Jefferson’s descendants confirmed by Smithsonian DNA study
Summary and headline written by AI from the source article. How we work
Researchers at the Smithsonian Institution have confirmed, through DNA analysis, that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, his enslaved chambermaid.
In 2011, Richard Kurin initiated a secret study to investigate the long-standing question of Jefferson’s paternity.
Kurin’s team sequenced Jefferson’s genome using hair samples and compared it to DNA from Hemings’s living descendants, a process complicated by the degraded state of the historical DNA and the need to locate Jefferson’s brother’s burial site to rule him out as the father. The project faced skepticism and criticism, including from a Hemings descendant who withdrew from the study over concerns about the timing of the release of Kurin’s book alongside the scientific paper.
Despite these challenges, the research, peer-reviewed and vetted by genomic scientists, demonstrated a clear genetic link between Jefferson and several Hemings descendants, including Margot Kossmann Williams, a biologist at Ohio State University. Williams and her mother traced their family history to Madison Hemings, a son of Jefferson and Hemings who publicly revealed his parentage in 1873.
The findings offer new insights into the complex history of race and slavery in America, and may help identify other, previously unknown, descendants of Jefferson and Hemings who passed as white. The Smithsonian plans to make Jefferson’s genome publicly available for further research.
