• DOI:10.1038/23835
• Corpus ID: 4424562

Jefferson fathered slave's last child

@article{Foster1998JeffersonFS,
  title={Jefferson fathered slave's last child},
  author={E. A. Foster and M. A. Jobling and Paul G. Taylor and P. Donnelly and Peter de Knijff and Ren{\'e} H.P. Mieremet and Tatiana Zerjal and Chris Tyler-Smith},
  journal={Nature},
  year={1998},
  volume={396},
  pages={27-28}
}

• E. A. Foster, M. Jobling, +5 authors C. Tyler-Smith
• Published 5 November 1998
• History
• Nature

There is a long-standing historical controversy over the question of US President Thomas Jefferson's paternity of the children of Sally Hemings, one of his slaves,. To throw some scientific light on the dispute, we have compared Y-chromosomal DNA haplotypes from male-line descendants of Field Jefferson, a paternal uncle of Thomas Jefferson, with those of male-line descendants of Thomas Woodson, Sally Hemings' putative first son, and of Eston Hemings Jefferson, her last son. The molecular findings fail to support the belief that Thomas Jefferson was Thomas Woodson's father, but provide evidence that he was the biological father of Eston Hemings Jefferson.