What the article in Nature showed in its science, contrary to its loose assertions, was that
(1) Thomas Woodson, born in 1790, who looked like Thomas Jefferson and was suspected of being his son, was not;
(2) Eston Jefferson, born in 1808, who was never suspected of being Thomas Jefferson's son, was the son of a Jefferson male.
The authors would not deny that this is a fair assessment of the conclusions. (The conclusions are not absolutely certain because of possible wild coincidences or because of illegitimacy in the line of descent between 1790 and 1998.) But the article was titled,
Jefferson fathered slave's last child.
Of course, this is not the same as item (2) at all. A title more accurate, more relevant to the historical debate, and more sensational to historians, if not the general public, would have been
Jefferson did not father slave's first child.
The problem is as a certain Mr. Randall put it,
"There were 25 men within 20 miles of Monticello who were all Jeffersons and had the same Y chromosome," ... "And 23 of them were younger than Jefferson, who was 65 years old, at that time a very advanced age, when Eston was conceived. "
(Leef Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer, Certainty of Jefferson-Hemings Affair Is Overstated, Critics Say, January 06, 1999, Wednesday, Pg. A06)
Actually, that understates the problem. An letter that Nature published in January 1999 points out that any male slave fathered by a Jefferson would also have the same Y chromosome, and could have fathered Sally Hemings' child Eston. We don't have a count of how many such slaves there were.
But what does the Nature article say? Some excerpts: "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."
"Four of the five male-line descendants of Thomas Woodson shared a haplotype (with one MSY1 variant) that was not similar to the Y chromosome of Field Jefferson but was characteristic of Europeans. The fifth Wood-son descendant had an entirely different haplotype, most often seen in sub-Saharan Africans, which indicates illegitimacy in the line after individual W42."
"The simplest and most probable explanations for our molecular findings are that Thomas Jefferson, rather than one of the Carr brothers, was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson, and that Thomas Woodson was not Thomas Jefferson's son."
"We cannot completely rule out other explanations of our findings based on illegitimacy in various lines of descent. For example, a male-line descendant of Field Jefferson could possibly have illegitimately fathered an ancestor of the presumed male-line descendant of Eston. But in the absence of historical evidence to support such possibilities, we consider them to be unlikely."
Note that Foster et al. mention the two Carr nephews of Jefferson, but not the five Jefferson nephews. Note, too, that their concluding paragraph is a polite disclaimer that there might possibly, conceivably, be an alternative explanation-- and then they list a highly implausible one. That is false modesty-- a nod to scientific custom, or a rhetorical flourish designed to bolster their attack on Jefferson by showing how fair they are to admit that there is a tiny chance they might be wrong.
If that was all the evidence I had, I would believe that the 8 authors of the piece just rushed their piece into print without presenting it to other scholars for discussion, and were cocky enough as scientists to think that adding a historian as a ninth author, or even reading a book on Jefferson's family, was not important. But look at some excerpts from their January 1999 response in Nature to criticism: "It is true that men of Randolph Jefferson's family could have fathered Sally Hemings' later children. Space constraints prevented us from expanding on alternative interpretations of our DNA analysis, including the interesting one proposed by Davis.
The title assigned to our study was misleading in that it represented only the simplest explanation of our molecular findings: namely, that Thomas Jefferson, rather than one of the Carr brothers, was likely to have been the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson."
"It had been suggested to us earlier (by Herbert Barger, who also helped to recruit the descendants of Field Jefferson who participated in our study) that Isham Jefferson, son of Thomas Jefferson's brother Randolph, might have been the father of one or more of Sally Hemings' children."
"But it is not known for certain that Isham was at Monticello at that time, whereas it is documented that Thomas Jefferson was. From the historical knowledge we have, we cannot conclude that Isham, or any other member of the Jefferson family, was as likely as Thomas Jefferson to have fathered Eston Hemings."
Thus, the authors admit that they knew about the five male-line nephews and didn't mention them, even while finding room for the two female-line nephews. Their excuse is that they don't know if the nephews were at the right place at the right time, instead of a few miles away, whereas Jefferson was right there-- an astounding coincidence till you realize that "right there" is his home. Jefferson's age goes unmentioned. They say that "Space constraints prevented us from expanding on alternative interpretations...". That is false. Their last paragraph, quoted above, repeats (without expanding) an alternative explanation-- it simply picks the least likely alternative explanation.
Here is how I would rewrite their last paragraph:"Other explanations do exist. Besides illegitimacy in the various lines of descent, explained above, any Jefferson male, including Jefferson's brother, that brother's five sons, and any males slaves fathered by earlier Jefferson males could have been Eston's father. Given that Jefferson was 63, President, and under scrutiny by his enemies, his nephews are strong candidates. "
There-- all done in 55 words, saving 2 words on the original conclusion!
And, in fact, I would doubt whether the DNA tests themselves were done right. It is clear that the authors twisted the story and omitted key historical evidence that went contrary to their explanation. If they did that, wouldn't they also twist and omit lab evidence? Or, if you like: they botched the easy, nontechnical part of the study in such a way that an amateur can see the flaws, so why should we think they can do fancy biochemistry any better than they do basic logic?
Note too, the editorial that appeared in Nature with the initial story:
"Interestingly, Jefferson's haplotype does not match male descendants of Sally's first son, Tom Woodson. The simplest explanation is that Jefferson was not Tom's father. An alternative explanation would require non-paternities among Tom's offspring."
"Politically, the Thomas Jefferson verdict is likely to figure in upcoming impeachment hearings on William Jefferson Clinton's sexual indiscretions, in which DNA testing has also played a role "
"Both presidents seem to have engaged in politically reckless conduct; in Jefferson's case, fathering Eston six years after allegations appeared in the national press. And both offered evasive denials to the charges. In 1805 the Massachusetts legislature staged a mock impeachment trial of Jefferson, citing several grievances including the accusations about Sally Hemings. Jefferson acknowledged one charge (propositioning a married woman in his youth), but asserted that all the others were false."
Journalists who covered this story did absolutely no checking into the background and possible biases of the authors of the Nature piece. I did a little, on the Web, and found no evidence that they were anything other than ordinary scientists. But for all the newspapers knew, they could have been funded by the Democratic party. Moreover, David Murray points out on P. F01 of the Sacramento Bee of November 29, 1998 that the co-author of the Nature editorial in the same issue was highly biased: "Two days before that [the Nature article], a full-page ad appeared in The New York Times opposing Clinton's impeachment. Among the signers: the co-author of the article (Ellis) in Nature pronouncing the DNA data definitive, in which he noted wryly the Hemings report's "impeccable timing."' "
Murray's article, which is a version of a Washington Post one, is about the bias in the press reporting on Hemings. He is critical, but much kinder than I think the press deserves. See http://www.stats.org/newsletters/9811/monticello.htm.
(I myself am a conservative, but it is not clear which way this cuts. I would like to respect our founding fathers, but I much prefer Washington and Adams to Jefferson, whose views on religion and political authority are dubious, and get a bit of a kick out of Jefferson's hypocrisy on the slavery question. Note that Jefferson's reputation is hardly redeemed if we conclude that he allowed sexual debauchery on his plantation, even if he did not participate himself.)
Someone should investigate how newspapers responded later when it became clear (certainly by January 1999) that their initial stories were wrong. A casual Lexis search reveals very few January stories, and about half of those just repeat the same wrong November conclusions. See E.M. Halliday in the New York Times of January 8, 1999, p. A19, for example, who says of Randolph Jefferson as an alternative to his older brother Thomas,
"At best he would seem to be a desperate and dubious choice, underlining the extremes to which the true disbelievers are driven in their fervor to exonerate our third President from the charge of miscegenation.
Well, there's always the Man in the Moon, who if you're given to far-out fantasy might imaginably be a Jefferson. But it doesn't seem too probable. "
One might also compare the Jefferson-Hemings story with the Clinton-Williams story. Jefferson was accused of fathering a child by a black slave because the mother said so and the boy looked like him. Clinton was accused of fathering a child by a black prostitute because the mother said so and the boy looked like him. In each case, it was reported that DNA evidence cleared the president of paternity.
In this connection,note the January 10, 1999 New York Daily News headline (p. 5): CLINTON NO JEFFERSON, LOVE CHILD NOT HIS.
Those who wish to think Jefferson is Eston's father rely, besides the DNA evidence, on four points:
(1) Jefferson was at Monticello during the dates that the six youngest Hemings children were conceived. This may or may not be significant, depending on how often he was away from Monticello. If he was there 90 percent of the time, this means nothing. If he was there 5 percent of the time, it means a lot. I wonder tho, why, if Sally Hemings was his long-time mistress, he did not take her with him when he travelled, under the guise of a maid?
(2) Jefferson freed only Sally and her children, and none of his other slaves. This might be because Sally was his wife's half-sister. Did he have many other in-laws as slaves?
(3) Sally's male children, especially Thomas, were said to look just like Jefferson. Since the DNA evidence does show that Thomas was definitely not related to the Jeffersons, the resemblance must be coincidental or the eyewitnesses untrustworthy. The DNA evidence destroys the credibility of this historical evidence rather than confirming it.
(4) Family lore says that Sally said that Thomas Jefferson was the father of her children. Since the DNA evidence does show that Thomas was definitely not related to the Jeffersons, either family lore or Sally is untrustworthy. Again, the DNA evidence destroys the credibility of this historical evidence rather than confirming it.
I might add that the DNA evidence about Thomas Woodson, the oldest son, undermines the likelihood that Thomas Jefferson was Eston's father in another way. It shows that when Sally was a nubile 14 and ready to get pregnant with some man, and Jefferson was middle-aged, had recently lost his wife, and was living in France safe from American gossips and out of the company of English-speaking women, Jefferson withstood temptation. Why would he then succumb later? (tho please note that it is not clear from the historical evidence that Thomas Woodson is even Sally Hemings's son, so maybe she did not get pregnant till six years later. Without knowing much of the evidence, I'd say that a slave having one pregnancy at age 14 and six more starting not starting till six years later seems unlikely.)
March 20, 1999: Mr. Barger, a Jefferson family historian, provides additional useful information. A few excerpts:
"It should be noted that Professor Ellis didn�t mention Randolph and sons in his Jefferson book and told me by phone on November 14, 1998, after the article had been published, that he knew NOTHING of Randolph and sons. Annette Gordon-Reed, author of�Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy�, did NOT mention Randolph and sons in her book either. Fawn Brodie, author of �Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History�, mentioned Randolph as a ten year old and once as an adult and did not name any other children. She even said Randolph was �less than mediocrein talent and native intelligence.� ""Thomas�s first cousin, once removed, George Jefferson, Jr., educatedby Thomas, his agent and manager in Richmond and who must have come to Monticello to discuss business when Thomas came home. Could this possibly explain why Sally became pregnant only when Thomas was at Monticello."
"Randolph, named for his maternal Randolph family, was a widower and between wives when shortly after his wife�s death, Sally became pregnant with her first child, Harriet I. It had been almost six years since arriving at Monticello from Paris, thus, we can see that there was no �long term love affair� between Thomas and Sally. She continued having children until 1808 when Eston was born. Randolph Jefferson would marry his second wife the next year, 1809, and would have a child, John, born about 1810. Three of Sally Hemings� children, Harriet, Beverly and Eston (the latter two not common names), were given names of the Randolph family who had earlier owned Randolph�s plantation, �Snowden�, and who had received it as his inheritance."
"Randolph was invited by Thomas to come to Monticello to visit him and Randolph�s twin sister, who had arrived one day earlier. This was in August 1807, exactly nine months prior to Eston�s birth. Randolph was also present at Monticelloon May 27, 1808, exactly six days after Eston�s birth on May 21, 1808. He had probably come to see his son, Eston. Thomas even drafted Randolph�s will on that date."
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