simply because he'd prefer to
believe it. Isn't that what Bolshevik propagandists did?
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
J. L. Bell
> > His nephews were never considered as candidates until after
> > the DNA evidence showed that it had to be a Jefferson male.
>
> Perhaps everyone was so preoccupied with only Jefferson
> himself. Turns out, apparently, that his nephew was
> known to be quite friendly with the slaves in that he
> often partied with them.
This is faulty on three grounds. First, Jefferson's Randolph descendants were
so preoccupied with denying that their famous ancestor had fathered Sally
Hemings's children that they said two nephews, Peter and Samuel Carr,
confessed to doing so. Those stories were mutually contradictory (each claimed
an exclusive relationship between one Carr and Hemings), are shaky in other
ways, and have been ruled out by the DNA evidence. If there were evidence of a
relationship between Hemings and a Jefferson nephew, therefore, the Randolphs
would have used that instead of pointing to the Carrs. That wasn't a matter of
a preoccupation with Jefferson; it was a matter of lack of evidence.
Second, no Jefferson nephew is "known to be quite friendly with the slaves."
You're probably thinking of a single remark about one of Jefferson's brothers,
Randolph, who was said to have played the fiddle at slave dances. Only in
FOOTLOOSE is dancing equivalent to sex.
Third, that remark about the brother didn't say when he appeared at dances in
the slave quarters at Jefferson's plantation. His presence there is documented
for the years well before Hemings bore her children. But he had his own
plantation and his own slaves during the years of her child-bearing.
Researchers trying to deny Thomas Jefferson's paternity of those children have
found an invitation to his brother to visit Monticello on one occasion when
Hemings is known to have conceived. In contrast, Thomas was there on every
occasion and was identified as Hemings's sexual partner in his lifetime and by
her child.
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
jali...@home.com
>:|On 2 Jan 2002 14:23:33 GMT, amcm...@yuma.Princeton.EDU (F. Andrew
I can give you quotes of people talking about how the culture had and was
going to the dogs.
The culture being referred to Virginia
The time frame, the early 1780s
>:|I would recommend Pat Buchanan's new book which is reviewed at
>:|www.drudgereport today.
Pat Buchanan? LOL, enough said.
jali...@home.com
>:|On 2 Jan 2002 14:25:21 GMT, amcm...@yuma.Princeton.EDU (F. Andrew
Actually, it was fairly common.
I don't hear much to make me believe farmers having sex with cows is
fairly common, unless you want to include artificial insemination as having
sex with ones cows.
>:|billybobwhite
jali...@home.com
>:|jali...@home.com wrote:
>:|
>:|
>:|: I assume you are considering him guilty.
>:|: Your evidence is?
>:|
>:|
>:|This isn't a court case. What would TJ be "guily" of? Of doing something
>:|that was widely documented among other slaveholders in the US?
Ask the person who made the original statement.
The original statement was by F. Andrew McMichael was:
>:|If the nephew fathered the children, then it would be Jefferson who
>:|was a cuckhold? <g>
to which I replied
jali...@home.com
kewl
Two others I would recommend are:
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings An American Controversy, Annette
Gordon_Reed (a pro Jefferson is the father book) The latest version
which has a DNA update.
The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty Edited by Eyler Robert
Coates, Sr. (A anti Jefferson is the father works)
Jim Elbrecht
-snip-
>The DNA evidence does not rule out that Jefferson was the father of
>all the Hemings children.
>
IMO all the DNA test did was stir the pot. It proved a
relationship between a couple of 20th century people. It did nothing
to confirm that the assumed lineages of those people was correct. [and
it suggested that one of the long-standing believed lineages was
incorrect]
The stakes are so high in the minds of generations of descendants that
I would first toss out any genealogies that had been done and then go
generation by generation with the DNA back to the suspect couple.
Then, and only then, should anyone say that the DNA is evidence of a
TJ & Sally baby.
The release of the results of that test were politically motivated
propaganda & both the magazine that reported them and the 'scientist'
that conducted the tests have been criticized by their peers.
Eyler Robert Coates used this TJ quote in his critical analysis of the
testing;
"The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees, in
every object, only the traits which favor that theory." --Thomas
Jefferson to Charles Thompson, 1787.
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7970/resrpt1.htm
[I see Coates has now published a book, too-- I haven't seen the
book.]
Jim
jali...@home.com
Ooooppps I made a mistake.
It was Michael Furlan and not F. Andrew McMichael who made the original
comment
>:|If the nephew fathered the children, then it would be Jefferson who
>:|was a cuckhold? <g>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
amcm...@yuma.Princeton.EDU (F. Andrew McMichael) wrote:
>:|jali...@home.com wrote:
>:|
>:|
>:|: I assume you are considering him guilty.
>:|: Your evidence is?
>:|
>:|
>:|This isn't a court case. What would TJ be "guily" of? Of doing something
>:|that was widely documented among other slaveholders in the US?
Ask the person who made the original statement.
The original statement was by F. Andrew McMichael -- incorrect, mistake on
my part, it was Michael Furlan who said:
>:|If the nephew fathered the children, then it would be Jefferson who
>:|was a cuckhold? <g>
to which I replied
jali...@home.com
>:|Michael Furlan (mi...@thecivilwargroup.com) wrote:
>:|
>:|
>:|: The DNA evidence does not rule out that Jefferson was the father of
>:|: all the Hemings children.
>:|
>:|
>:|The important thing about the DNA evidence is that it ruled out the
>:|Carr brothers, and showed that a male within the TJ lineage had to
>:|have done it. The rest of the evidence gathered makes it pretty certain
>:|that Tj was the father of a few of Hemings' kids.
How do you come to the conclusion that this so called
What rest of the evidence gathered?
With at the very least eight possible suspects, why do you single out only
one of them, Thomas Jefferson?
Which children does this so called evidence show he was the father of?
It wasn't Tom Woodson and it wasn't Easton, which was it that there is
evidence showing he fathered?
>:|rest of the evidence gathered makes it pretty certain
>:|that Tj was the father of a few of Hemings' kids.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Carr brothers were ruled out in only one instance, that instance being
case of the "one descendant of Easton Flemings.
(If Tom Woodson was conceived in France the Carr brothers couldn't have
been responsible since they weren't in France.)
The DNA for the Jefferson sides was taken from descendants of Field
Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's uncle.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
" There were nineteen subjects, which included five descendants of two sons
of Field Jefferson, three descendants of three sons of the Carr brothers'
grandfather, five descendants of two sons of Thomas Woodson, the alleged
first son of Sally, one descendant of Easton Flemings, Sally's last child,
and five control subjects. The blood samples were then hand-carried to
England in December 1997 by Dr. Foster, to a laboratory for testing and
comparison."
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty.
The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 28)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is another Sally Hemings offspring line located. The grave of William
Hemings, son of Madison Hemings, grandson of Sally Hemings has been located
and none of the Hemings defendants seem willing to give permission to have
DNA tests made.
Tom - (Woodson) (1790) was suppose to be conceived by Thomas Jefferson and
Sally Hemings in France. DNA ruled this out.
Harriett - (1795) died in 1799 Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas
Jefferson
Beverly- (1798) son of Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
Unamed daughter (1799) died in infancy Sally Hemings and some believe
Thomas Jefferson
Harriet - (1801) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
Madison - (1805) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
Easton - (1808) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson DNA proves
that there is a 1-100 chance that a male Jefferson did father this child
(rather than a random male from outside the Jefferson line) with Sally H.
but cannot show which Jefferson. There were at the very least 8 potential
suspects.
jali...@home.com
>:|Whippoorwill (jturn4...@lycos.com) wrote:
>:|
>:|: This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media. I heard
>:|: that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his family but not him
>:|: specifically. If she was knocked up by a Jefferson the odds are it
>:|: was his nephew.
>:|
>:|
>:|
>:|His nephews were never considered as candidates until after the
>:|DNA evidence showed that it had to be a Jefferson male.
Which nephews? My understand is the Carr brothers were blamed for a good
number of years. (or at least they were offerd up as possible fathers)
They might have fathered some of her children. The DNA results only showed
no match between either of them and her last known child. (No match between
them and Tom Woodson either, but if he really was conceived in France, they
weren't in France)
jali...@home.com
>:|On Wed, 02 Jan 2002 13:51:08 GMT, jali...@home.com wrote:
>:|>I assume you are considering him guilty. Your evidence is?
>:|Guilty?
Yes guilty as in being the one who performed said act, not as in legalities
of said act.
>:|It was perfectly legal at the time to have sex with your female slave
>:|children.
Female slave children? You are claiming that slaves were considered
children of the white slave owner?
>:|As for evidence, Annette Gordon-Reed's book, plus the DNA evidence are
>:|enough for me.
The DNA evidence does not show Thomas Jefferson to be the father of any of
Sally H's children. It establishes one link between the last of her known
children and a male Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson at the time of the
conception of that last know Hemings child was 64 years old. There were
seven other males that would have carried the exact same Y chromosome that
lived at Monticello, visited Monticello or lived within 20 miles of
Monticello who were within a age range of late teens to 51.
Thomas Jefferson's brother Randolph was 51 years of age was known to hang
out with the slaves at Monticello even to the point of playing the fiddle
for the slaves to dance to etc in the evenings when he was at Monticello.
He lived approx 20 miles from Monticello, visited there when Thomas
Jefferson was in residence. He was invited to come to Monticello to visit
with his twin sister at the time conception would have taken place for
Sally H's last known child (August 1807)
Thomas Jefferson Jr. Randolph's son was born in 1783, lived at Monticello
for extended periods of time from 1897 to 1800 possibly 1801. Two of Sally
H's children were conceived during this time period.
Robert Lewis Jefferson was born in 1787 and was known to be at Monticello
in July or August 1807, the approx window for conception for Sally H's last
child
Isham Jefferson, another one of Randolph's sons was born on 1781, and it
was reported that he was "raised" by Thomas Jefferson.
George Jefferson, Jr, a cousin of Thomas Jefferson and descendant of Field
Jefferson served as T.J.'s commission agent in Richmond. How often and
when he might have been at Monticello is not recorded but is reasonable to
assume that he was there at times and would have been there at times Thomas
Jefferson was there.
There would have been other Jefferson nephews and cousins that could very
well have been at Monticello, most likely at times Thomas Jefferson was
there, over the years between 1790 and 1807 and could have qualified as
fathers of one or more of her children.
The Carr Brothers, for example. All the DNA proved with regards to them was
neither of them fathered Sally H's last known child. It says nothing about
any of her other children.
[All the above comes from the book "The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An
American Travesty." The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler
Robert Coates, SR., Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001)
pp.88-96 ]
I read Annette Gordon-Reed's book and at the time felt she made a
convincing case.
Then I read "The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty." The
Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001)" and saw the
alterations in fact, saw that she didn't mention that at the very least
there were 7 other male Jeffersons in and around Monticello during the
years that Sally H was bearing children, etc.
I quickly lost the respect for her conclusions.
>:|That Jefferson was the father certainly reflects better on him than
>:|that he ran a whore house for his nephew.
Oh brother.
>:|Isn't that what you are suggesting?
Not at all.
jali...@home.com
>:|Bob Tiernan wrote:
>:|> > His nephews were never considered as candidates until after
>:|> > the DNA evidence showed that it had to be a Jefferson male.
>:|>
>:|> Perhaps everyone was so preoccupied with only Jefferson
>:|> himself. Turns out, apparently, that his nephew was
>:|> known to be quite friendly with the slaves in that he
>:|> often partied with them.
>:|
>:|This is faulty on three grounds. First, Jefferson's Randolph descendants were
>:|so preoccupied with denying that their famous ancestor had fathered Sally
>:|Hemings's children that they said two nephews, Peter and Samuel Carr,
>:|confessed to doing so. Those stories were mutually contradictory (each claimed
>:|an exclusive relationship between one Carr and Hemings), are shaky in other
>:|ways, and have been ruled out by the DNA evidence.
The DNA evidence only ruled out the Carr's with regards to Tom Woodson (but
had he been conceived in France, they weren't in France) and Sally H's last
known child.
The DNA evidence does not speak to the children she had, those that lived
and those that didn't, between Tom Woodson and her last known child.
>:|If there were evidence of a
>:|relationship between Hemings and a Jefferson nephew, therefore, the Randolphs
>:|would have used that instead of pointing to the Carrs. That wasn't a matter of
>:|a preoccupation with Jefferson; it was a matter of lack of evidence.
>:|
>:|Second, no Jefferson nephew is "known to be quite friendly with the slaves."
>:|You're probably thinking of a single remark about one of Jefferson's brothers,
>:|Randolph, who was said to have played the fiddle at slave dances. Only in
>:|FOOTLOOSE is dancing equivalent to sex.
>:|
>:|Third, that remark about the brother didn't say when he appeared at dances in
>:|the slave quarters at Jefferson's plantation. His presence there is documented
>:|for the years well before Hemings bore her children. But he had his own
>:|plantation and his own slaves during the years of her child-bearing.
>:|Researchers trying to deny Thomas Jefferson's paternity of those children have
>:|found an invitation to his brother to visit Monticello on one occasion when
>:|Hemings is known to have conceived. In contrast, Thomas was there on every
>:|occasion and was identified as Hemings's sexual partner in his lifetime and by
>:|her child.
Which child?
There is also a record of at least one other male seen leaving her
house/hut/shack etc
Bottom line still remains that there were at least 8 possible males that
could have fathered some or al of her children. Thomas Jefferson being only
one of those 8.
There is no conclusive evidence that identifies Thomas Jefferson as having
been the father of any of her children
jali...@home.com
>:|
>:|On 2 Jan 2002, F. Andrew McMichael wrote:
>:|
>:|> Whippoorwill wrote:
>:|
>:|
>:|> : This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media.
>:|> : I heard that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his
>:|> : family but not him specifically. If she was knocked up by a
>:|> : Jefferson the odds are it was his nephew.
>:|
>:|
>:|> His nephews were never considered as candidates until after
>:|> the DNA evidence showed that it had to be a Jefferson male.
>:|
>:|
>:|Perhaps everyone was so preoccupied with only Jefferson
>:|himself. Turns out, apparently, that his nephew was
>:|known to be quite friendly with the slaves in that he
>:|often partied with them.
>:|
Don't know about the nephews but Thomas Jefferson's younger brother did
party and hang out with the slaves.
jali...@home.com
I have and its quite good.
I had contact with Coates in trying to locate a quote attributed to
Jefferson. It turns out the quote is bogus.
I found him to be helpful, but he didn't go out of his way to be helpful.
I ran across his on line version of the Jefferson Bible which I was totally
unimpressed with. He altered it a bit, maybe for some sort of copyright
reasons, but I wasn't impressed with his version.
I checked his book
The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty.
The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001)
out of the Va Beach, Va public library and found it to be quite good. It's
the first book I have run across that give any real information concerning
the other potential Jefferson males that might very likely be suspects.
He names them, gives ages and some background on their coming and going at
Monticello during those years that Sally H. was having children.
He does acknowledge that there is evidence pointing to Thomas Jefferson as
being the father os at least some of her children, but also points out that
there is also as much and as solid evidence pointing to the fact that one
or more others fathered her children and not Thomas Jefferson.
He properly explains the DNA and exactly what it means, and doesn't mean,
what it establishes and doesn't establish.
>:|
>:|Jim
troll no. 69
fucked up
<jali...@home.com> wrote in message
news:rql03u4kqkkqhtr8k...@4ax.com...
> bulld...@aol.com (Bulldogwaw) wrote:
>
> >:|>From: jali...@home.com
> >:|>Date: 12/29/2001 2:12 PM Eastern Standard Time
> >:|>Message-id: <ii4s2usa8tv74ai2l...@4ax.com>
> >:|
> >:|>>:| Hate to tell you this, BUT - - - they did some DNA on Sally
Hemmings
> >:|>progeny,
> >:|>>:|and there was a match to Jefferson.
> >:|>
> >:|
> >:|>Hate to tell you thus, well actually I don't hate to tell you this at
all. I
> >:|am aware of the DNA results
> >:|
> >:|Oh really?
>
>
> Yep, far more so than you are apparently.
>
> >:|
> >:|
> >:|>There was a match to "A" male Jefferson.
> >:|>
> >:|
> >:|>The DNA did not come from Thomas Jefferson.
> >:|
> >:| Wrong!
>
> LOL, are you actually trying to claim they dug up Thomas Jefferson's
> remains? LOL, you better think about that one before you answer.
>
> The DNA for the Jefferson sides was taken from descendants of Field
> Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's uncle.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------
> " There were nineteen subjects, which included five descendants of two
sons
> of Field Jefferson, three descendants of three sons of the Carr brothers'
> grandfather, five descendants of two sons of Thomas Woodson, the alleged
> first son of Sally, one descendant of Eston Flemings, Sally's last child,
> and five control subjects. The blood samples were then hand-carried to
> England in December 1997 by Dr. Foster, to a laboratory for testing and
> comparison."
> (SOURCE OF INFORMATION: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty.
> The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
> Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 28)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------
>
> There is a chromosome the "Y" chromosome that remains constant in males
of
> a same line. It is only passed from generation to generation by males to
> males of the same line.
>
> Thomas Jefferson had no male children that lived to adulthood. They did
not
> did up Thomas Jefferson's remains. Nor did they locate and dig up the
> remains of his one male child that did die young.
>
>
> Instead they used descendants of Field Jefferson who was Thomas
Jefferson's
> uncle. Field Jefferson would have had the same Y Chromosome as Thomas
> Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's Father, Thomas Jefferson's Grandfather, and
> the same Y Chromosome as any surviving males in Thomas Jefferson's direct
> line of descendants had he had any that survived.
>
> DNA testing will not establish paternity beyond one generation with any
> degree of absolute certainty. It can exclude potential fathers but cannot
> identify with absolute certainty a father beyond one generation.
>
> The reason being while in males the Y Chromosome would be present through
> many generation all other chromosomes change because the mating of a man
> and woman produces new chromosomes.
>
> Example: A paternity test using DNA could pretty well establish that your
> son, if you had a son was actually your son, or could prove beyond any
> doubt that he wasn't, if in fact he wasn't.
> However, your son matures and has children with a woman. The children of
> that union would have different DNA than yours, with the exception of that
> one Y Chromosome that would be present in any and all male children of
that
> union.
>
> What the DNA tests in the Jefferson-Sally H. situation proved was that the
> odds were 1-100 that a Jefferson male was the father of the last of the
> Sally H. children
>
> There were no matches between the Jefferson male line and the Woodson
> line, that being the Thomas Woodson line. The descendants of Thomas
Woodson
> have claimed for decades that Thomas Woodson was the male child that was
> conceived by Sally. H. when she was in France with Thomas Jefferson and
who
> was born shortly after their return from France. It was this Tom , so the
> Woodson oral traditions goes, that James Thomson Callender first wrote
> about when he wrote about Thomas Jefferson and his mistress slave
September
> 1, 1802., and it was that Tom that was in fact the son of Thomas Jefferson
> and Sally H.
>
> Well, the results of the DNA doesn't support that. No Y Chromosome
> consistent with the Jefferson line was found in the Thomas Woodson
> descendant's blood sample.
>
> The Woodson clan had additional samples tested in 2000 with the same
> results. They have since, as a group, dropped attempts to gain burial
> rights in the Jefferson cemetery.
>
>
> During the time period that Sally H. was conceiving children the following
> lived at or within 20 miles of Monticello, and visited often when Thomas
> Jefferson was there,
> They are:
> Thomas Jefferson
> Randolph Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's brother)
> Five sons of Randolph Jefferson who lived at or near Monticello and at
> least one male cousin, George (See: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An
American
> Travesty. The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert
> Coates, SR., Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 40)
>
> All of the above would have the exact same Y Chromosome.
>
> Jefferson's Uncle, Field Jefferson, had male children, who in turn had
male
> children. Thus, any or all of those particular Jefferson's, if they ever
> visited at Monticello would have been potential, "suspects."
>
>
> Thus all the DNA test established was that the odds were 1-100 that one of
> the males in the Jefferson line fathered at least the last of Sally
Hemings
> children. The DNA did not and could not identify which one.
>
>
> To sum it up once more:
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
> (1) There was no match between the DNA of descendants of Jefferson and
> Woodson. This finding was extremely important. It meant that Thomas
> Jefferson (or any other Jefferson) did not father Thomas Woodson as stated
> in Callender's 1802 article.
>
> (2) There was no match between the DNA of Woodson, Herrings, and Carr
> descendants. This meant that neither of the Carr brothers fathered Thomas
> Woodson or Eston Herrings. However, it is still conceivable that they
could
> have fathered one or more of Sally's other children.
>
> (3) A match was found between the DNA of descendants of Field Jefferson
and
> the descendant of Eston Herrings. This only means that any one of the
> Jefferson men previously mentioned could have fathered Eston Herrings, but
> it doesn't indicate which Jefferson.
> (SOURCE OF INFORAMTION: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty.
> The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
> Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 30)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------
> >:|>Evidence? It must have been so quiet no one knows about it.
> >:|
> >:| Funny it seems to have been enough for Jefferson's *white* descendats
to
> >:|accept the black ones as members of the family.
> >:|Guess they don't know as much as *you* huh?
>
>
> Your claim was:
>
> >Hate to tell you this, BUT - - - they did some DNA on Sally Hemmings
> >progeny, and there was a match to Jefferson.
>
> >A much quieter note they found the samematches with the offspring of
> >some others of Jefferson's slaves.
>
> >So, I would say there is proof now. The Hemmings family has been welcomed
> >by the Jeffersons as family. That does it for me.
>
> My comment
> Evidence? It must have been so quiet no one knows about it.
> was in direct reply to your
>
> >A much quieter note they found the samematches with the offspring
> >of some others of Jefferson's slaves.
>
> You still have not supplied any evidence for the above.
>
> In addition, acceptance is not universal.
>
> >:|
> >:|>Actually, I don't have a problem with the fact that Sally H. and J
Jefferson
> >:|might have been involved sexually, hell even romantically.
> >:|
> >:| Neither would I if she had been his wife instead of *slave.*
> >:|
> >:|>But, it has not been proven, which was my point.
> >:|
> >:| To most of the world it has.
>
> "Most of the world" as you call it was duped by the original misleading
> articles published in 98-99.
>
> Follow up articles published giving the "rest of the story" is correcting
> that perception, that is for those interested in knowing. Those interested
> in believing the worse will continue to hang their hats on the
> misrepresentations created with those first articles.
>
> >:|>None of the Sally H. descendants have been allowed burial permission
in the
> >:|Jefferson family cemetery.
> >:|
> >:| Don't know if they have integrated the family cemetary, but they have
> >:|welcomed the black descendats at family gatherings. You should watch
> >:|educational TV more.
>
> Which is not proof.
> I prefer to read the work of scholars rather than writers of TV
programming
> who looks at ratings and drama for audience appeal.
>
> Actually I have here and have read all of the following:
> All of the Anti Jefferson was the father works of the likes of Dumas
> Malone and other Jefferson scholars.
>
> Thomas Jefferson a Intimate History, Fawn M. Brodie (pro Jefferson was
> father work)
>
> A President in the Family, Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas
> Woodson, Byron W. Woodson, Sr. (pro Jefferson was father written by a
> member of the Woodson clan)
>
>
> Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings An American Controversy, Annette
> Gordon_Reed (a pro Jefferson is the father book)
>
> The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty Edited by Eyler Robert
> Coates, Sr. (A anti Jefferson is the father works)
>
> The last three mentioned works above all take into account the DNA
> results, address other aspects since 1998 including the so called
> acceptance by the Jefferson descendants, the Monticello foundation etc.
>
> I suggest you get away from education TV and read the actual facts ,
> results and works by scholars on both sides.
>
> >:|
> >:| There is vastly more than mere speculation to Jefferson regularly
drilling
> >:|for oil with Hemmings. And has been for almost 200 years.
>
> Not really
>
> The best that can be said is there is valid evidence on both sides of the
> issue. However, the DNA evidence has damaged badly the "he is the father"
> crowd.
> By two separate sets of DNA tests made on descendants of Thomas Woodson
and
> both sets ruling any Jefferson out as the father of Thomas Woodson, much
of
> the circumstantial evidence has been discredited.
Andrew McMichael
This doesn't answer my question. How does showing, or even arguing, that TJ
fathered children with one of his slaves [as many slaveowners did] "tear
down all that is decent in this country?"
--
Andrew McMichael, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University
http://www.princeton.edu/~amcmicha/cv.html
J. L. Bell
> The release of the results of that test were politically motivated
> propaganda & both the magazine that reported them and the 'scientist'
> that conducted the tests have been criticized by their peers.
Somebody's misleading you, Jim. The DNA findings were published by Britain's
top biological science magazine, NATURE, after standard peer review. What
political motive would a British academic journal have to publish the report
as it did?
The geneticist who conducted the tests is a respected scientist--there's no
need for scare-quotes around that word. Neither the science nor the statements
in the article have been argued with. Even the most ardent "defenders" of
Thomas Jefferson (most of whom seem, oddly enough, to prefer the idea that he
kept slaves for the sexual pleasure of his male relatives) accept the DNA
findings.
Combined with the documentary evidence, the DNA tests have been enough to
convince most historians that Thomas Jefferson was the most likely father of
Sally Hemings's children. Many were already convinced by the documents. Some
believe Jefferson was definitely the father, some probably, some merely that
he was the most likely candidate. No one has come close to assembling more
evidence in favor of another man.
> Eyler Robert Coates used this TJ quote in his critical analysis of the
> testing;
> "The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees, in
> every object, only the traits which favor that theory." --Thomas
> Jefferson to Charles Thompson, 1787.
> http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7970/resrpt1.htm
>
> [I see Coates has now published a book, too-- I haven't seen the
> book.]
Mr. Coates's approach to this whole issue has been very interesting. Up until
the DNA tests were published, his website described the whole investigation of
Sally Hemings's children as "swill-sampling." He in particular belittled
Callender's hearsay reports about a boy named Tom conceived in Paris. After
the DNA tests, however, Mr. Coates completely changed his methods. He began
"swill-sampling" himself, helping to create the Thomas Jefferson Heritage
Foundation and to publish its reports for the sole purpose of attacking the
new historical consensus. And he began to cite Callender's reports because
they served his new purpose of linking Hemings with the Woodson line (there's
no documentary evidence for that, and some against it). In sum, Mr. Coates
changed his intellectual approach 180 degrees in order to arrive at the same
conclusion. Clearly the conclusion was what mattered to him, not the methods
he used.
I find Mr. Coates's approach to Jefferson to be quite selective. He's
assembled a web page of Jefferson quotations that he's convinced U of VA to
sponsor. When I last looked, that website lists under the topic of race
several quotations from Jefferson trying to back away from the racist
statements in NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, but not the original passages at
issue--a careful and incomplete selection. Elsewhere Mr. Coates has written
that Jefferson strikes him as being a very consistent thinker. I suppose he
would be if one ignores part of what he wrote.
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
Andrew McMichael
>
>
>
> The stakes are so high in the minds of generations of descendants that
> I would first toss out any genealogies that had been done and then go
> generation by generation with the DNA back to the suspect couple.
> Then, and only then, should anyone say that the DNA is evidence of a
> TJ & Sally baby.
Gordon-Reed is in the process of doing a very detailed genaeology of the
Hemings and related lines.
J. L. Bell
> Thomas Jefferson's brother Randolph was 51 years of age was known to hang
> out with the slaves at Monticello even to the point of playing the fiddle
> for the slaves to dance to etc in the evenings when he was at Monticello.
The statement about Randolph Jefferson's fiddle-playing is not tied to a
particular date, but he seems to have spent most of his time at his brother
Thomas's plantations/slave labor camps before Sally Hemings conceived her
children. Furthermore, the dances took place at the slave quarters, which was
NOT where Sally Hemings lived. She lived in Thomas Jefferson's main house. (In
addition, only the caricatures in FOOTLOOSE see an automatic connection
between dances and sex.) Thus we have Thomas Jefferson being in the same
building as Sally Hemings around every time she's known to have conceived, and
Randolph Jefferson possibly being there one time she's known to have
conceived. It takes a lot of self-delusion for researchers to claim that
Randolph is the more likely father of Hemings's children.
The documentation about the president's nephews' presence at Monticello ranges
from limited to shaky. For instance, you write, "Isham Jefferson, another one
of Randolph's sons was born on 1781, and it was reported that he was 'raised'
by Thomas Jefferson." This report appears only in one line of a local history
written decades after Isham's death and hundreds of miles from Monticello and
its documents. Such local histories are notorious for inaccuracies, usually
boosting the importance of local men.
You criticize Annette Gordon-Reed for not considering other Jefferson nephews
as possible fathers of Sally Hemings's children. Please acknowledge that in
the entire history of this dispute NO ONE suggested in print that any of those
nephews had sexual relations with Hemings until after the DNA tests sent
diehard deniers scurrying to find candidates with the right genes. There was
no reason for Gordon-Reed's book--which was published before the DNA tests and
was a review of the historiography on the subject--to consider those other men.
Jefferson's Randolph descendants didn't mention their Jefferson cousins in
connection with Hemings. Instead, one claimed that everyone at Monticello knew
that Peter Carr had an exclusive, long-term relationship with Hemings and
fathered all her children. Another claimed that Samuel Carr did. One Randolph
even claimed to have heard a teary confession. Those stories are, of course,
mutually contradictory. There's no documentary evidence in their favor, and
they're further contradicted by the DNA findings. But they do show that the
Randolphs were not above pointing the finger at their distant cousins for
fathering Sally Hemings's children. If the actual men involved were
Jefferson's nephews by the male line, why didn't the Randolphs say so?
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
J. L. Bell
> The DNA evidence only ruled out the Carr's with regards to Tom Woodson (but
> had he been conceived in France, they weren't in France) and Sally H's last
> known child.
>
> The DNA evidence does not speak to the children she had, those that lived
> and those that didn't, between Tom Woodson and her last known child.
Jefferson's Randolph descendants claimed that a Carr brother (they
contradicted each other about which one) fathered ALL of Sally Hemings's
children. Those claims have now been shown to be false, as you acknowledge.
Aside from those claims, there's no documentation for the Carrs being at
Monticello during the years when Hemings's bore her children, much less being
there when she conceived or having been in a relationship with her. Why don't
you suggest that Sally Hemings had sex with James Madison? At least his visits
to Monticello are documented.
> >:|In contrast, Thomas was there on every
> >:|occasion and was identified as Hemings's sexual partner in his lifetime and by
> >:|her child.
>
> Which child?
Madison Hemings, of course. I thought you said you'd read about this issue. In
1873 he told a newspaper reporter in Ohio that Thomas Jefferson was his
father. His is the only 19th-century account of Sally Hemings's children from
within the family and the only one borne out by the DNA tests that no one at
that time could anticipate.
> There is also a record of at least one other male seen leaving her
> house/hut/shack etc
You seem to be referring to a statement by Bacon, one of Jefferson's white
overseers, but to be misrepresenting it in three important ways.
First, Bacon referred to Hemings's room in the main house at Monticello, not
to a "hut" or "shack." Those inaccurate and dismissive words provide a
revealing look at how you're approaching this issue.
Second, the word "record" implies information set down at the time. Instead,
Bacon reportedly made this statement years later; it was preserved at
secondhand and incompletely by people seeking to deny evidence of a
Jefferson-Hemings liaison.
Third, Bacon didn't live at Monticello, and wasn't in Jefferson's employ
during the years she conceived her children. Therefore, his statement should
carry little weight for you.
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
jali...@home.com
>:|jali...@home.com wrote:
>:|> Thomas Jefferson's brother Randolph was 51 years of age was known to hang
>:|> out with the slaves at Monticello even to the point of playing the fiddle
>:|> for the slaves to dance to etc in the evenings when he was at Monticello.
>:|
>:|The statement about Randolph Jefferson's fiddle-playing is not tied to a
>:|particular date, but he seems to have spent most of his time at his brother
>:|Thomas's plantations/slave labor camps before Sally Hemings conceived her
>:|children.
Seems?
Let me set some ground rules here early on.
I don't have a clue if T J did or did not have a sexual relationship with
one or any of his females slaves.
I'm honest enough to say that.
Now, I'll toss in the other side of that, NEITHER does anyone else.
I also have no ax to grind, I am not for or against Jefferson. if he did or
didn't doesn't alter my views of him in the least bit. He was a man, great
in many ways, flawed in other ways. He had beauty and pimples as well, as
we all do.
There is no concrete evidence that has ever been found, historical or
scientific that PROVES that he ever fathered any children by any slave.
What there is is a lot of circumstantial evidence, a lot of speculation, a
lot of spinning.
What you have and will continue to have is those that want to believe he
did, and they will tout all the circumstantial evidence that exists that
seems to bolster their case.
On the other side of that coin you have those who don't want to believe
that he fathered any of her children and they will tout all the
circumstantial evidence that seems to bolster their case.
Both sides will pick holes, use sarcasm, etc to try and damage the other
side.
One thing I have found seems to be habit from both sides of leaving things
out or perhaps even outright altering things.
You can seemingly find in the case of all the major players each pointing
the finger at the players on the other side saying members they, those
members, left this or that out, misrepresented this or that, didn't
mention this or that, etc.
Example, in one of the books I recently read they talk about a an erasure
mark in one of the books Jefferson kept records in, indicating that someone
had erased an entry there and IIRC it would have been a spot where a
certain slave named Tom, if said slave existed should have been listed.
The implication being that some unknown person erased Tom's name.
You can find examples of this going on from and on both sides of this
debate..
I would love to find a study, any study, done by someone or by persona's
that truly and honestly could give a figs leaf less about any meanings to
any outcome, no axes to grind for or against anyone.
For such a study to take every single piece of known information that could
even remotely add to or take away from the total of knowledge in this
matter.
In the case of the DNA would completely and honestly explain in very
detailed terms exactly what those tests showed and didn't show, might of
proved and couldn't prove.
List all the information that supports both sides, all the information tat
hurts either or both sides and any evidence that does neither, in short all
the good, bad and indifferent.
However, finding such a study seems pretty hard to do.
There isn't anything I have read yet over the numerous books, reports,
articles, etc yet that I can't see major flaws in, and that is material for
both sides. When I start running into claims that so and so misrepresented
this or that or left this or that out of their book etc then I want to know
only one thing. Did they, and if they did, why did they?
Those answers become more and more difficult to find.
What we seem to have more than anything else is a war of personalities and
scholars
We have all the older scholars bashing Fawn Brodie, and her bashing them.
We have Annette Gordon-Reed bashing the older ones, the Brodie bashers and
some of the new scholars. We have Eyler Robert Coates bashing Annette
Gordon-Reed and Byron W. Woodson bashing anyone who doesn't support the
Woodson Family oral traditions.
We have The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society bashing that TJMF
Even the National Genealogical Society in their Quarterly Volume 89, No.3,
September 2001 issue had a special report on the Jefferson-Hemings debate.
I am reading it now. What I see with it is possibly a respected Society
prostituting itself. It has joined that bashing. The arguments they
present to bash the Coates book are so surface, so generalized that they
are actually comical. They have come to the conclusion that Jefferson was a
father of some of Sally Hemings children (using the rules of genealogy
research and study, or so they say, but the flaws are evident)
There are honest points raised on both sides of the issue, I would much
rather see more effort, more honest attempts to address those honest
points that are raised by both sides than all the bull crap bashing that is
going on.
I would much rather see more honesty, more admitting by both sides that
there are questions, facts, evidence, etc that at this point in time don't
have answers for nd may never have answers for. It may never be possible to
say for certain he did or he didn't.
All these books, reports, studies, etc are people or groups of people
putting together that info that basically supports their conclusions on
this matter while claiming the conclusions of the other side is incorrect.
I get tired of that.
I want to know, things like
(1) Is there truly an erasure?
(2) Did Gordon-Reed publish a copy of a letter when there was an original
known to exist that contained info the copy didn't contain and would have
conflicted with the point she was trying to make? If so why?
and so on
I want to know things like that, I want to know the answers to all the
charges each side makes against the other side. In doing that I may end up
with the most honest gathering of information that it is possible to have.
=================================================
Here is what is known:
This whole so called scandal came about as a result of a certain pissed off
man wanting to get revenge. Thus he published a story in the newspaper in
1802 as I recall. Ironically, that man's original story has been pretty
much demolished.
TOM WOODSON
That man wrote about a boy named Tom who was about 12 who was suppose to
have been a product of a sexual relationship between TJ and a slave named
Sally Hemings. It was not a story about a boy approx 4 years old named
Beverly. (Tom was the son that was suppose to have been conceived in
France and born in America shortly after they all returned from France.
This was suppose to have been the ultimate proof, because no Carr male was
in France, no Jefferson male, other than TJ was in France. This was the
foundation of the long time romantic or pure sexual relationship between
Sally Hemings and TJ story. But the DNA testing didn't support any of
that.)
Tom Woodson is the only Tom put forth by any oral traditions of any of
those claiming to be descendants of TJ and Sally Hemings and what the DNA
does show is that there was no "Jefferson" Y Chromosome found in any of the
Woodson male lines and six different test were run on what appears to be
all six surviving male lines of descendants. IIRC, the Bryon Woodson book
does list Tom Woodson as having had 11 children of which 6 were sons who
went on to have sons etc.
Thus, the original rumor/story doesn't stand up. The woodson oral
tradition, which was suppose to have been the most detailed, most complete,
oldest, etc doesn't float.
BTW, the oral tradition of the descendants of Madison Hemings claim that a
child of unknown gender was conceived in Paris and born at Monticello but
only lived a short time. So even the various oral traditions don't agree
on this one.
HARRIET HEMINGS
Born 5 October, 1795, died December 1797 [1]
BEVERLY HEMINGS
Born 1 April, 1798, left monticello in 1821 or 1822, dropped from sight.
According to Madison Hemings, he passed into white society, married in
Maryland into a family "in good Circumstances"; and had at least one child,
a daughter. (unless he had son as well and either his grave or their
graves could be found, good DNA harvested, this is a dead end trail with
regards to any DNA evidence.[1]
HARRIET HEMINGS
Born in May 1801; left Monticello in 1821 or 1822, possibly with brother
Beverly. Madison reported that she passed into white society and "married a
white man in good standing in Washington City." He last heard from her
about 1863. She had several children, but nothing further is known about
her or her offspring. [1]
MADISON HEMINGS
born 19 January 1805; manumitted by Jefferson's will in 1826. He was
considered white by the 1830 census taker's but married a free quadroon,
MARY McCOY, on 21 November 1831. Because interracial marriage was then
illegal in Virginia's Madison went before authorities in Charlottesville,
shortly bone his marriage, to register as a "free Negro." That document
describes him as a "mulato" of light complexion, 5' 7'/s" tall." After his
mother's death, Madison moved his family to Pike County, Ohio, where he
worked as a builder in Waverly, the county seat. After retirement, he
settled across the county line in rural Ross County, where he died 28
November 1877.
His children were (1) a son who died young in Albemarle County; (2) Sarah
(3) Thomas Eston, who died in a Confederate prison; (4) Harriet, who died
in 1925 (g) Mary Ann, who married [-?-] Johnson; (6) Catherine Jane; (7)
William Beverly, who joined the Union Army at age sixteen and died in 1910
at the military home in Leavenworth, Kansas; (8) James Madison, who moved
into white society in Colorado; (9) Julia A.; and (10) Ellen Wayles, who
wed an Oberlin College graduate, Andrew Jackson Roberts, and died in 1940
after seeing one son (Frederick Madison Roberts) serve twelve years in the
California State Assembly.'" [1]
ESTON HEMINGS
(alias JEFFERSON), born 21 May 1808, is the son for whom DNA testing was
conducted among male offspring, with a finding that they carry the
Jefferson Y-chromosome. Eston was willed by Jefferson to John Hemings
(Eston's half-uncle) as an apprentice until he reached twenty-one, but he
was informally manumitted in 1826, three years early. 6-ton, too, was
labeled white by the 1830 census taker in Charlottesville. However, on 14
June 1832, he wed the free octoroon JULIA ANN ISAAcS and filed a "free
Negro" registration that describes him as a "Aright mulatto," 6' 1". After
his mother's death, he moved to Ohio with his brother Madison but settled
in Chillicothe, where he became a musician of considerable repute. In 1852
he moved his family to Madison, Wisconsin. There they changed their surname
to Jefferson and established their racial identity as white. Eston died in
Madison on 3 January 1856.
His children were (1) John Wayles Jefferson, a lieutenant-colonel of a
white unit in the Civil War; and later a wealthy banker and cotton broker
in Memphis, Tennessee; (2) Ann(a) W Jefferson, whose son Walter Beverly
Pearson became the multimillionaire president of Standard Screw Company in
Chicago; and (3) William Beverly Jefferson, who owned two hotels and an
omnibus company in Madison. [1]
FOOTNOTE
[1] National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Volume 89, No. 3, September
2001 pp 171-172.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A grave site for William Beverly has been found and Coates in his book The
Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty stated that prior to the DNA
results oral permission was obtained by descendants of Madison Jefferson to
exhume the remains for DNA testing but once the DNA results of the original
testing was made public these same people refused to sign the legal
documents that would have allowed the exhumation to actually take place. he
stated they said they preferred to stand by their oral traditions.
Therefore, science has given a 100-1 odds, when compared to random male
population sampling, that a male Jefferson fathered one of Sally Hemings
children, that child being Eston Hemings.
A testing of the DNA that might be harvested from William Beverly would
isolate Eston Hemings as being the only known offspring or a probable
Jefferson male, or would expand the known offsprings of a Jefferson male.
The descendants of Madison Hemings don't seem willing to take that gamble.
The DNA taken from William Beverly could also be matched with the Woodson
and Carr DNA results thus perhaps shedding more light on the subject.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With the current known evidence, including the scientific evidence no one
can state positively that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings, let
along any other Hemings child. The evidence does show he didn't father any
child named Tom Hemings, or Tom Woodson.
One can suspect he fathered Eston Hemings, one can speculate he did, but
one cannot prove he did. The scientific evidence says nothing about any of
the other known Hemings children and rules him out as a father for Tom
Woodson no matter who Tom Woodson's mother was.
With cooperation from the right people more information could be gathered
by doing DNA tests on William Beverly, provided good DNA could be
harvested. If a burial site for Beverly Hemingway could be found and good
DNA harvested, or any male children he had was found and good DNA could be
harvested, more would be known.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[snip]
>:|You criticize Annette Gordon-Reed for not considering other Jefferson nephews
>:|as possible fathers of Sally Hemings's children. Please acknowledge that in
>:|the entire history of this dispute NO ONE suggested in print that any of those
>:|nephews had sexual relations with Hemings until after the DNA tests sent
>:|diehard deniers scurrying to find candidates with the right genes. There was
>:|no reason for Gordon-Reed's book--which was published before the DNA tests and
>:|was a review of the historiography on the subject--to consider those other men.
Irrelevant.
I do believe the mystery was considered settled by those who wanted to have
it settled. They claimed T Jefferson was the father, Those who didn't want
him to be the father offered up the Carr brothers.
let me offer you something from page 227 of National Genealogical Society
Quarterly, Volume 89, No. 3, September 2001
"By definitions, the scholarly practice of history is grounded in
revisionism. Historians present new evidence and offer new interpretations
of previously examined evidence, deepening and enhancing our comprehension
of the past in the process."
History is not latin, i.e. a dead language.
There is constantly research being done and at times new facts become
known, which in turn caused a reevaluation of previously known information
and conclusions.
It doesn't matter when a research was began to find other possible
"fathers." What matters is, evidence was discovered which instituted a
reexamination of existing opinion, fact sand conclusions. What matters is,
there were other potential "fathers" found.
What matters now is, can it be proven they weren't and only T Jefferson was
or could be?.
That should be the direction now, not what was the situation for decades
before.
>:|Jefferson's Randolph descendants didn't mention their Jefferson cousins in
>:|connection with Hemings. Instead, one claimed that everyone at Monticello knew
>:|that Peter Carr had an exclusive, long-term relationship with Hemings and
>:|fathered all her children. Another claimed that Samuel Carr did. One Randolph
>:|even claimed to have heard a teary confession. Those stories are, of course,
>:|mutually contradictory. There's no documentary evidence in their favor, and
>:|they're further contradicted by the DNA findings. But they do show that the
>:|Randolphs were not above pointing the finger at their distant cousins for
>:|fathering Sally Hemings's children. If the actual men involved were
>:|Jefferson's nephews by the male line, why didn't the Randolphs say so?
Who knows what their reasoning might have been.
All the above that you mentioned shows is what I said in the beginning. NO
ONE KNOWS.
jali...@home.com
[snip]
>:| Why don't
>:|you suggest that Sally Hemings had sex with James Madison? At least his visits
>:|to Monticello are documented.
If you are going to try and be cute or silly don't bother wasting my time
and yours by replying. I am totally and completely fed up with people who
are unable to carry on a civilized normal discussion and have to resort to
crap to try and make a point. A need to resort to crap shows they have no
point to make.
>:|> >:|In contrast, Thomas was there on every
>:|> >:|occasion and was identified as Hemings's sexual partner in his lifetime and by
>:|> >:|her child.
>:|> Which child?
>:|Madison Hemings, of course.
>:|I thought you said you'd read about this issue.
Exactly what function in a discussion does the above comment play?
Now, back to the discourse.
>:|> >:|In contrast, Thomas was there on every
>:|> >:|occasion and was identified as Hemings's sexual partner in his lifetime and by
>:|> >:|her child.
>:|> Which child?
>:|Madison Hemings, of course.
An oral tradition?
One oral tradition was totally demolished, wasn't it?
Wasn't the original story published in 1802 and which was strongly tried
into what was later to become the Woodson family oral tradition demolished
with it?
Why should the Madison Hemings oral tradition be considered any more valid?
Are there any parts of his story that disagree with known facts?
The descendants of Madison Hemings could ads a great deal of knowledge to
this issue, but didn't trust their own oral tradition enough to sign the
legal papers that would allow the exhumation of William Beverly a son of
Madison Hemings, once the results of the original DNA tests were known.
>:|In
>:|1873 he told a newspaper reporter in Ohio that Thomas Jefferson was his
>:|father. His is the only 19th-century account of Sally Hemings's children from
>:|within the family and the only one borne out by the DNA tests that no one at
>:|that time could anticipate.
Sorry, the DNA tests did not prove 61 or 63 year old Thomas Jefferson the
father of Eston Hemings. Nor did they link any other Jefferson male to any
other known child of Sally Hemings. They eliminated Jefferson and Carr
males as a possible Tom Woodson father.
>:|> There is also a record of at least one other male seen leaving her
>:|> house/hut/shack etc
>:|
>:|You seem to be referring to a statement by Bacon, one of Jefferson's white
>:|overseers, but to be misrepresenting it in three important ways.
>:| First, Bacon referred to Hemings's room in the main house at Monticello, not
>:|to a "hut" or "shack." Those inaccurate and dismissive words provide a
>:|revealing look at how you're approaching this issue.
Duh! How am I approaching the issue?
I didn't recall the exact wording he used. It was not the major point I
was making. The point I was making was given, there is an account of a man
or men being seen leaving her room early in the mornings. Since I was not
quoting the man and didn't find that minor detail important enough to go
back and look up the exact words. I wrote it in my words.
That is your best shot?
I am approaching the issue as you call it of showing that the original
person to respond to me in this thread didn't have his facts even remotely
close. If and when I becomes important enough to quote I can quote, trust
me on that.
>:| Second, the word "record" implies information set down at the time. Instead,
>:|Bacon reportedly made this statement years later; it was preserved at
>:|secondhand and incompletely by people seeking to deny evidence of a
>:|Jefferson-Hemings liaison.
Wonderful, so one guy gives his story years later. Madsion Hemoings gives
his story years later. One is to be taken as Gospel the other not.
Interesting standard
The Madison oral traditions was kept repeated etc by people wanting such a
Jefferson-Hemings liaison.
You can't have it both ways.
You treat all equally until any individual item is PROVEN to be incorrect
or you are in the bias business.
There were agendas aplenty.
It all began based on an agenda to destroy Jefferson.
Hemings people had a wonderful family history they could pass on in a time
period when most in their circumstances had no family history beyond having
been property, thought of as less than human.
Thus there were anti Jefferson folks, pro Jefferson folks and a family
without a past who now had a past.
Don't for one second think there aren't inaccuracies all around.
>:| Third, Bacon didn't live at Monticello, and wasn't in Jefferson's employ
>:|during the years she conceived her children. Therefore, his statement should
>:|carry little weight for you.
Much of what Madison Hemings reported happened before he was born,
therefore apply the same standard to those statements as you do the Bacon
statements.
Andrew McMichael
> I am not for or against Jefferson.
I agree, and why anyone would be either for or against Jefferson is beyond
me.
> What there is is a lot of circumstantial evidence, a lot of speculation, a
> lot of spinning.
A great deal of history is circumstantial evidence and speculation. You have
some evidence, you construct a theory. A few years later, if your theory is
good enough, someone comes along and tries to refute it.
I am in the process of writing an entire book based on a great deal of
evidence and a great deal of theorizing. I'm told by lots of people that it
is pretty convincing. I take that as a compliment. But, in fact, what I have
is alot of concrete evidence, alot of circumstantial, and a good theory to
explain what I think to be the truth. Nothing different from the TJ case.
> Example, in one of the books I recently read they talk about a an erasure
> mark in one of the books Jefferson kept records in, indicating that someone
> had erased an entry there and IIRC it would have been a spot where a
> certain slave named Tom, if said slave existed should have been listed.
>
> The implication being that some unknown person erased Tom's name.
Not unusual. The Spanish kept detailed records of race in birth, marriage,
and death records for Spanish Louisiana and other parts of the empire. In
the 1890s someone spent a great deal of time in East and West Baton Rouge
parishes erasing references to race in birth, marriage, and death records.
One guess why.
> I would love to find a study, any study, done by someone or by persona's
> that truly and honestly could give a figs leaf less about any meanings to
> any outcome, no axes to grind for or against anyone.
I think Gordon-Reed's study does that. Unfortunately, she's been tarred so
much that nobody can admit that.
When people start out on a project, they have no preconceived notions, But
as the evidence grows you begin to "believe." That's natural.
>
> All the above that you mentioned shows is what I said in the beginning. NO
> ONE KNOWS.
Of course. I'm not sure anyone is claiming to know for sure. What
Gordon_reed, anyway, is saying is that the best evidence we have is that TJ
fathered at least one, and possibly a few more, of Hemings' children.
--
Andrew McMichael, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University
http://www.princeton.edu/~amcmicha/cv.html
"Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg"-- A Dutch Proverb.
mdgiles
.
> It's seems ironic that someone who complains about "American Bolsheviks" as
> you do is making statements without evidence simply because he'd prefer to
> believe it. Isn't that what Bolshevik propagandists did?
>
> J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
>
>
casual perusal of the African-American community would show to have
been quite common - miscegenation (on the white male / black female
basis that is). Skin tone variation (in comparision to native born
West Africans)runs the range from lightest light to darkest dark. How
exactly did we (I'm African - American) get that way. Why are there so
many occasions where slave masters (like Jefferson) freed only one
specific group of slaves? Unlike Washington who freed them all, at his
wife's death.
It also shows an inabilty, on the part of some posters to conceive of
a black women as attractive. In Jefferson's case, it would be a black
women who was a half sister of, and probably resembled, his late wife.
Lastly; we males are notorious for doing way too much of our thinking
with our "little brain". Indeed, I read once that males think about
sex, on average, every 13(?) seconds (adolescents more often, old guys
like me, less often). I'm willing to bet that some of those thoughts
are of the "harem" or "sex slave" variety (Hey, Islam has built a
worldwide religion on that fantasy). Given that point, I would believe
it would be odd for a slavemaster NOT to take advantage of the
Master/Slave relationship. After all, slave women would be sexually
available the moment he reached puberty, whereas white women would
have been generally unavailable until marriage.
Scooter
"Whippoorwill" <jturn4...@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:6vd63u0ecv6g0cvah...@4ax.com...
> On 2 Jan 2002 14:25:21 GMT, amcm...@yuma.Princeton.EDU (F. Andrew
> McMichael) wrote:
>
> >jali...@home.com wrote:
> >
> >
> >: I assume you are considering him guilty.
> >: Your evidence is?
> >
> >
> >that was widely documented among other slaveholders in the US?
>
> par with a dairy farmer having sex with his cows in today's world.
> --------
Not only is this inaccurate in that it purports that miscegenation was as
rare as bestiality, the phrasing of your last response speaks volumes about
you, and not positively.
Scooter
> On 2 Jan 2002 14:23:33 GMT, amcm...@yuma.Princeton.EDU (F. Andrew
> McMichael) wrote:
>
> >Whippoorwill (jturn4...@lycos.com) wrote:
> >
> >: This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media. I heard
> >: that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his family but not him
> >: was his nephew.
> >
> >
> >
> >His nephews were never considered as candidates until after the
> >DNA evidence showed that it had to be a Jefferson male.
> >
> >
> >: all that is decent in this country. They have been working like
> >: termites to destroy the institutions of this country that gave the
> >: worthless cuckolds a home.
Good Gawd, who calls someone a Bolshevik anymore? Alexander Hamilton hardly
thought highly of Jefferson, and he was also vitally important to this
nation's institutions and was positively not a Bolshevik.
> >
>
> "There are none so blind as they who will not see".
>
> Look around you and see the how the culture has deteriorated in the
> past 40 years.
Yeah, let's see 1961, I guess Jim Crow laws were still around. Lawdy Lawdy
them uppity colored folks, jews and women ruined everything by wanting
equality didn't they?
>
> I would recommend Pat Buchanan's new book which is reviewed at
> www.drudgereport today.
Geez, Pat Buchanan there's some intelligent megawattage for you. Come to
think of it, the early 60s was the period all culture went to hell for Pat
Buchanan, since that was the time Vatican II came into being. Thanks to
that lousy Bolshevik John XXIII.
Bob Tiernan
On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 jali...@home.com wrote:
> "J. L. Bell" <jnol...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >:|Madison Hemings, of course.
>
> An oral tradition?
> One oral tradition was totally demolished, wasn't it?
Oral tradition does not guarantee accuracy. I once
ran into an old man with his two sisters and they
claimed they were distant cousins of George Custer.
That may have been true, but part of the "oral
tradition" they've been passing on was that during
the first few days after Custer took command of a
brigade he was grabbed by a division commander
prior to Gettysburg and this division commander
commanded Custer for several days when he had
no authority to do so and before Custer "found
out" who his real commander was. They'd been
telling this story for decades despite its
inaccuracy. Oral tradition still needs footnotes.
Bob T.
Jim Elbrecht
>Jim Elbrecht wrote:
>> The release of the results of that test were politically motivated
>> propaganda & both the magazine that reported them and the 'scientist'
>> that conducted the tests have been criticized by their peers.
>
>Somebody's misleading you, Jim. The DNA findings were published by Britain's
>top biological science magazine, NATURE, after standard peer review. What
>political motive would a British academic journal have to publish the report
>as it did?
Just to be clear. I don't have a horse in this race. My complaint
with the Nature article is that it was spectacularized reporting of
poor science [as it was reported].
The report was hyped by Nature with the lines;
"Scandals involving American presidents are nothing new."
and "Now, DNA analysis confirms that Jefferson was indeed the father
of at least one of Hemings' children."
The DNA evidence does not prove that. It suggests that some of the
family traditions handed down on the Hemings side are true. It only
*proves* a link between some 20th century folks.
Even if we accept [and some Jefferson researchers don't] the
genealogies that Foster used, the link he assumes is TJ's father.
That leaves many other male Jeffersons with the same Y chromosome,
passing it down to many more males over the intervening 10 generations
from 1800 to 1998. [and presumably including descendants from
Jefferson's grandfather, g-grandfather, etc]
The article, entitled "Jefferson fathered slave's last child", closes
with;
"Now, with impeccable timing, Jefferson reappears to remind us of a
truth that should be self evident. Our heroes - and especially
presidents - are not gods or saints,...."
[the 'impeccable timing' was that it was released the same week as a
sitting president was appearing in court for impeachment. None of
that reads like science to me.]
Dr. Foster himself was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying;
"They unnecessarily politicized something that was intended to be a
piece of scientific work,"
>
>The geneticist who conducted the tests is a respected scientist--there's no
>need for scare-quotes around that word. Neither the science nor the statements
>in the article have been argued with.
Nature even back-pedaled a couple months later. See Nature, Jan 7
1999. In it, the lead scientist of the study, Dr. Eugene Foster,
criticizes his co-authors for going too far with their conclusions.
He talks about how 'rushed' they were to get the article in that issue
of Nature, and tells how there wasn't room in the article to explore
other Jefferson males as candidates. He also said [in the January
1999 article] that sorting out *which* Jefferson male was something
historians, not scientists, should decide.
Science magazine also wrote some articles on how misleading the
article was.
> Even the most ardent "defenders" of
>Thomas Jefferson (most of whom seem, oddly enough, to prefer the idea that he
>kept slaves for the sexual pleasure of his male relatives) accept the DNA
>findings.
I don't think TJ needs defending. I *do* wonder why so few folks
seem to be able to accept that Sally may have *chosen* a Jefferson
male as a mate. [or at least had no objections] The Jeffersons in
general don't seem to have been the Simon Legrees of slave owners.
I am far from an apologist for the 'peculiar insitution' of slavery,
but the more [primary sources] I read about the relationships of
slaves & masters the more I am convinced that I'll *never* understand
them.
>
>Combined with the documentary evidence, the DNA tests have been enough to
>convince most historians that Thomas Jefferson was the most likely father of
>Sally Hemings's children.
I agree with that statement. Emphasis on 'combined with', 'most
historians', and 'most likely'.
What Foster said in January in his letter to Nature was;
"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,"
Had the original Nature article stated it so clearly, then my argument
would be with the folks who read into the article what they wanted to
believe, not the magazine & the folks who put their name on the
article.
-snip-
Jim
raymond o'hara
Michael Furlan wrote in message ...
>On Tue, 01 Jan 2002 16:30:31 -0500, Whippoorwill
><jturn4...@lycos.com> wrote:
>>This is a small part of the American Bolsheviks agenda to tear down
>>all that is decent in this country.
>
>black "love child." <g>
how does it help tj's rep if it turns out he was pimping sally for his
relatives?
Andrew McMichael
>
> On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 jali...@home.com wrote:
>
> > "J. L. Bell" <jnol...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > >:|Madison Hemings, of course.
> >
> > An oral tradition?
> > One oral tradition was totally demolished, wasn't it?
>
> Oral tradition does not guarantee accuracy.
No. But anthropologists have found that when a community has nothing but
oral tradition [no written history], those oral traditions tend to be
exceedingly accurate from one generation to the next. When a community
relies mostly on the written word to pass down its history, oral tradition
is usually pretty bad.
Andrew McMichael
> Skin tone variation (in comparision to native born
> West Africans)runs the range from lightest light to darkest dark. How
> exactly did we (I'm African - American) get that way.
I'm not arguing that miscegenation wasn't pretty common. Nor am I arguing
that many [most?] black folks in the US have some white ancestor somewheer
down the line, but . . .
Africans in Africa have skin color variation that runs the same gamut as
African Americans. So, skin color variation among African Americans is not a
marker of anything.
jali...@home.com
>:|jali...@home.com wrote:
>:|
>:|> I am not for or against Jefferson.
>:|I agree, and why anyone would be either for or against Jefferson is beyond
>:|me.
People thought they had a lot of reasons throughout his lifetime and even
still today.
I read a book recently where the author was crying in his beer over the
fact that Jefferson was remembered, has become an icon, whereas his hero
Joseph Story has become the forgotten man of American History.
Of course, this was political. The author is a well known conservative
author, many view Story as a great conservative. However, mostly because of
his church state views. He is seen by many as the father of modern
religious accommodation and as being very anti separation of church and
state.
The roots of much of the anti jefferson from his own times to today would
fall under the heading of political reasoning.
>:|> What there is is a lot of circumstantial evidence, a lot of speculation, a
>:|> lot of spinning.
>:|
>:|
>:|A great deal of history is circumstantial evidence and speculation. You have
>:|some evidence, you construct a theory. A few years later, if your theory is
>:|good enough, someone comes along and tries to refute it.
All well and good, but a theory isn't hard cold facts. That is the problem.
There seems to be two camps, he did, he didn't. With the result of people
belonging to one or the other of the camps and constant spinning, twisting,
etc of what few actual facts there are to make them fit the camp they
belong to. That and the constant attacking by one side of the other side.
Both sides do this. Too many attempts to pass off theory as facts. There
does not seem to be very much real efforts to perhaps establish what the
truth might actually be.
>:|I am in the process of writing an entire book based on a great deal of
>:|evidence and a great deal of theorizing. I'm told by lots of people that it
>:|is pretty convincing. I take that as a compliment. But, in fact, what I have
>:|is alot of concrete evidence, alot of circumstantial, and a good theory to
>:|explain what I think to be the truth. Nothing different from the TJ case.
Argument is not evidence, argument is not fact. Argument is argument.
Circumstantial is not fact. The disturbingly high number of people being
let out of prisons in recent years, sometimes off death row, because DNA
evidence shows they are innocent of the crime they were convicted of
shows that circumstantial "evidence" is far from being as air tight, as
conclusive as many people would have liked us to believe.
>:|> Example, in one of the books I recently read they talk about a an erasure
>:|> mark in one of the books Jefferson kept records in, indicating that someone
>:|> had erased an entry there and IIRC it would have been a spot where a
>:|> certain slave named Tom, if said slave existed should have been listed.
>:|>
>:|> The implication being that some unknown person erased Tom's name.
>:|
>:|
>:|Not unusual. The Spanish kept detailed records of race in birth, marriage,
>:|and death records for Spanish Louisiana and other parts of the empire. In
>:|the 1890s someone spent a great deal of time in East and West Baton Rouge
>:|parishes erasing references to race in birth, marriage, and death records.
>:|One guess why.
The why probably goes along with the following:
The implication in this case was one of someone deliberately erasing Tom's
name because Tom's name being there would have established that Tom existed
and that Tom existed in the time and place a Tom would have been if he were
Thomas Jefferson's "son" from a Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings sexual
union.
If true this has passed into unethical and dishonesty and if untrue it has
still passed into unethical and dishonesty.
>:|> I would love to find a study, any study, done by someone or by persona's
>:|> that truly and honestly could give a figs leaf less about any meanings to
>:|> any outcome, no axes to grind for or against anyone.
>:|I think Gordon-Reed's study does that. Unfortunately, she's been tarred so
>:|much that nobody can admit that.
Might she simply support what you appear to want to believe?
I read her book and felt she probably had it down pat, then I have run
across things since then that makes me wonder now.
Coates points to two items in her book and claims she is misrepresenting
those items. If this is true her credibility takes a hit.
What I am going to do, over a period of time, because I have other things
going on is list all the so called "evidence" for and against, factual,
circumstantial, speculative, etc.
At that point, I am going to try and match each to the charges, claims,
arguments, spinning, done by the both sides to that particular item.
When this is completed, I hope to have something that might clear the smoke
some and enable a person to come to some sort of conclusion as to what
seems to be most reasonable. However, based on all known evidence at this
point in time, there cannot be a 100% truth in this matter found.
But if Gordon-Reed was padding her study I place her in the same realm as
the others who are marketing their own biases, trying to pass theirs off as
"the truth."
>:|When people start out on a project, they have no preconceived notions, But
>:|as the evidence grows you begin to "believe." That's natural.
Better put some in there. Some people do have preconceived notions. That is
why we end up with books that are highly selective with regards to the
historical evidence they supply.
Church/state is a very good example.
After studying this topic for 7 years I can make this statement:
There is a evidence that supports strict separation as being a purpose,
intent etc of founders. There is evidence that supports accommodation
as being a purpose, intent, etc, of founders. There is evidence that
supports neither of those positions.
Yet you can find many many books published that will claim this or that and
those books are full of cites that support the position of the author, with
little or no acknowledgment that there is also evidence around, easily
found that is going to disagree with what the author is saying.
Look at the cites given in Supreme Court cases. A ruling that favors strict
separation is going to be full of cites for historical and legal evidence
that supports strict separation, and the opposite is true for those that
rule in favor of accommodation.
It may come as a shock to some people, but the research done in courts is
usually done by clerks and those clerks usually have a political
philosophy. (Granted, those philosophies usually are in harmony with the
Judge or Justice who hires them) Those clerks have a position on the issue
presented by the case, the case is often times accepted to strengthen a
legal point or make a new legal point. There is a whole bunch of
preconceived notions going on here and these clerks will fill the opinion
with cites of historical and legal evidence that is going to support those
preconceived notions.
>:|> All the above that you mentioned shows is what I said in the beginning. NO
>:|> ONE KNOWS.
>:|Of course. I'm not sure anyone is claiming to know for sure.
Then you haven't been reading this thread or other threads on this topic
very closely. Even the various authors, while paying lip service to all the
disclaimers, don't really emphasis those details. They may say that the DNA
doesn't prove Jefferson a father of those kids, but then goes on and makes
arguments that sure work awfully hard to do just that.
Come on, get real.
>:|Gordon_reed, anyway, is saying is that the best evidence we have is that TJ
>:|fathered at least one, and possibly a few more, of Hemings' children.
If the charges Coates made aginst her in those two instances I am thinking
of are valid then I have no confidence in her saying the "best" evidence
says this or that.
Her best evidence rests almost totally on the fact she says only Thomas
Jefferson was near her each time she got preggers.
But that cannot be proven. Unless one can produce a log of all relatives
who visited Thomas Jefferson when he was home, when they came, when they
left, and this log shows positively that there was no male Jefferson, other
than Thomas Jefferson there when Eston Hemings was conceived,
she is speculating.
Only Eston Hemings line has been shown, thus far, to have any potential
connection to a Jefferson line by way of the DNA.
Not such connections have been made to Madison Hemings line or Beverly
Hemings. The Madison Hemings line could be compared, execpt once the
original DNA results were published the descendants of Madison Hemings
refused to follow up on the oral yes they had already given to exhume the
body of William Beverly, a son of Madison Hemings.
(Seems like thay are afraid maybe their "oral traditions" might take a hit
as well, at least they don't seem confident enough to take the risk. Can't
say I blame them. If there was no match found in the Madison Hemings line
to any Jefferson, that would be devestating to the Thomas Jefferson is the
father story. The Madison Hemings oral traditions would be blown as sky
high as the Tom Woodson oral traditions were.)
Beverly Heming had no known male children so his DNA would have to be used
provided his grave could even be located and usable DNA could be extracted.
Far too many people have made the leap already from maybe one to probably
all of Sally Hemings children because of the DNA results and the DNA
results do not name Thomas Jefferson as a father of Eston Hemings or any
other child that Sally Hemings might have had.
The whole Sally Hemings Thomas Jefferson story has had one huge hole
blasted in it already thanks to DNA. The "president Tom" that James T
Callender wrote about never existed. There isn't even any evidence that
Sally Hemings was the mother of Thomas Woodson, who the Woodson clan claims
was the Tom that Callender referred to and who was conceived in France and
born at Montecello in 1790. The 12 year old red headed Tom Jefferson look
alike that lived at Montecello in 1802 and whose mother was "dusky Sally"
or whatever term he used to describe her.
The whole foundation of that whole story has been shown to be flawed. Yet,
you don't see hardly anyone really taking that and running with it, showing
the implications if has or could have for any other "oral traditions"
jali...@home.com
>:|"J. L. Bell" <jnol...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<3C33B255...@earthlink.net>...
>:|.
>:|>
>:|> It's seems ironic that someone who complains about "American Bolsheviks" as
>:|> you do is making statements without evidence simply because he'd prefer to
>:|> believe it. Isn't that what Bolshevik propagandists did?
>:|>
>:|> J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
>:|>
>:|>
>:|No what's ironic is the lengths people will go to in denying what a
>:|casual perusal of the African-American community would show to have
>:|been quite common - miscegenation (on the white male / black female
>:|basis that is). Skin tone variation (in comparision to native born
>:|West Africans)runs the range from lightest light to darkest dark. How
>:|exactly did we (I'm African - American) get that way. Why are there so
>:|many occasions where slave masters (like Jefferson) freed only one
>:|specific group of slaves? Unlike Washington who freed them all, at his
>:|wife's death.
One thing that does have to go into the above equation is a simple
economical fact of life back then. Thomas Jefferson was deeply in debt when
he died. Fact of life in those days, slaves were considered property that
had value. Thus, unlike Washington, the estate of Jefferson was not in a
position to free all the slaves. The people that Jefferson owed money to
would have prevented it.
That doesn't address the issue of would Jefferson freed all had he been in
a debt free position to do so? It doesn't address that issue because I
don't have an answer to that question.
>:|It also shows an inabilty, on the part of some posters to conceive of
>:|a black women as attractive.
Actually, I find black women to be extremely attractive. (no, I'm not blk,
I'm so fair I almost glow i the dark. Tanning is a alien concept to my
skin, burning, blistering peeling and returning to its original shade is
normal for me) I have dated blk women on a number of occasions.
>:|In Jefferson's case, it would be a black
>:|women who was a half sister of, and probably resembled, his late wife.
This is true. Jefferson's wife who inherited the Hemings was actually the
owner of her own half sister.
Sally Hemings was not exactly blk.
Sally's mother was Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings who was a daughter of a
"full-blooded" African Slave and one Capt. Hemings, an English seaman.
Betty Hemings was deeded to John Wayles (Jefferson's father in law) as part
of a Eppes-Wayles's marriage settlement.
Martha Eppes, John Wayle's first wife gave birth to Martha Wayles, who
later married Thomas Jefferson.
After Martha Eppes-Wayles died, John Wayles took Better Hemings as his
concubine and Sally Hemings was one of the Children of that "arrangement."
Sally's Mother (Betty) would have been half blk-half wht, Sally would have
been 3/4 wht, 1/4 blk (technically quadroons) and any of her children would
have been 7/8 white, 1/8 black, and based on Virginia law of the time
legally white, but still slaves, because Virginia law regarded children of
the mother to be in the same position as the mother, i.e. if the mother was
a slave, all of her children were slaves as well. Thus we have a case of
legally white folks also being legally slaves.
Point being, Sally Hemings would have looked quite "wht" and possibly could
have bore some resemblance to Jefferson's dead wife, although how much
would be hard to determine. Same Father, different mothers.
mdgiles
> mdgiles wrote:
>
> > Skin tone variation (in comparision to native born
> > West Africans)runs the range from lightest light to darkest dark. How
> > exactly did we (I'm African - American) get that way.
>
> I'm not arguing that miscegenation wasn't pretty common. Nor am I arguing
> that many [most?] black folks in the US have some white ancestor somewheer
> down the line, but . . .
>
>
> Africans in Africa have skin color variation that runs the same gamut as
> African Americans. So, skin color variation among African Americans is not a
> marker of anything.
>
>
and Somolia, but not so much around the West Coast - and that's where
the majority of the slaves in the Americas were imported from. And the
color variances are no where as great as they are in America. There
was a reason for the "one drop rule". After all, absent that rule many
slaves would've had to be considered "white".
mdgiles
have been a reason, as there must have been a reason his debtors
didn't contest the will. I wouldn't doubt that these "things" happened
quite often, and it was "understood" by his debtors.
>
> >:|It also shows an inabilty, on the part of some posters to conceive of
> >:|a black women as attractive.
>
>
> Actually, I find black women to be extremely attractive. (no, I'm not blk,
> I'm so fair I almost glow i the dark. Tanning is a alien concept to my
> skin, burning, blistering peeling and returning to its original shade is
> normal for me) I have dated blk women on a number of occasions.
>
have been a number of posts on this issue, where the writters "proof"
that Jefferson didn't father the Hemmings children was that he
wouldn't have "lowered" himself to sleeping with a slave women. After
I stopped laughing, and picked myself up off the floor; i made the
observation you replied to above.
>
> >:|In Jefferson's case, it would be a black
> >:|women who was a half sister of, and probably resembled, his late wife.
>
>
> This is true. Jefferson's wife who inherited the Hemings was actually the
> owner of her own half sister.
> Sally Hemings was not exactly blk.
>
> Sally's mother was Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings who was a daughter of a
> "full-blooded" African Slave and one Capt. Hemings, an English seaman.
> Betty Hemings was deeded to John Wayles (Jefferson's father in law) as part
> of a Eppes-Wayles's marriage settlement.
> Martha Eppes, John Wayle's first wife gave birth to Martha Wayles, who
> later married Thomas Jefferson.
> After Martha Eppes-Wayles died, John Wayles took Better Hemings as his
> concubine and Sally Hemings was one of the Children of that "arrangement."
>
> Sally's Mother (Betty) would have been half blk-half wht, Sally would have
> been 3/4 wht, 1/4 blk (technically quadroons) and any of her children would
> have been 7/8 white, 1/8 black, and based on Virginia law of the time
> legally white, but still slaves, because Virginia law regarded children of
> the mother to be in the same position as the mother, i.e. if the mother was
> a slave, all of her children were slaves as well. Thus we have a case of
> legally white folks also being legally slaves.
>
> Point being, Sally Hemings would have looked quite "wht" and possibly could
> have bore some resemblance to Jefferson's dead wife, although how much
> would be hard to determine. Same Father, different mothers.
>
>
Jefferson's attraction to her more likely. In some ways it would be as
if he had his late wife back.
Whippoorwill
I'm not sure about Virginia, but in the Deep South a 1/8 black woman
would be an Octoroon. Her daughter by a white man would be 1/16
black and called a Musty. And the Mustie's child by a white man would
be accepted as white. In other words it would take 5 generations to
undo one act of miscegenation. 100 to 150 years.
--------
billybobwhite
J. L. Bell
> >> The release of the results of that test were politically motivated
> >> propaganda & both the magazine that reported them and the 'scientist'
> >> that conducted the tests have been criticized by their peers.
Jim Elbrecht more recently wrote:
> Dr. Foster himself was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying;
> "They unnecessarily politicized something that was intended to be a
> piece of scientific work,"
At first you referred to Eugene Foster as a "'scientist'," with scare-quotes
implying he doesn't deserve that title. Later you refer to him correctly as
"lead scientist." I have to assume that you're repudiating your earlier
characterization of him, though you don't say so explicitly. As I pointed out,
Dr. Foster's research and findings have been accepted by every historian and
geneticist I've read on this issue.
Dr. Foster's paper appeared in NATURE alongside a commentary by a historian:
Joseph Ellis, author of AMERICAN SPHINX. In that book Ellis had concluded that
it was unlikely that Thomas Jefferson had fathered Sally Hemings's children.
Since that was the major Jefferson study that came out around the same time as
Annette Gordon-Reed's THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS, people who didn't
want to accept her arguments were happy to point to his. But the DNA findings
had convinced Ellis otherwise.
Ellis's essay in NATURE tied the scandal of the 1800s to the Clinton sex
scandal. But that had nothing to do with the science. More recently, the
Thomas Jefferson Heritage folks have gleefully jumped on his inflations of his
resume in the pages of the WALL STREET JOURNAL, seemingly hoping to discredit
the Jefferson-Hemings link by implication. Again, what Ellis told reporters
about his athletic career and other personal matters has nothing to do with
the evidence about Jefferson and Hemings. As I said, it was only about five
years before that Ellis was a frequently cited voice against the link between
those two people. Such are the ironies of this issue.
Just as we don't expect a newspaper headline to have all the nuances of an
article, or an opinion piece to have the balance of a news report, so we
shouldn't lump together Dr. Foster's scientific paper with the other material
around it.
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
J. L. Bell
> There is no concrete evidence that has ever been found, historical or
> scientific that PROVES that he ever fathered any children by any slave.
>
> What there is is a lot of circumstantial evidence, a lot of speculation, a
> lot of spinning.
There are also false, incomplete, and unfair statements, whether intentional
or not. Here are three examples from your last post.
ONE:
> BTW, the oral tradition of the descendants of Madison Hemings claim that a
> child of unknown gender was conceived in Paris and born at Monticello but
> only lived a short time.
This isn't "the oral tradition of the descendants of Madison Hemings." It's
the statement of Madison Hemings himself, printed in 1873. That statement is
the ONLY account of the paternity of Sally Hemings's children that's been
completely consistent with the DNA tests done over a century later. It's
printed in Annette Gordon-Reed's book, which you say you've read.
By referring to this statement as an "oral tradition," you're making several mistakes:
a) revealing carelessness about an important historical point, in a way that
dismisses what's so far proven to be the most reliable account of the Hemings family.
b) trying to treat the Woodson tradition, which is truly oral (no hint of it
appears in print in the lifetime of the people involved, and no documentary
evidence supports it), as equivalent to the written Hemings statement in terms
of historical accuracy. Historians have always relied on written sources over
oral traditions.
c) treating the traditions from the Hemings and Woodson families as the only
"oral traditions" and not treating the Randolph family's passed-down lore in
the same way. You write, "even the various oral traditions don't agree on this
one," but the oral traditions have NEVER agreed. The oral traditions were from
the Randolphs and Woodsons.
One lesson we can draw from this historical inquiry is that, compared to all
oral traditions, the written record (Jefferson's papers, showing his travels
and Sally Hemings's pregnancies; Madison Hemings's published account of his
life) has proven more internally consistent, borne up better under logical
scrutiny, and remained consistent with scientific tests unimaginable when
those documents were created. That conclusion would startle very few
historians. But to agree to what may seem like self-evident wisdom require
people to agree that Thomas Jefferson is the most likely father of Sally
Hemings's children. And some can't bring themselves to do that.
TWO:
I wrote--
> >:|You criticize Annette Gordon-Reed for not considering other Jefferson nephews
> >:|as possible fathers of Sally Hemings's children. Please acknowledge that in
> >:|the entire history of this dispute NO ONE suggested in print that any of those
> >:|nephews had sexual relations with Hemings until after the DNA tests sent
> >:|diehard deniers scurrying to find candidates with the right genes. There was
> >:|no reason for Gordon-Reed's book--which was published before the DNA tests and
> >:|was a review of the historiography on the subject--to consider those other men.
>
> Irrelevant.
That's just laughable. Have the fairness to judge Gordon-Reed's book on what
she set out to write: a critical review of previous studies of the
Jefferson-Hemings link. She published in 1997, before the DNA tests and before
anyone had suggested in print that the father of Hemings's children was any
Jefferson but Thomas. Don't fault her for not having taken a time journey to
the near future in order to see what relatives the Jefferson "defenders" would
seize on next.
We should indeed examine all possible fathers for Hemings's children. I didn't
object to that inquiry. I object to how you criticized Gordon-Reed's book on
an intellectually unfair basis. Your approach to her scholarship in that
manner is entirely relevant to judging how you approach the historiography of
this issue.
THREE:
> >:|Jefferson's Randolph descendants didn't mention their Jefferson cousins in
> >:|connection with Hemings. Instead, one claimed that everyone at Monticello knew
> >:|that Peter Carr had an exclusive, long-term relationship with Hemings and
> >:|fathered all her children. Another claimed that Samuel Carr did. One Randolph
> >:|even claimed to have heard a teary confession. Those stories are, of course,
> >:|mutually contradictory. There's no documentary evidence in their favor, and
> >:|they're further contradicted by the DNA findings. But they do show that the
> >:|Randolphs were not above pointing the finger at their distant cousins for
> >:|fathering Sally Hemings's children. If the actual men involved were
> >:|Jefferson's nephews by the male line, why didn't the Randolphs say so?
>
> Who knows what their reasoning might have been.
Why do you use the word "reasoning" to dignify the process by which they came
up with statements that we know are false?
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
J. L. Bell
> The implication in this case was one of someone deliberately erasing Tom's
> name because Tom's name being there would have established that Tom existed
> and that Tom existed in the time and place a Tom would have been if he were
> Thomas Jefferson's "son" from a Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings sexual
> union.
That's the implication that the Woodson family draws in their recent book. But
there are other ways to interpret this evidence.
ANY child born to Sally Hemings within eight or so months after she and Thomas
Jefferson returned from Paris would have seemed like confirmation of
Callender's reports. There's no need for us to consider that erasure only in
regard to the Tom Woodson claim. It would fit equally well with Madison
Hemings's 1873 memoir, which says such a child was born and died young.
In an 1868 letter, Jefferson descendant Henry S. Randall wrote of being told
by his mother to look in the president's records to confirm that he wasn't
near Sally Hemings nine months before she gave birth. So we know that family
was aware that historians would take what was written in those farm books as
evidence on this matter.
We also know that what Randall claimed was false: Hemings's pregnancies
coincide closely with Jefferson's presence at Monticello (leaving aside
Paris). Jefferson's legitimate descandants thus appear capable of
misrepresenting the historical record in order to argue that the president
couldn't have had children by someone he kept enslaved.
Unfortunately, the Woodson book doesn't reproduce the original document, but a
transcription of it that indicates the erasure. We don't see in that book how
many erasures there are, or how any other changes were made. It's a piece of
evidence (or possibly removal of evidence) worth checking on, but not just in
regard to the Woodson claim.
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
J. L. Bell
> >:| Why don't
> >:|you suggest that Sally Hemings had sex with James Madison? At least his visits
> >:|to Monticello are documented.
>
> If you are going to try and be cute or silly don't bother wasting my time
> and yours by replying. I am totally and completely fed up with people who
> are unable to carry on a civilized normal discussion and have to resort to
> crap to try and make a point. A need to resort to crap shows they have no
> point to make.
Obviously, you can't answer my question with logic. There's unquestioned
evidence that James Madison visited Monticello at various times. There's no
evidence that either Carr brother did. The statements that one or the other
was the father of all of Sally Hemings's children were mutually contradictory,
and scientifically discredited. So why not discuss Madison instead of the
Carrs?
> >:|> >:|In contrast, Thomas was there on every
> >:|> >:|occasion and was identified as Hemings's sexual partner in his lifetime and by
> >:|> >:|her child.
>
> >:|> Which child?
>
> >:|Madison Hemings, of course.
>
> >:|I thought you said you'd read about this issue.
>
> Exactly what function in a discussion does the above comment play?
It serves to highlight that your claims to have read thoroughly about this
issue haven't led to accurate recall or statement of the evidence. Case in point...
> >:|> Which child?
>
> >:|Madison Hemings, of course.
>
> An oral tradition?
Madison Hemings's statement was published in 1873. It wasn't an "oral
tradition" and it won't be, however often you call it that. Either you don't
understand what an "oral tradition" is, or you're trying to treat all claims
by formerly enslaved families (whether written or not) as "oral."
> >:|In
> >:|1873 he told a newspaper reporter in Ohio that Thomas Jefferson was his
> >:|father. His is the only 19th-century account of Sally Hemings's children from
> >:|within the family and the only one borne out by the DNA tests that no one at
> >:|that time could anticipate.
>
> Sorry, the DNA tests did not prove 61 or 63 year old Thomas Jefferson the
> father of Eston Hemings. Nor did they link any other Jefferson male to any
> other known child of Sally Hemings. They eliminated Jefferson and Carr
> males as a possible Tom Woodson father.
Unable to defend what you wrote, you're misrepresenting what I did. Madison
Hemings's memoir is the only 19th-century account of the relationship of Sally
Hemings and Thomas Jefferson that's consistent with the 20th-century DNA
findings.
The study tested four patrilineal lines: Hemings, Jefferson, Woodson, and
Carr. Hemings's account forecast that the Hemings and Jefferson lines would
match, and the Woodson and Carr lines would be separate from both. That's
exactly what the DNA test found. The Woodson tradition (which is truly oral,
not written down until after all eyewitnesses had died) and the Randolph
tradition (partly oral) forecast otherwise.
I never argue that result requires that Thomas Jefferson be the father of
Sally Hemings's children. I say only that the result bears out Madison
Hemings's memoir and contradicts the others (which were shaky to begin with).
Huffing about Jefferson's age and the Woodson claim are simply embarrassing
attempts to distract attention from the implications of Madison Hemings's account.
> >:|> There is also a record of at least one other male seen leaving her
> >:|> house/hut/shack etc
> >:|
> >:|You seem to be referring to a statement by Bacon, one of Jefferson's white
> >:|overseers, but to be misrepresenting it in three important ways.
> >:| First, Bacon referred to Hemings's room in the main house at Monticello, not
> >:|to a "hut" or "shack." Those inaccurate and dismissive words provide a
> >:|revealing look at how you're approaching this issue.
>
> Duh! How am I approaching the issue?
With misstatements, all of which serve discredit or minimize the Hemings
family claim. You haven't made any exaggerations which would go the other way,
toward crediting Madison Hemings's statement, as we'd see if your errors were
random. That casts doubt on your claim to be approaching this issue with an
open, unbiased mind.
> I didn't recall the exact wording he used. It was not the major point I
> was making. The point I was making was given, there is an account of a man
> or men being seen leaving her room early in the mornings. Since I was not
> quoting the man and didn't find that minor detail important enough to go
> back and look up the exact words. I wrote it in my words.
Few people who've written on this issue feel the fact that Sally Hemings and
Thomas Jefferson lived in the same house is a "minor detail." Of course, few
people make up details when they don't remember facts, as you did when you
imagined Hemings living in a "hut" during the time she bore her children.
Those aspects of how you approach the issue are important in judging your
claims to be an unbiased seeker of facts and a reliable reporter on evidence.
> >:|Second, the word "record" implies information set down at the time. Instead,
> >:|Bacon reportedly made this statement years later; it was preserved at
> >:|secondhand and incompletely by people seeking to deny evidence of a
> >:|Jefferson-Hemings liaison.
>
> Wonderful, so one guy gives his story years later. Madsion Hemoings gives
> his story years later. One is to be taken as Gospel the other not.
> Interesting standard
Let's go over the facts again. Madison Hemings's statement is the only one
from someone who actually lived with Sally Hemings. It's the only one that
remains consistent with the records at Monticello and the DNA findings.
In contrast, Bacon didn't live at Monticello, and wasn't in Jefferson's
employ during the years Sally Hemings conceived her children. If he actually
saw anyone coming out of her room in the morning (and it's a stretch to
imagine he did), the identity of that person has limited relevance to this question.
You don't have to take either account "as Gospel." (Nor did you have to refer
to either as a "record," as you falsely did.) You have to recognize that those
statements have quite different credibility, based on their sources and their
corroborating evidence. I'm sorry if you find standards like that too hard to
deal with, but those are what historians use.
> Much of what Madison Hemings reported happened before he was born,
> therefore apply the same standard to those statements as you do the Bacon
> statements.
Madison Hemings was alive when his younger brother Eston was born. When it
suits your purpose, you've argued that we should consider Eston's paternity on
its own because we don't have DNA lines from the other children. Yet when
you're actually faced with Eston's older brother saying whom his mother was
sleeping with at the time, you try to focus attention on anything else.
Madison Hemings did relate many things that he couldn't have witnessed first
hand. The fact that people who wish to denigrate his claims hold this up
simply shows their double standards. We all rely on what our mothers tell us
about who our fathers were. In rare cases, those maternal claims are
contradicted by evidence. What Madison Hemings stated hasn't fallen into that
category.
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
J. L. Bell
> Michae...@nyu.edu (mdgiles) wrote:
> >:| Why are there so
> >:|many occasions where slave masters (like Jefferson) freed only one
> >:|specific group of slaves? Unlike Washington who freed them all, at his
> >:|wife's death.
>
> One thing that does have to go into the above equation is a simple
> economical fact of life back then. Thomas Jefferson was deeply in debt when
> he died. Fact of life in those days, slaves were considered property that
> had value. Thus, unlike Washington, the estate of Jefferson was not in a
> position to free all the slaves. The people that Jefferson owed money to
> would have prevented it.
>
> That doesn't address the issue of would Jefferson freed all had he been in
> a debt free position to do so?
Nor does it address Mr. Giles's original question: Why did Jefferson, despite
knowing his estate was in debt, lessen the value of that estate by freeing the
two sons of Sally Hemings who were still at Monticello?
> This is true. Jefferson's wife who inherited the Hemings was actually the
> owner of her own half sister.
> Sally Hemings was not exactly blk.
>
> Sally's mother was Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings who was a daughter of a
> "full-blooded" African Slave and one Capt. Hemings, an English seaman.
> Betty Hemings was deeded to John Wayles (Jefferson's father in law) as part
> of a Eppes-Wayles's marriage settlement.
> Martha Eppes, John Wayle's first wife gave birth to Martha Wayles, who
> later married Thomas Jefferson.
> After Martha Eppes-Wayles died, John Wayles took Better Hemings as his
> concubine and Sally Hemings was one of the Children of that "arrangement."
Here we see another curious facet of how some people approach the issue of
Sally Hemings's children. They casually accept and pass on statements about
her ancestry even though those accounts are necessarily secondhand. Yet they
denigrate statements from her own children and others about their father for
being secondhand.
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
Andrew McMichael
>
> Andrew McMichael <amcm...@princeton.edu> wrote:
>
> >:|A great deal of history is circumstantial evidence and speculation. You have
> >:|some evidence, you construct a theory. A few years later, if your theory is
> >:|good enough, someone comes along and tries to refute it.
>
> All well and good, but a theory isn't hard cold facts. That is the problem.
Yes. There are few cold, hard facts when it comes to history. That's one of
the problems with this whole debate. People who aren't used to doing history
think that it should be something along the lines of physics, where we can
gather enough facts to make a conclusive point.
> Argument is not evidence, argument is not fact. Argument is argument.
> Circumstantial is not fact. The disturbingly high number of people being
> let out of prisons in recent years, sometimes off death row, because DNA
> evidence shows they are innocent of the crime they were convicted of
> shows that circumstantial "evidence" is far from being as air tight, as
> conclusive as many people would have liked us to believe.
But we aren't trying to convict or exonerate a man of anything. This isn't a
legal case, though alot of people are treating it as such.
> Might she simply support what you appear to want to believe?
What makes you think I "want" to believe in anything? I don't give a damn
whether he did it or not. It is irrelevant to me. I think he did it because
I think there is more evidence that he did than that he didn't.
jal...@cox.net
>:|>Sally's Mother (Betty) would have been half blk-half wht, Sally would have
>:|>been 3/4 wht, 1/4 blk (technically quadroons) and any of her children would
>:|>have been 7/8 white, 1/8 black, and based on Virginia law of the time
>:|>legally white, but still slaves, because Virginia law regarded children of
>:|>the mother to be in the same position as the mother, i.e. if the mother was
>:|>a slave, all of her children were slaves as well. Thus we have a case of
>:|>legally white folks also being legally slaves.
>:|
>:|I'm not sure about Virginia,
Jefferson lived in Virginia, thus Virginia law would have been the law
applied.
J. L. Bell
> There are few cold, hard facts when it comes to history. That's one of
> the problems with this whole debate. People who aren't used to doing history
> think that it should be something along the lines of physics, where we can
> gather enough facts to make a conclusive point.
> But we aren't trying to convict or exonerate a man of anything. This isn't a
> legal case, though alot of people are treating it as such.
Indeed. An attorney associated with the Thomas Jefferson Heritage group has
even prepared a brief for a paternity suit--just in case Madison or Eston
Hemings comes back from the dead to sue Thomas Jefferson for support. It can
be accessed in PDF form through this page:
http://www.jefferson-hemings.org/2000.htm
So we have some historians and several non-historians demanding scientific
and/or legal proof about a historical controversy of two centuries ago, and
insisting that the weight of the historical evidence shouldn't be enough to
convince anyone.
Yet those same people show themselves willing to accept a lesser level of
historical evidence about other questions, such as Sally Hemings's own
ancestry. That's the double standard Annette Gordon-Reed wrote about in her
book on the issue, come back in a new guise. Rather than insisting that the
question of the president fathering Hemings's children is settled and
shouldn't be explored further, Jefferson "defenders" (in some cases the same
people as before) insist the question is still open.
J. L. Bell JnoL...@compuserve.com
jal...@cox.net
jals...@home.com wrote:
>:|> Michae...@nyu.edu (mdgiles) wrote:
>:|> >:| Why are there so
>:|> >:|many occasions where slave masters (like Jefferson) freed only one
>:|> >:|specific group of slaves? Unlike Washington who freed them all, at his
>:|> >:|wife's death.
>:|>
>:|> One thing that does have to go into the above equation is a simple
>:|> economical fact of life back then. Thomas Jefferson was deeply in debt when
>:|> he died. Fact of life in those days, slaves were considered property that
>:|> had value. Thus, unlike Washington, the estate of Jefferson was not in a
>:|> position to free all the slaves. The people that Jefferson owed money to
>:|> would have prevented it.
>:|>
>:|> That doesn't address the issue of would Jefferson freed all had he been in
>:|> a debt free position to do so?
>:|Nor does it address Mr. Giles's original question: Why did Jefferson, despite
>:|knowing his estate was in debt, lessen the value of that estate by freeing the
>:|two sons of Sally Hemings who were still at Monticello?
Did Thomas Jefferson free any other slaves other than the two you mention
above?
Did Thomas Jefferson free any other relatives of Sally Hemings, other than
the two you mention above?
Was there ever a letter written by anyone stating something to the effect
that Jefferson freed several slaves (not just Sally Hemings two sons) who
could pass for white and had skills that would enable them to survive in
the white world, as white?
Is there anything in Jefferson's Notes On Virginia (written when Sally
Hemings was only about 10 years old) that lay out a potential plan for
freeing the children of any slaves when it was thought that they could
continue to live and survive in the white world as free persons?
This is exactly what I have been referring to. People take bits and pieces,
or take some facts and leave out other facts to build make their theory
look better then it actually is. I see both sides doing this.
This whole slave freeing thing is suppose to rest on a promise that
Jefferson made to Sally Hemings while in France. This promise is suppose to
show that Jefferson was the father of her children.
However, if such a promise was made, it could have just as easily been made
for the following reason: To enable Thomas Jefferson to brin both Sally
Hemings and her brother back from France, to enable him to get some return
on them, from them.
Sally Hemings and her brother were free in France. They weren't slaves any
longer. Jefferson wanted them to return with him to Virginia where they
would be slaves again. He made them a promise to get them to agree to come
back to Virginia with him. (He had to get them to agree, he couldn't force
them to return) To Sally's brother he promised freedom once he (the
brother) had trained a replacement (the brother had been trained in French
cooking in France) Sally Hemings was not a male, was not especially
trained in any craft that might sustain her in America thus to her he
promised freedom to any children she might have when they reached a certain
age. (Those who want Jefferson to be the father of her children point to
the promise and/or that he didn't promise her her freedom as meaning that
he was smitten by and with her, wanted to keep her for himself and would
thus be the father of her children.)
>:|
>:|> This is true. Jefferson's wife who inherited the Hemings was actually the
>:|> owner of her own half sister.
>:|> Sally Hemings was not exactly blk.
>:|>
>:|> Sally's mother was Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings who was a daughter of a
>:|> "full-blooded" African Slave and one Capt. Hemings, an English seaman.
>:|> Betty Hemings was deeded to John Wayles (Jefferson's father in law) as part
>:|> of a Eppes-Wayles's marriage settlement.
>:|> Martha Eppes, John Wayle's first wife gave birth to Martha Wayles, who
>:|> later married Thomas Jefferson.
>:|> After Martha Eppes-Wayles died, John Wayles took Better Hemings as his
>:|> concubine and Sally Hemings was one of the Children of that "arrangement."
>:|
>:|Here we see another curious facet of how some people approach the issue of
>:|Sally Hemings's children. They casually accept and pass on statements about
>:|her ancestry even though those accounts are necessarily secondhand. Yet they
>:|denigrate statements from her own children and others about their father for
>:|being secondhand.
>:|
Do you have any evidence that there is no records that exist or existed
showing anything about her background.
I have no problem with dropping out all gossip, all hearsay, all
unsubstantiated claims (all claims that cannot be support with documentary
evidence). What do you think you are going to have left?
You probably won't even have a story left.
But to get back to the above, which part of her background do you question
or doubt and why?
Sam Sloan
wrote:
>One thing I have not seen mentioned in these postings (admittedly I
>have not read every word) is that Jefferson was in his 60s when
>Hemings' last child was born. That being the only one for whom any
>possible relation to a Jefferson has been established.
>
>I also have not seen anyone question the motives of national media
>which reported that a definite DNA link was established among Hemings
>descendants with little or no mention of the actual results. Nor have
>I noticed any apologies for their misleading (or downright lying to)
>the American public. I suppose "not bashing" dead white men is
>unfashionable.
>
>Cary Osborne
What lies?
Sam Sloan
<jturn4...@lycos.com> wrote:
>This lie is just par for the course for the U.S. news media. I heard
>that the DNA was consistent with belonging to his family but not him
>specifically. If she was knocked up by a Jefferson the odds are it
>was his nephew.
What nephew? Do you have anyone in mind?
>
>This is a small part of the American Bolsheviks agenda to tear down
>all that is decent in this country. They have been working like
>termites to destroy the institutions of this country that gave the
>worthless cuckolds a home.
>--------
>billybobwhite
>
Sam Sloan
"The Slave Children of Thomas Jefferson". Why the omission?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/4906574009/slavesofthomasje
On Mon, 31 Dec 2001 13:21:59 GMT, jali...@home.com wrote:
>bulld...@aol.com (Bulldogwaw) wrote:
>
>>:|>From: jali...@home.com
>>:|>Date: 12/29/2001 2:12 PM Eastern Standard Time
>>:|>Message-id: <ii4s2usa8tv74ai2l...@4ax.com>
>>:|
>>:|>>:| Hate to tell you this, BUT - - - they did some DNA on Sally Hemmings
>>:|>progeny,
>>:|>>:|and there was a match to Jefferson.
>>:|>
>>:|
>>:|>Hate to tell you thus, well actually I don't hate to tell you this at all. I
>>:|am aware of the DNA results
>>:|
>>:|Oh really?
>
>
>Yep, far more so than you are apparently.
>
>>:|
>>:|
>>:|>There was a match to "A" male Jefferson.
>>:|>
>>:|
>>:|>The DNA did not come from Thomas Jefferson.
>>:|
>>:| Wrong!
>
>LOL, are you actually trying to claim they dug up Thomas Jefferson's
>remains? LOL, you better think about that one before you answer.
>
>The DNA for the Jefferson sides was taken from descendants of Field
>Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's uncle.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>" There were nineteen subjects, which included five descendants of two sons
>of Field Jefferson, three descendants of three sons of the Carr brothers'
>grandfather, five descendants of two sons of Thomas Woodson, the alleged
>first son of Sally, one descendant of Eston Flemings, Sally's last child,
>and five control subjects. The blood samples were then hand-carried to
>England in December 1997 by Dr. Foster, to a laboratory for testing and
>comparison."
>(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty.
>The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
>Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 28)
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>There is a chromosome the "Y" chromosome that remains constant in males of
>a same line. It is only passed from generation to generation by males to
>males of the same line.
>
>Thomas Jefferson had no male children that lived to adulthood. They did not
>did up Thomas Jefferson's remains. Nor did they locate and dig up the
>remains of his one male child that did die young.
>
>
>Instead they used descendants of Field Jefferson who was Thomas Jefferson's
>uncle. Field Jefferson would have had the same Y Chromosome as Thomas
>Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's Father, Thomas Jefferson's Grandfather, and
>the same Y Chromosome as any surviving males in Thomas Jefferson's direct
>line of descendants had he had any that survived.
>
>DNA testing will not establish paternity beyond one generation with any
>degree of absolute certainty. It can exclude potential fathers but cannot
>identify with absolute certainty a father beyond one generation.
>
>The reason being while in males the Y Chromosome would be present through
>many generation all other chromosomes change because the mating of a man
>and woman produces new chromosomes.
>
>Example: A paternity test using DNA could pretty well establish that your
>son, if you had a son was actually your son, or could prove beyond any
>doubt that he wasn't, if in fact he wasn't.
>However, your son matures and has children with a woman. The children of
>that union would have different DNA than yours, with the exception of that
>one Y Chromosome that would be present in any and all male children of that
>union.
>
>What the DNA tests in the Jefferson-Sally H. situation proved was that the
>odds were 1-100 that a Jefferson male was the father of the last of the
>Sally H. children
>
>There were no matches between the Jefferson male line and the Woodson
>line, that being the Thomas Woodson line. The descendants of Thomas Woodson
>have claimed for decades that Thomas Woodson was the male child that was
>conceived by Sally. H. when she was in France with Thomas Jefferson and who
>was born shortly after their return from France. It was this Tom , so the
>Woodson oral traditions goes, that James Thomson Callender first wrote
>about when he wrote about Thomas Jefferson and his mistress slave September
>1, 1802., and it was that Tom that was in fact the son of Thomas Jefferson
>and Sally H.
>
>Well, the results of the DNA doesn't support that. No Y Chromosome
>consistent with the Jefferson line was found in the Thomas Woodson
>descendant's blood sample.
>
>The Woodson clan had additional samples tested in 2000 with the same
>results. They have since, as a group, dropped attempts to gain burial
>rights in the Jefferson cemetery.
>
>
>During the time period that Sally H. was conceiving children the following
>lived at or within 20 miles of Monticello, and visited often when Thomas
>Jefferson was there,
>They are:
>Thomas Jefferson
>Randolph Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's brother)
>Five sons of Randolph Jefferson who lived at or near Monticello and at
>least one male cousin, George (See: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American
>Travesty. The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert
>Coates, SR., Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 40)
>
>All of the above would have the exact same Y Chromosome.
>
>Jefferson's Uncle, Field Jefferson, had male children, who in turn had male
>children. Thus, any or all of those particular Jefferson's, if they ever
>visited at Monticello would have been potential, "suspects."
>
>
>Thus all the DNA test established was that the odds were 1-100 that one of
>the males in the Jefferson line fathered at least the last of Sally Hemings
>children. The DNA did not and could not identify which one.
>
>
>To sum it up once more:
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>(1) There was no match between the DNA of descendants of Jefferson and
>Woodson. This finding was extremely important. It meant that Thomas
>Jefferson (or any other Jefferson) did not father Thomas Woodson as stated
>in Callender's 1802 article.
>
>(2) There was no match between the DNA of Woodson, Herrings, and Carr
>descendants. This meant that neither of the Carr brothers fathered Thomas
>Woodson or Eston Herrings. However, it is still conceivable that they could
>have fathered one or more of Sally's other children.
>
>(3) A match was found between the DNA of descendants of Field Jefferson and
>the descendant of Eston Herrings. This only means that any one of the
>Jefferson men previously mentioned could have fathered Eston Herrings, but
>it doesn't indicate which Jefferson.
>(SOURCE OF INFORAMTION: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty.
>The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, SR.,
>Jefferson editions, Charlottesville, Virginia, (2001) p 30)
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>:|>Evidence? It must have been so quiet no one knows about it.
>>:|
>>:| Funny it seems to have been enough for Jefferson's *white* descendats to
>>:|accept the black ones as members of the family.
>>:|Guess they don't know as much as *you* huh?
>
>
>Your claim was:
>
>>Hate to tell you this, BUT - - - they did some DNA on Sally Hemmings
>>progeny, and there was a match to Jefferson.
>
>>A much quieter note they found the samematches with the offspring of
>>some others of Jefferson's slaves.
>
>>So, I would say there is proof now. The Hemmings family has been welcomed
>>by the Jeffersons as family. That does it for me.
>
>My comment
>Evidence? It must have been so quiet no one knows about it.
>was in direct reply to your
>
>>A much quieter note they found the samematches with the offspring
>>of some others of Jefferson's slaves.
>
>You still have not supplied any evidence for the above.
>
>In addition, acceptance is not universal.
>
>>:|
>>:|>Actually, I don't have a problem with the fact that Sally H. and J Jefferson
>>:|might have been involved sexually, hell even romantically.
>>:|
>>:| Neither would I if she had been his wife instead of *slave.*
>>:|
>>:|>But, it has not been proven, which was my point.
>>:|
>>:| To most of the world it has.
>
>"Most of the world" as you call it was duped by the original misleading
>articles published in 98-99.
Why were the articles misleading??
>Follow up articles published giving the "rest of the story" is correcting
>that perception, that is for those interested in knowing. Those interested
>in believing the worse will continue to hang their hats on the
>misrepresentations created with those first articles.
>
>>:|>None of the Sally H. descendants have been allowed burial permission in the
>>:|Jefferson family cemetery.
>>:|
>>:| Don't know if they have integrated the family cemetary, but they have
>>:|welcomed the black descendats at family gatherings. You should watch
>>:|educational TV more.
>
>Which is not proof.
>I prefer to read the work of scholars rather than writers of TV programming
>who looks at ratings and drama for audience appeal.
>
>Actually I have here and have read all of the following:
> All of the Anti Jefferson was the father works of the likes of Dumas
>Malone and other Jefferson scholars.
>
>Thomas Jefferson a Intimate History, Fawn M. Brodie (pro Jefferson was
>father work)
>
>A President in the Family, Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas
>Woodson, Byron W. Woodson, Sr. (pro Jefferson was father written by a
>member of the Woodson clan)
>
>
>Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings An American Controversy, Annette
>Gordon_Reed (a pro Jefferson is the father book)
>
>The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty Edited by Eyler Robert
>Coates, Sr. (A anti Jefferson is the father works)
>
>The last three mentioned works above all take into account the DNA
>results, address other aspects since 1998 including the so called
>acceptance by the Jefferson descendants, the Monticello foundation etc.
>
>I suggest you get away from education TV and read the actual facts ,
>results and works by scholars on both sides.
>
>>:|
>>:| There is vastly more than mere speculation to Jefferson regularly drilling
>>:|for oil with Hemmings. And has been for almost 200 years.
>
> Not really
>
>The best that can be said is there is valid evidence on both sides of the
>issue. However, the DNA evidence has damaged badly the "he is the father"
>crowd.
Very strange statement. The DNA evidence, combined with all the other
historical evidence, proves conclusively that Thomas Jefferson was the
father.
>By two separate sets of DNA tests made on descendants of Thomas Woodson and
>both sets ruling any Jefferson out as the father of Thomas Woodson, much of
>the circumstantial evidence has been discredited.
What are you talking about? What circumstantial evidence has been
discredited?
>There is another Sally Hemings offspring line located. The grave of William
>Hemings, son of Madison Hemings, grandson of Sally Hemings has been located
>and none of the Hemings defendants seem willing to give permission to have
>DNA tests made.
>
>Tom - (Woodson) (1790) was suppose to be conceived by Thomas Jefferson and
>Sally Hemings in France. DNA ruled this out.
>
>Harriett - (1795) died in 1799 Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas
>Jefferson
>
>Beverly- (1798) son of Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
>
>Unamed daughter (1799) died in infancy Sally Hemings and some believe
>Thomas Jefferson
This is just a theory. There is no proof that this child existed.
>
>Harriet - (1801) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
>
>Madison - (1805) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson
>
>Easton - (1808) Sally Hemings and some believe Thomas Jefferson DNA proves
>that there is a 1-100 chance that a male Jefferson did father this child
>(rather than a random male from outside the Jefferson line) with Sally H.
>but cannot show which Jefferson. There were at the very least 8 potential
>suspects.
Sam Sloan
http://www.samsloan.com/slaves.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/4906574009/slavesofthomasje
Sam Sloan
>"J. L. Bell" <jnol...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>:|jali...@home.com wrote:
>>:|> Thomas Jefferson's brother Randolph was 51 years of age was known to hang
>>:|> out with the slaves at Monticello even to the point of playing the fiddle
>>:|> for the slaves to dance to etc in the evenings when he was at Monticello.
>>:|
>>:|The statement about Randolph Jefferson's fiddle-playing is not tied to a
>>:|particular date, but he seems to have spent most of his time at his brother
>>:|Thomas's plantations/slave labor camps before Sally Hemings conceived her
>>:|children.
>
>
>Seems?
>
>
>Let me set some ground rules here early on.
>
>I don't have a clue if T J did or did not have a sexual relationship with
>one or any of his females slaves.
>I'm honest enough to say that.
>Now, I'll toss in the other side of that, NEITHER does anyone else.
>I also have no ax to grind, I am not for or against Jefferson. if he did or
>didn't doesn't alter my views of him in the least bit. He was a man, great
>in many ways, flawed in other ways. He had beauty and pimples as well, as
>we all do.
>
>There is no concrete evidence that has ever been found, historical or
>scientific that PROVES that he ever fathered any children by any slave.
>
>What there is is a lot of circumstantial evidence, a lot of speculation, a
>lot of spinning.
>
>What you have and will continue to have is those that want to believe he
>did, and they will tout all the circumstantial evidence that exists that
>seems to bolster their case.
>
>On the other side of that coin you have those who don't want to believe
>that he fathered any of her children and they will tout all the
>circumstantial evidence that seems to bolster their case.
>
>Both sides will pick holes, use sarcasm, etc to try and damage the other
>side.
>
>One thing I have found seems to be habit from both sides of leaving things
>out or perhaps even outright altering things.
>
>You can seemingly find in the case of all the major players each pointing
>the finger at the players on the other side saying members they, those
>members, left this or that out, misrepresented this or that, didn't
>mention this or that, etc.
>
>Example, in one of the books I recently read they talk about a an erasure
>mark in one of the books Jefferson kept records in, indicating that someone
>had erased an entry there and IIRC it would have been a spot where a
>certain slave named Tom, if said slave existed should have been listed.
>
>The implication being that some unknown person erased Tom's name.
>
>You can find examples of this going on from and on both sides of this
>debate..
>
>I would love to find a study, any study, done by someone or by persona's
>that truly and honestly could give a figs leaf less about any meanings to
>any outcome, no axes to grind for or against anyone.
>
>For such a study to take every single piece of known information that could
>even remotely add to or take away from the total of knowledge in this
>matter.
>
>In the case of the DNA would completely and honestly explain in very
>detailed terms exactly what those tests showed and didn't show, might of
>proved and couldn't prove.
>
>List all the information that supports both sides, all the information tat
>hurts either or both sides and any evidence that does neither, in short all
>the good, bad and indifferent.
>
>However, finding such a study seems pretty hard to do.
>
>There isn't anything I have read yet over the numerous books, reports,
>articles, etc yet that I can't see major flaws in, and that is material for
>both sides. When I start running into claims that so and so misrepresented
>this or that or left this or that out of their book etc then I want to know
>only one thing. Did they, and if they did, why did they?
>
>Those answers become more and more difficult to find.
>
>What we seem to have more than anything else is a war of personalities and
>scholars
>
>We have all the older scholars bashing Fawn Brodie, and her bashing them.
>We have Annette Gordon-Reed bashing the older ones, the Brodie bashers and
>some of the new scholars. We have Eyler Robert Coates bashing Annette
>Gordon-Reed and Byron W. Woodson bashing anyone who doesn't support the
>Woodson Family oral traditions.
>
>We have The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society bashing that TJMF
>
>Even the National Genealogical Society in their Quarterly Volume 89, No.3,
>September 2001 issue had a special report on the Jefferson-Hemings debate.
>I am reading it now. What I see with it is possibly a respected Society
>prostituting itself. It has joined that bashing. The arguments they
>present to bash the Coates book are so surface, so generalized that they
>are actually comical. They have come to the conclusion that Jefferson was a
>father of some of Sally Hemings children (using the rules of genealogy
>research and study, or so they say, but the flaws are evident)
>
>There are honest points raised on both sides of the issue, I would much
>rather see more effort, more honest attempts to address those honest
>points that are raised by both sides than all the bull crap bashing that is
>going on.
>
>I would much rather see more honesty, more admitting by both sides that
>there are questions, facts, evidence, etc that at this point in time don't
>have answers for nd may never have answers for. It may never be possible to
>say for certain he did or he didn't.
>
>All these books, reports, studies, etc are people or groups of people
>putting together that info that basically supports their conclusions on
>this matter while claiming the conclusions of the other side is incorrect.
>
>I get tired of that.
>
>I want to know, things like
>(1) Is there truly an erasure?
>(2) Did Gordon-Reed publish a copy of a letter when there was an original
>known to exist that contained info the copy didn't contain and would have
>conflicted with the point she was trying to make? If so why?
>and so on
>
>I want to know things like that, I want to know the answers to all the
>charges each side makes against the other side. In doing that I may end up
>with the most honest gathering of information that it is possible to have.
>=================================================
>Here is what is known:
>
>This whole so called scandal came about as a result of a certain pissed off
>man wanting to get revenge. Thus he published a story in the newspaper in
>1802 as I recall. Ironically, that man's original story has been pretty
>much demolished.
>
>TOM WOODSON
>That man wrote about a boy named Tom who was about 12 who was suppose to
>have been a product of a sexual relationship between TJ and a slave named
>Sally Hemings. It was not a story about a boy approx 4 years old named
>Beverly. (Tom was the son that was suppose to have been conceived in
>France and born in America shortly after they all returned from France.
>This was suppose to have been the ultimate proof, because no Carr male was
>in France, no Jefferson male, other than TJ was in France. This was the
>foundation of the long time romantic or pure sexual relationship between
>Sally Hemings and TJ story. But the DNA testing didn't support any of
>that.)
>
>Tom Woodson is the only Tom put forth by any oral traditions of any of
>those claiming to be descendants of TJ and Sally Hemings and what the DNA
>does show is that there was no "Jefferson" Y Chromosome found in any of the
>Woodson male lines and six different test were run on what appears to be
>all six surviving male lines of descendants. IIRC, the Bryon Woodson book
>does list Tom Woodson as having had 11 children of which 6 were sons who
>went on to have sons etc.
>
>Thus, the original rumor/story doesn't stand up. The woodson oral
>tradition, which was suppose to have been the most detailed, most complete,
>oldest, etc doesn't float.
>
>BTW, the oral tradition of the descendants of Madison Hemings claim that a
>child of unknown gender was conceived in Paris and born at Monticello but
>only lived a short time. So even the various oral traditions don't agree
>on this one.
>
>HARRIET HEMINGS
>Born 5 October, 1795, died December 1797 [1]
>
>BEVERLY HEMINGS
>Born 1 April, 1798, left monticello in 1821 or 1822, dropped from sight.
>According to Madison Hemings, he passed into white society, married in
>Maryland into a family "in good Circumstances"; and had at least one child,
>a daughter. (unless he had son as well and either his grave or their
>graves could be found, good DNA harvested, this is a dead end trail with
>regards to any DNA evidence.[1]
>
It is virtually certain that Beverley was the grandfather of Edward
Graham Jefferson, retired chairman of the board of DuPont Chemical
Corp.
>HARRIET HEMINGS
>Born in May 1801; left Monticello in 1821 or 1822, possibly with brother
>Beverly. Madison reported that she passed into white society and "married a
>white man in good standing in Washington City." He last heard from her
>about 1863. She had several children, but nothing further is known about
>her or her offspring. [1]
>
>MADISON HEMINGS
>born 19 January 1805; manumitted by Jefferson's will in 1826. He was
>considered white by the 1830 census taker's but married a free quadroon,
>MARY McCOY, on 21 November 1831. Because interracial marriage was then
>illegal in Virginia's Madison went before authorities in Charlottesville,
>shortly bone his marriage, to register as a "free Negro." That document
>describes him as a "mulato" of light complexion, 5' 7'/s" tall." After his
>mother's death, Madison moved his family to Pike County, Ohio, where he
>worked as a builder in Waverly, the county seat. After retirement, he
>settled across the county line in rural Ross County, where he died 28
>November 1877.
>
>His children were (1) a son who died young in Albemarle County; (2) Sarah
>(3) Thomas Eston, who died in a Confederate prison; (4) Harriet, who died
>in 1925 (g) Mary Ann, who married [-?-] Johnson; (6) Catherine Jane; (7)
>William Beverly, who joined the Union Army at age sixteen and died in 1910
>at the military home in Leavenworth, Kansas; (8) James Madison, who moved
>into white society in Colorado; (9) Julia A.; and (10) Ellen Wayles, who
>wed an Oberlin College graduate, Andrew Jackson Roberts, and died in 1940
>after seeing one son (Frederick Madison Roberts) serve twelve years in the
>California State Assembly.'" [1]
>
> ESTON HEMINGS
>(alias JEFFERSON), born 21 May 1808, is the son for whom DNA testing was
>conducted among male offspring, with a finding that they carry the
>Jefferson Y-chromosome. Eston was willed by Jefferson to John Hemings
>(Eston's half-uncle) as an apprentice until he reached twenty-one, but he
>was informally manumitted in 1826, three years early. 6-ton, too, was
>labeled white by the 1830 census taker in Charlottesville. However, on 14
>June 1832, he wed the free octoroon JULIA ANN ISAAcS and filed a "free
>Negro" registration that describes him as a "Aright mulatto," 6' 1". After
>his mother's death, he moved to Ohio with his brother Madison but settled
>in Chillicothe, where he became a musician of considerable repute. In 1852
>he moved his family to Madison, Wisconsin. There they changed their surname
>to Jefferson and established their racial identity as white. Eston died in
>Madison on 3 January 1856.
>
>His children were (1) John Wayles Jefferson, a lieutenant-colonel of a
>white unit in the Civil War; and later a wealthy banker and cotton broker
>in Memphis, Tennessee; (2) Ann(a) W Jefferson, whose son Walter Beverly
>Pearson became the multimillionaire president of Standard Screw Company in
>Chicago; and (3) William Beverly Jefferson, who owned two hotels and an
>omnibus company in Madison. [1]
>FOOTNOTE
>[1] National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Volume 89, No. 3, September
>2001 pp 171-172.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>A grave site for William Beverly has been found and Coates in his book The
>Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty stated that prior to the DNA
>results oral permission was obtained by descendants of Madison Jefferson to
>exhume the remains for DNA testing but once the DNA results of the original
>testing was made public these same people refused to sign the legal
>documents that would have allowed the exhumation to actually take place. he
>stated they said they preferred to stand by their oral traditions.
>
>Therefore, science has given a 100-1 odds, when compared to random male
>population sampling, that a male Jefferson fathered one of Sally Hemings
>children, that child being Eston Hemings.
>
>A testing of the DNA that might be harvested from William Beverly would
>isolate Eston Hemings as being the only known offspring or a probable
>Jefferson male, or would expand the known offsprings of a Jefferson male.
>The descendants of Madison Hemings don't seem willing to take that gamble.
>
>The DNA taken from William Beverly could also be matched with the Woodson
>and Carr DNA results thus perhaps shedding more light on the subject.
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>With the current known evidence, including the scientific evidence no one
>can state positively that Thomas Jefferson fathered Eston Hemings, let
>along any other Hemings child. The evidence does show he didn't father any
>child named Tom Hemings, or Tom Woodson.
>
>One can suspect he fathered Eston Hemings, one can speculate he did, but
>one cannot prove he did. The scientific evidence says nothing about any of
>the other known Hemings children and rules him out as a father for Tom
>Woodson no matter who Tom Woodson's mother was.
>
>With cooperation from the right people more information could be gathered
>by doing DNA tests on William Beverly, provided good DNA could be
>harvested. If a burial site for Beverly Hemingway could be found and good
>DNA harvested, or any male children he had was found and good DNA could be
>harvested, more would be known.
>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>[snip]
>
>>:|You criticize Annette Gordon-Reed for not considering other Jefferson nephews
>>:|as possible fathers of Sally Hemings's children. Please acknowledge that in
>>:|the entire history of this dispute NO ONE suggested in print that any of those
>>:|nephews had sexual relations with Hemings until after the DNA tests sent
>>:|diehard deniers scurrying to find candidates with the right genes. There was
>>:|no reason for Gordon-Reed's book--which was published before the DNA tests and
>>:|was a review of the historiography on the subject--to consider those other men.
>
>
>Irrelevant.
>
>I do believe the mystery was considered settled by those who wanted to have
>it settled. They claimed T Jefferson was the father, Those who didn't want
>him to be the father offered up the Carr brothers.
>
>let me offer you something from page 227 of National Genealogical Society
>Quarterly, Volume 89, No. 3, September 2001
>
>"By definitions, the scholarly practice of history is grounded in
>revisionism. Historians present new evidence and offer new interpretations
>of previously examined evidence, deepening and enhancing our comprehension
>of the past in the process."
>
>History is not latin, i.e. a dead language.
>
>There is constantly research being done and at times new facts become
>known, which in turn caused a reevaluation of previously known information
>and conclusions.
>
>It doesn't matter when a research was began to find other possible
>"fathers." What matters is, evidence was discovered which instituted a
>reexamination of existing opinion, fact sand conclusions. What matters is,
>there were other potential "fathers" found.
>
>What matters now is, can it be proven they weren't and only T Jefferson was
>or could be?.
>That should be the direction now, not what was the situation for decades
>before.
>
>
>>:|Jefferson's Randolph descendants didn't mention their Jefferson cousins in
>>:|connection with Hemings. Instead, one claimed that everyone at Monticello knew
>>:|that Peter Carr had an exclusive, long-term relationship with Hemings and
>>:|fathered all her children.
Who claimed this?
>Another claimed that Samuel Carr did. One Randolph
>>:|even claimed to have heard a teary confession. Those stories are, of course,
>>:|mutually contradictory. There's no documentary evidence in their favor, and
>>:|they're further contradicted by the DNA findings. But they do show that the
>>:|Randolphs were not above pointing the finger at their distant cousins for
>>:|fathering Sally Hemings's children. If the actual men involved were
>>:|Jefferson's nephews by the male line, why didn't the Randolphs say so?
>
>Who knows what their reasoning might have been.
>
jal...@cox.net
>:|On Thu, 10 Jan 2002 14:51:00 GMT, jali...@home.com wrote:
>:|>BEVERLY HEMINGS
>:|>Born 1 April, 1798, left monticello in 1821 or 1822, dropped from sight.
>:|>According to Madison Hemings, he passed into white society, married in
>:|>Maryland into a family "in good Circumstances"; and had at least one child,
>:|>a daughter. (unless he had son as well and either his grave or their
>:|>graves could be found, good DNA harvested, this is a dead end trail with
>:|>regards to any DNA evidence.[1]
>:|It is virtually certain that Beverley was the grandfather of Edward
>:|Graham Jefferson, retired chairman of the board of DuPont Chemical
>:|Corp.
Your evidence is?
It is very odd that not a single book I have read across yet on this topic
mentions what you said above. As I recall, all who mention him either say
he dropped from sight, i.e. they have no information on him, or he had a
daughter.
If he had a daughter who later had sons, its irrelevant with regards to DNA
testing. That DNA won't tell them anything.
jal...@cox.net
>:|jali...@home.com wrote:
>:|>
>:|> Andrew McMichael <amcm...@princeton.edu> wrote:
>:|>
>:|> >:|A great deal of history is circumstantial evidence and speculation. You have
>:|> >:|some evidence, you construct a theory. A few years later, if your theory is
>:|> >:|good enough, someone comes along and tries to refute it.
>:|>
>:|> All well and good, but a theory isn't hard cold facts. That is the problem.
>:|
>:|Yes. There are few cold, hard facts when it comes to history. That's one of
>:|the problems with this whole debate. People who aren't used to doing history
>:|think that it should be something along the lines of physics, where we can
>:|gather enough facts to make a conclusive point.
People are doing that very thing. Did not a report issued by the TJMF in
Jan. 2000 suggested that Thomas Jefferson fathered one and probably all six
of the children of the slave Sally Hemings? (The Jefferson-Hemings Myth,
Coates, p 10)
The current state of knowledge does not support that conclusion.
Did not Gordon-Reed suggest that the best evidence supports the same
finding? That is her opinion. The current state of knowledge does not
support that conclusion.
>:|> Argument is not evidence, argument is not fact. Argument is argument.
>:|> Circumstantial is not fact. The disturbingly high number of people being
>:|> let out of prisons in recent years, sometimes off death row, because DNA
>:|> evidence shows they are innocent of the crime they were convicted of
>:|> shows that circumstantial "evidence" is far from being as air tight, as
>:|> conclusive as many people would have liked us to believe.
>:|But we aren't trying to convict or exonerate a man of anything. This isn't a
>:|legal case, though alot of people are treating it as such.
IIRC you have made this point before. I wonder why you keep stating this is
not a legal case. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that a
lawyer applied the legal standards pertaining to the introduction,
admittance and use of evidence to the so called evidence offered by those
who claim Jefferson fathered her kids: Dixon, Richard E., Attorney at Law,
The Case Against Thomas Jefferson: A Trial Analysis of the Evidence on
Paternity. The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American Travesty. Edited By
Eyler Robert Coates, Sr. The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society,
Chalottesville, Virginia. (2001) pp. 125-161, and found it wanting.
I don't give a damn if its a legal trial or not. Some sort of standard has
to be established and applied evenly and across the board to any and all
evidence, for, against and inconclusive. If genealogy is to ever be taken
as a serious discipline, if history is expected to fill in gaps and
details, to paint pictures of our past, there has to be some sort of
standard that is used with regards to undocumented evidence, gossip,
hearsay, rumors, etc. That standard has to be applied the same to all such
evidence.
The current state of the evidence supports the following:
It can be said that there is significant historical evidence that indicates
that Thomas Jefferson COULD have been the father of Eston Hemings.
It can also be said that there is significant historical evidence of equal
stature that indicates that Thomas Jefferson was NOT the father of Eston
Hemings. (Paraphrase of a comment by White McKenzie Wallenborn, M.D. A
Commitee Insider's Viewpoint, The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American
Travesty. Edited By Eyler Robert Coates, Sr. The Thomas Jefferson Heritage
Society, Chalottesville, Virginia. (2001) p. 58)
>:|> Might she simply support what you appear to want to believe?
>:|What makes you think I "want" to believe in anything?
Your comments, your replies, the trust of your arguments, etc.
>:|I don't give a damn
>:|whether he did it or not. It is irrelevant to me.
If you don't give a damn and it is so irrelevant, why do you keep coming
back replying to posts in this thread?
Actions speak louder than words.
I think he did it because
>:|I think there is more evidence that he did than that he didn't.
I guess it depends on the standard you apply when you define what is valid
"evidence" and what isn't valid "evidence," and if you apply that standard
evenly to all, documented and undocumented information, gossip, hearsay,
and so on and so forth.
Sam Sloan
>People are doing that very thing. Did not a report issued by the TJMF in
>Jan. 2000 suggested that Thomas Jefferson fathered one and probably all six
>of the children of the slave Sally Hemings? (The Jefferson-Hemings Myth,
>Coates, p 10)
>
>The current state of knowledge does not support that conclusion.
Why do you say over and over again "The current state of knowledge
does not support that conclusion."
All of the evidence points to that conclusion. Can you cite even one
bit of evidence which points to any other conclusion?
Sam Sloan
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/4906574009/slavesofthomasje
jal...@cox.net
>:|On Wed, 16 Jan 2002 12:59:49 GMT, jal...@cox.net wrote:
>:|
>:|
>:|>People are doing that very thing. Did not a report issued by the TJMF in
>:|>Jan. 2000 suggested that Thomas Jefferson fathered one and probably all six
>:|>of the children of the slave Sally Hemings? (The Jefferson-Hemings Myth,
>:|>Coates, p 10)
>:|>
>:|>The current state of knowledge does not support that conclusion.
>:|
>:|Why do you say over and over again "The current state of knowledge
>:|does not support that conclusion."
Because it is true. Why does that bother you so much?
>:|All of the evidence points to that conclusion.
What actual evidence is there?
What direct evidence shows that Thomas Jefferson fathered any children
beyond those he is credited to have fathered with his wife?
>:|Can you cite even one
>:|bit of evidence which points to any other conclusion?
Maybe you should read again what I have already posted in the various posts
here.
First and foremost no one can prove that Thomas Jefferson fathered any
children by any slave.
Science is not capable of proving that.
What direct evidence is there?
The only people who could supply direct testimony would be Thomas
Jefferson, Sally Hemings. They would be the two parties most directly
involved. Did either ever admit to such a relationship? Did either ever put
into writing any references to such a relationship?
Is there any eye witness testimony from people that saw them having sex?
There is plenty of gossip and plenty of hearsay, neither of which
constitutes proof. There are also plenty of denials from various people.
There is a lot of people who may have had reason to want to shelter
Jefferson saying such isn't true and almost equal amount of items and
people saying it is true. People, I might add, that might have reasons to
want it to be so,
You have a couple oral traditions, which don't exactly agree with each
other. The scientific evidence (DNA) has totally shot one of those oral
traditions out of the saddle.
That same scientific evidence does show a link between two 20th century
families, and when all the dust and crap is settled indicates something
like a 100 to 1 odds that a male Jefferson is the father of Eston Hemings.
(provided of course that there was no alteration or mutation of that Y
chromosome from the late 1700 Jefferson to the current two 20th century
descendants that were tested and provided that match.)
There was a chance of testing another line of Hemings that would or could
have involved a Jefferson male as a father of a different son of Sally
Hemings, but those needed to give permission decided not to take a chance
of having their beloved oral tradition perhaps shot down. They refused
written permission once the DNA results were published, after having given
oral permission before said publication.
Had that DNA been able to be harvested and tested it would have cleared or
involved the Carr male as a possible father of this Carr son, cleared or
involved a Jefferson male as a possible father of this son.
Had a Jefferson male been shown to have been the father of this particular
Hemings son the case against the Jefferson's would have been strengthened
Had it cleared a Jefferson male, on wow, that would have really muddied up
the waters.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only Eston Hemings line has been shown, thus far, to have any potential
connection to a Jefferson line by way of the DNA.
Not such connections have been made to Madison Hemings line or Beverly
Hemings. The Madison Hemings line could be compared, except once the
original DNA results were published the descendants of Madison Hemings
refused to follow up on the oral yes they had already given to exhume the
body of William Beverly, a son of Madison Hemings.
(Seems like they are afraid maybe their "oral traditions" might take a hit
as well, at least they don't seem confident enough to take the risk. Can't
say I blame them. If there was no match found in the Madison Hemings line
to any Jefferson, that would be devastating to the Thomas Jefferson is the
father story. The Madison Hemings oral traditions would be blown as sky
high as the Tom Woodson oral traditions were.)
Beverly Heming had no known male children so his DNA would have to be used
provided his grave could even be located and usable DNA could be extracted.
Far too many people have made the leap already from maybe one to probably
all of Sally Hemings children because of the DNA results and the DNA
results do not name Thomas Jefferson as a father of Eston Hemings or any
other child that Sally Hemings might have had.
The whole Sally Hemings Thomas Jefferson story has had one huge hole
blasted in it already thanks to DNA. The "president Tom" that James T
Callender wrote about never existed. There isn't even any evidence that
Sally Hemings was the mother of Thomas Woodson, who the Woodson clan claims
was the Tom that Callender referred to and who was conceived in France and
born at Monticello in 1790. The 12 year old red headed Tom Jefferson look
alike that lived at Monticello in 1802 and whose mother was "dusky Sally"
or whatever term he used to describe her.
The foundation of that whole story has been shown to be flawed. Yet,
you don't see hardly anyone really taking that and running with it, showing
the implications if has or could have for any other "oral traditions"
What there is, is no direct evidence at all. What there is is a lot of
gossip, rumor, hearsay, circumstantial evidence, a history of various
people involved in all that I just mentioned having a agenda, beginning
with Callender and continuing for decades.
You have a lot of people spinning it one way or the other each side
picking which items they will include and which items they will exclude.
The mere fact hat both sides can take the exact some information, in many
cases, and construct two or more potentials from that evidence shows how
inconclusive all of this really is.
People will believe that which they want to believe about this, but it will
never ben proven one way or the other. It can't be with what has been
discovered so far, known to exist so far, scientifically or otherwise.
jal...@cox.net
BTW you seemed to have overlooked this one:
GSHATTERHAND
>What direct evidence shows that Thomas Jefferson fathered any children
>beyond those he is credited to have fathered with his wife?
I've been following this string with intense interest. I have no dog in this
fight and no preconceptions.
IMHO jal...@cox.net is coming out way ahead.
Andrew McMichael
That's cause he shouts the loudest and the most often. He's offered no
evidence other than "it's not possible, and nobody's proved it."
Palmer Woodrow
Jefferson, Sally Hemings. They would be the two parties most directly
involved. Did either ever admit to such a relationship? Did either ever put
into writing any references to such a relationship?>
Actually, their DNA would be direct evidence.
--
Groveling is wrong for the soul, like grappling with whores in a
drugstore. - Hunter S. Thompson
jal...@cox.net
>:|>The only people who could supply direct testimony would be Thomas
>:|Jefferson, Sally Hemings. They would be the two parties most directly
>:|involved. Did either ever admit to such a relationship? Did either ever put
>:|into writing any references to such a relationship?>
>:|
>:|Actually, their DNA would be direct evidence.
Only his.
To use her DNA as any kind of direct evidence, along with his would be a
complicated process.
One would have to dig up Thomas Jefferson, find Sally Hemings grave, dig
her up, find a male child of hers dig him up, find the grave of a women he
had kids with dig up that body, find the graves of a male child they had,
dig up that body and repeat that process generation after generation after
generation till the present.
Simple way of saying all that is as follows:
DNA testing will not establish paternity beyond one generation with any
degree of absolute certainty. It can exclude potential fathers but cannot
identify with absolute certainty a father beyond one generation.
The reason being while in males the Y Chromosome would be present through
many generation all other chromosomes change because the mating of a man
and woman produces new chromosomes.
Example: A paternity test using DNA could pretty well establish that your
son, if you had a son was actually your son, or could prove beyond any
doubt that he wasn't, if in fact he wasn't.
However, your son matures and has children with a woman. The children of
that union would have different DNA than yours, with the exception of that
one Y Chromosome that would be present in any and all male children of that
union.
(See: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth, An American
Travesty. The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society. Edited by Eyler Robert
jal...@cox.net
jali...@home.com wrote
>:|> The implication in this case was one of someone deliberately erasing Tom's
>:|> name because Tom's name being there would have established that Tom existed
>:|> and that Tom existed in the time and place a Tom would have been if he were
>:|> Thomas Jefferson's "son" from a Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings sexual
>:|> union.
>:|
>:|That's the implication that the Woodson family draws in their recent book. But
>:|there are other ways to interpret this evidence.
>:|
>:|ANY child born to Sally Hemings within eight or so months after she and Thomas
>:|Jefferson returned from Paris would have seemed like confirmation of
>:|Callender's reports. There's no need for us to consider that erasure only in
>:|regard to the Tom Woodson claim. It would fit equally well with Madison
>:|Hemings's 1873 memoir, which says such a child was born and died young.
You have any evidence of any child that even remotely fits the description
or any of the facts as given by Callender in his series of articles Sept.
to Dec 1802?
>:|In an 1868 letter, Jefferson descendant Henry S. Randall wrote of being told
>:|by his mother to look in the president's records to confirm that he wasn't
>:|near Sally Hemings nine months before she gave birth. So we know that family
>:|was aware that historians would take what was written in those farm books as
>:|evidence on this matter.
>:|
>:|We also know that what Randall claimed was false: Hemings's pregnancies
>:|coincide closely with Jefferson's presence at Monticello (leaving aside
>:|Paris). Jefferson's legitimate descandants thus appear capable of
>:|misrepresenting the historical record in order to argue that the president
>:|couldn't have had children by someone he kept enslaved.
Just the same as his opponents were perfectly capable of creating false
information or reporting gossip etc as fact.
It is a fact of life that some white males who worked around or oversaw
or owned slaves used blk women for sexual pleasure. It is a fact of life
that children were produced as a rsult of that first fact of life.
Thus there would be many fars, plantations, etc in the south at that time
poeriod that would have light or near white or white looking children
present.
In many of those cases there would be speculations on that farm or
plantation as to who was the stud doing the planting and probably would be
gossip and rumor among some neighbors.
Thus that there were gossip and or rumors among neighbors of Jefferson and
even among some guests is not unusual.
However, gossip and rumor doesn't establish fact.
>:|Unfortunately, the Woodson book doesn't reproduce the original document, but a
>:|transcription of it that indicates the erasure. We don't see in that book how
>:|many erasures there are, or how any other changes were made. It's a piece of
>:|evidence (or possibly removal of evidence) worth checking on, but not just in
>:|regard to the Woodson claim.
Granted. That is my point.
A neutral source or group or whatever it would take, collect all the
evidence, i.e. gossip, rumors, published reports, letters, record books,
DNA evidence, oral traditions, etc, all of it, the good, the bad and the
indifferent.
Establish a standard to be applied to each and every item and apply that
same exact standard to each and every item in exactly the same manner.
So far, that has not been done.
What we have so far is a very unhappy man seeking revenge publishing some
stories. That seemed to set the tone because almost from tthat point on we
have those who had reasons to damage Jefferson for one reason or another
using and adding to it and those who wanted to protect or defend him trying
to subtract from it.
It became a war of *he did or he didn't.* No one really seemed to
want to compile all the information that could be found and apply the
standards to it that was used in other areas to discover fact, truth, etc.
As I posted previously:
Hex's Real "Dad"
now they think it might have been his Uncle or brother, I don't know which.
I am really not that interested in this story at all! So to find that out
if it came from the Jefferson clan you would have to dig people up. Why not?
Who cares. It was TJ, not Jesus. Not that Jesus is buried, but you get the
point. LOL!
Sherrie Zabinski
GSHATTERHAND wrote:
I too have followed this thread with great interest and I agree... he has
definitely set his case with quite a bit fact, where the others seem to set
their case with more emotion and little fact... Fact gets my vote every time..
GSHATTERHAND
>Date: 1/29/02 10:26 PM Eastern Standard Time
from gshatterhand
>> IMHO jal...@cox.net is coming out way ahead.
>I agree... he has>definitely set his case with quite a bit fact, where the
others seem to set>their case with more emotion and little fact... Fact gets
my vote every>time..
You have said it so well, Sherrie. And some of those debating him seem to be
prominent scholars in the Jefferson-Hemmings debate! Scary!
Alexander Browne
interesting. Jalison seems to make more sense than others.
Incidentally a very sussesfull attorney in Columbus, Ohio, has offered
an award of one million bucks to anyone that can prove, in a court of
law, that Thomas Jefferson fathered any of Hemmings children. The offer
was made in the Columbus Dispatch, a widely distributed news paper, for
about two years now and there have been no takers, even though
descendants of the Hemmings, who claim
to be descendants, live only 40 miles south in a city called
Chilllicothe.
It seems to me that if you can not prove something it must be at least
questionable. But some do not want to apply common sense to even
question it and have made up their minds for reasons known only to them.
GSHATTERHAND
>Date: 1/31/02 7:37 PM Eastern Standard Time
>I have been following this thread for some time and find it very
>interesting. Jalison seems to make more sense than others.
Yet another who feels Jalison makes a lot of sense! I begin to take comfort in
numbers LOL.
I didn't know about the offer by the Columbus Dispatch. Interesting indeed.
Andrew McMichael
> Incidentally a very sussesfull attorney in Columbus, Ohio, has offered
> an award of one million bucks to anyone that can prove, in a court of
> law, that Thomas Jefferson fathered any of Hemmings children.
Do you think that you could prove in a court of law that *you* are descended
from anyone specific from 200+ years ago? I doubt it. I also doubt that any
African-American could prove with any sort of conclusiveness their
decendancy from someone before 1865.
Alexander Browne
I like thousands of others can prove I am a descendent of my father, who
can be proven to be a descendent of his father, and his father can be
proved that he is a descendent of his father, and so forth.by other
means sufficient to allow an unbiased court to make an appropriate
decision. We do not have this in the Hemmings case. The only thing we
have is an inconclusive DNA and rumors.
If no one can claim they were descendants of any person then why are the
Hemmings and others makIng the claim? It seems to me that if you
can't
prove a derogatory claim you should not make it.
Jim Elbrecht
-snip-
>
>Do you think that you could prove in a court of law that *you* are descended
>from anyone specific from 200+ years ago? I doubt it. I also doubt that any
>African-American could prove with any sort of conclusiveness their
>decendancy from someone before 1865.
Not that this means the Hemmings should be able to, but I think I
could in 8 different lines. [and could prove my wife's folks in
another 6] Whether those lines would hold up under DNA scrutiny,
I'm not sure, but I'm willing to find out if someone wants to pay for
the research. They are solid enough for a civil court, though.
The Hemmings/?Jefferson? line has a lot more going against it--
African American, Virginia records, and most importantly *very high
stakes* from both sides making all statements by either party suspect.
I don't think either side has a presented a solid case yet, and I
think the folks who say it is *proven* one way or the other are in
pursuit of one agenda or another.
Jim
Andrew McMichael
>
> ,
>
> I like thousands of others can prove I am a descendent of my father, who
> can be proven to be a descendent of his father, and his father can be
> proved that he is a descendent of his father, and so forth.by other
> means sufficient to allow an unbiased court to make an appropriate
> decision.
After you get past the early 20th century, you'd have a hard time proving
anything in court. In court you'd have to prove it beyond a "reasonable
doubt." Any good lawyer with a half-competent historian at hir side could
cast reasonable doubt on 19th century records without breaking a sweat.
Hell, given how the evidence against the TJ-Hemings link is being presented,
it'd be easier to prove that *you* don't come from any specific person in
the 19th century.
> We do not have this in the Hemmings case. The only thing we
> have is an inconclusive DNA and rumors.
We have the following anecdotal evidence:
1. Jefferson only freed those slaves who have been suspected of being his
descendants.
2. Jefferson and Hemings were rumored to be close anyway.
3. TJ sent for Hemings when he was in France. While there she conceived.
We have the following ancillary items:
1. Hemings, according to contemporaries, looked alot like TJ's deceased
wife.
2. Plenty of slaveowners fathered children with their slaves. It happened
all the time, and was no secret.
Here's the big one:
3. Prior to the DNA evidence, the main suspects were the Carr brothers.
There was a great deal of evidence to suggest that one of the Carrs had done
it. Aside from TJ, the Carrs were the only ones around when Hemings
conceived the kids. Contemporaries suggested it was one of the Carrs. Most
historians believed that it was the Carr's, and agreed that the evidence
strongly suggested that they had done it.
Add to this the following indisputable facts:
1. Sally Hemming had a number of children.
2. Some of those children's descendants have male-Jefferson DNA.
3. Thomas Jefferson was the only male Jefferson around Sally when several of
her children would have been conceived. We know this from looking at his
plantation log books. We know who came and went, who was there at what
times.
> It seems to me that if you
> can't prove a derogatory claim you should not make it.
This is telling. What part of the Hemings claim is "derogatory?"
Andrew McMichael
>
> I don't think either side has a presented a solid case yet, and I
> think the folks who say it is *proven* one way or the other are in
> pursuit of one agenda or another.
I think that anyone who presents historical any evidence and argument as
*proven* should have their head examined.
Pete Lamb
amcm...@princeton.edu wrote on 2/1/02 10:25 AM:
> Alexander Browne wrote:
>>
>> I like thousands of others can prove I am a descendent of my father, who
>> can be proven to be a descendent of his father, and his father can be
>> proved that he is a descendent of his father, and so forth.by other
>> means sufficient to allow an unbiased court to make an appropriate
>> decision.
>
> After you get past the early 20th century, you'd have a hard time proving
> anything in court. In court you'd have to prove it beyond a "reasonable
> doubt." Any good lawyer with a half-competent historian at hir side could
> cast reasonable doubt on 19th century records without breaking a sweat.
> Hell, given how the evidence against the TJ-Hemings link is being presented,
> it'd be easier to prove that *you* don't come from any specific person in
> the 19th century.
Criminal convictions require the case be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt,"
but civil cases only require a probability to be proven. The
Jefferson-Hemmings issue would be a civil contest.
Like most Americans, you also seem to confuse "beyond a reasonable doubt"
with "beyond any shadow of a doubt." Beyond a reasonable doubt is
comparatively easy to prove.
GSHATTERHAND
>Date: 2/1/02 10:25 AM Eastern Standard Time
>We have the following anecdotal evidence:
>
>1. Jefferson only freed those slaves who have been SUSPECTED of being
his>descendants.
>2. Jefferson and Hemings were RUMORED to be close anyway.
emphasis mine...............Pretty weak even for anecdotal evidence I think.
>1. Hemings, according to contemporaries, looked alot like TJ's deceased>wife.
>2. Plenty of slaveowners fathered children with their slaves. It happened>all
the time, and was no secret.
More "items" that mean little or are totally irrelevant. Once again, I only
know what I have read in this string concerning this matter. Citing this sort
of thing only weakens your case IMHO with most objective listeners. I agree
with others who note the most desperate to prove Jefferson paternity in this
matter must be driven by another agenda.
Andrew McMichael
I guess you didn't read on. I was building the case from the weakest of
evidence to the strongest. That was why I labeled each one "anecdotal" &c
&c. When taken all together . . .
Andrew McMichael
>
>
> Like most Americans, you also seem to confuse "beyond a reasonable doubt"
> with "beyond any shadow of a doubt." Beyond a reasonable doubt is
> comparatively easy to prove.
What I'm not confusing is that this isn't a court case. People who argue
that it should be treated like a court case need to step back and figure out
why they are taking it so seriously.
As you note, probablility is all that needs proof. By that measure, one can
prove almost anything in history "probable."
BlanketGHS
opposed to even the possibility of Jeferson having sexual relations with
Sally--or anyone else. One wonders what he did with himself in the forty-four
years between the time of his wife's death and his own passing.
Reg Pitts
Blank...@aol.com
GSHATTERHAND
>Date: 2/1/02 6:50 PM Eastern Standard Time
>What I don't quite understand is why the anti-Hemings forces are so>vehemently
>opposed to even the possibility of Jeferson having sexual relations
with>Sally--or anyone else.
What I've seen in this string is NOT opposition to the "possibility" of
anything. Only an insistence the matter has not been proved one way or another.
Alexander Browne
I don't know how familiar you are with our judicial system but as one
who worked in the legal profession for a number of years. I can assure
you that I could have my case successfully pled. A string of relatives
,armed with affidavits, being paraded before the court alone would
convince them of my claim. Brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles,
father
and mother, and grandparents, who would be expert witnesses to the
fact.Do you really believe the court would rule that I am not who I am
and in effect rule against them. Regardless of how skillful an opposing
attorney would be I can assure you the jury would rule in my favor.
Those items you cited as your reason for
believing as you do have been discussed before and have been written off
by many. The readers of this news group are more than likely aware of
that without commenting further. But regardless of anything presented,
even if true, there is still no Proof that would stand up in court,
civil and certainly not criminal. that Thomas Jefferson fathered any of
the Hemming
children.
Frankly I find it disturbing that
accuations are made about a man who has been dead for about 175 years
and who is not here to present his side of the story. Of course that may
be the very reason why he is being accused. It seems
that it is the pastime of some to attempt to discredit our established
heroes.
However if you feel you have sufficient evidence to prove your case you
can make a lot of money by taking the attorney, I posted about, up on
his offer.
It would be interesting and I assure you I will attend.
A. Browne