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Hemings and Jefferson: What the DNA Says
In 1998 Dr. Eugene Foster and a team of geneticists tested DNA samples from male-line descendants of Field Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's uncle) and of Eston Hemings (Sally Hemings's son). (The surviving children from Thomas Jefferson's marriage were female, so their descendants could not be tested in this way.)
The test results show a genetic link between the Jefferson and Hemings descendants: A man with the Jefferson Y chromosome fathered Eston Hemings (born 1808). While there were other adult males with the Jefferson Y chromosome living in Virginia at that time, most historians now believe that the documentary and genetic evidence, considered together, strongly support the conclusion that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings's children. |