Slight mix-up: Thomas Woodson was another man who claimed to be a son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Madison Hemings made no mention of him, nor is there any mention of him in the accounts at Monticello, but his descendants had the oral tradition they were descendants of Jefferson and Hemings. DNA of a male line demonstrated they are not. Sally probably never had a son named Thomas Woodson.
It has not been conclusively proven- nor can it be- that TJ was the father of any of Sally Hemings’ children; all that has been proven is, as mentioned above, a male line Jefferson was the father of her youngest son, Eston. HOWEVER, the combination of
1- Oral histories
2- Circumstantial evidence
3- DNA testing
combines to make it far more likely than not.
A major significance of the DNA finding of Eston Hemings’ descendant is that it disproved the official story of Jefferson’s legitimate descendants. Two of his grandchildren, addressing the rumors of Sally, ‘confided’ (probably with every intention of it getting out) that the fathers of her children were Peter and Samuel Carr, Thomas Jefferson’s nephews by his sister. By testing the Jefferson male lineage (the Y chromosome line) this proved that neither Carr brother could possibly have been the father, because they did not have the Jefferson Y-chromosome (not unless TJ’s sister was committing adulterous incest with one of her brothers or male cousins anyway, which has never been even a rumor [though their cousin Nancy Randolph… well, that’s another story]). This, as you can imagine, was a major validation for the Hemings’ descendants and major egg in the face of many of the staunch deniers of Sally’s significance.
The most significant oral history is of course Madison Hemings, who went on record beginning in the late 1860s and then in the 1870s gave several interviews. However, before that, his brother Eston had moved from Ohio (where he lived on property adjoining Madison’s after they left Virginia) and actually took the surname of Jefferson (he’d always used Hemings before). His grave reads E.H. Jefferson. He also began living as a white man in Wisconsin; his own son, John Wayles Jefferson, named for TJ’s father-in-law who was the grandfather of Sally Hemings’ children [that Sally was Martha Jefferson’s half-sister was never disputed]) served in the Union army as a white man. (Picture of him.)
Madison Hemings has descendants but they could not be tested for the Y-line as his male line died out with his grandsons. Interestingly, while Madison identified as mulatto in the Census and legal records and in his official accounts stated he had “more of the African” about him (i.e. more black features) than his siblings, his sons also served as white men in the Union army. One died at and is buried at Andersonville. One of his grandsons, who imo bears a resemblance to TJ, was Frederick Madison Roberts, a successful mortician who was the first black man elected to public office in California.
What became of Eston and Madison’s older brother, Beverly, and their older sister, Harriet, is unknown. Madison said that they officially “ran away”, but in a nudge nudge wink wink sort of way; TJ allowed them to ‘run away’ and gave them a small amount of money and never actually looked for them. This syncs with the records of Monticello; at the same time TJ records them as runaways there are disbursements of $100 in cash (a lot of money at the time of course, but certainly no fortune- TJ was notoriously cash poor however) and it’s unrecorded what it’s for, which is something that almost never happened. Jefferson recorded every penny in his ledgers, even money that he lost or misplaced (literally- there are entries for “misplaced $2”, often followed by “found it” later on).
This account was echoed by Edmund Bacon, a former overseer at Monticello, who stated that he personally drove Harriet to Charlottesville to catch a stage to Philadelphia. Madison said she ended up in D.C., married a white man, and had a family who, to his knowledge, did not know of her parentage. He knew her married name and corresponded with her sporadically but chose to protect her privacy. He said his brother Beverly also lived in the metro D.C. area but they had long lost contact.
The biggest discrepancy in Madison’s account is that he stated his mother became pregnant by Jefferson in Paris when she was a teenager and he was in his 40s. There is no evidence of this; if she did become pregnant then she must have either miscarried or had a stillbirth, because her first recorded child was not born until five years after her return to Virginia. (The contract Jefferson gave Sally’s brother promising him his freedom if he would return to Virginia [which he did not have to do- he could have stayed in France, and he knew it] survivesand is at the L.O.C..)
Among the strongest circumstantial evidence is that Sally Hemings never conceived when Jefferson was away from Monticello, and he was a way for months at a time. Also, none of the male Jeffersons are known to have been at Monticello nine months before the births of Madison and Eston. It is unknown whether Sally accompanied Jefferson when he traveled to his summer home at Poplar Forest, but he definitely took her sons with him, which is significant because unlike Monticello he did not entertain at Poplar Forest and was extremely particular who accompanied him; it was a refuge and a sanctuary for him. (This is not to imply he had a father-child relationship with any of Sally’s children; per Madison he did not- he was kind to them, but they didn’t call him ‘Papa’ and he didn’t acknowledge them even within his family, but it was a very open secret.)
At least one other former slave from Monticello, Isaac Jefferson, recalled Sally in detail, and said it was an open secret that she was Jefferson’s concubine. Most plantations had a pretty good gossip-intelligence line, and it’s doubtful Sally would have tried to hide it.
Sally’s brothers (particularly James) and sisters were also interesting. One oddity is that some of her nieces and nephews were literally “white slaves”. Under Virginia law, if you could prove 7/8 Euro ancestry, you were legally white; it did NOT make you free, but you COULD legally marry a white person, and at least two of Sally’s nieces did. One married a Jewish businessman in Charlottesville, and another married a fairly well to do attorney who purchased her so that he could marry her. All of the slaves freed in Jefferson’s will were members of Sally’s family (including two of her sons).
Another piece of circumstantial evidence is the freeing of Sally herself. Per Madison, he gave her freedom in Paris- basically a verbal agreement her children would be freed when they became adults (and he kept his word- he did not free all of her nieces and nephews, but he did free all of her children, by manumission or by looking the other way when they ‘ran’) and that she would be free upon his death. He in fact did not mention her in his will, and she was not formally freed by his daughter or any other member of his family or anybody else. HOWEVER, she was living free in Charlottesville a few months after his death.
This is remarkable considering that slaves less valuable than she was- including several members of her own family- were auctioned off. (Sally herself was appraised at $50 in an estate inventory, but never sold.) Sally’s siblings and nieces and nephews and grandnieces/grandnephews were sold to the winds with the rest of Jefferson’s slaves who weren’t freed, but Sally basically went to Charlottesville and lived with her sons. (TJ’s creditors would also have been within their legal rights to dispute the manumission of Madison and Eston, both of whom would have been many times more valuable than their mother, but did not, nor did they challenge the 4 other slaves he freed in his will.)
Interesting thing about the Hemings family is some were almost completely black as well. Sally’s grandmother was black- Madison said her name was Susanna and he believed she was from Africa- and her daughter, Betty, was the daughter of a British sailor who tried to buy her and, when the owner wouldn’t sale (or Hemings didn’t have the money) he tried to steal her, but ultimately she remained the property of her owner. Betty had several children by a black slave before becoming the concubine of her master (actually her mistress’s husband, because she was dower property), John Wayles, the man mentioned above. (Wayles had terrible luck with his white wives; he outlived three by the time he was in his 40s.) She and Wayles had 6 children together, and when he died she had another child by another white man and another child by another black man- 13 or 14 in all. Thus she had grandchildren who were so black you couldn’t tell they had any European ancestry and grandchildren who were so white you couldn’t tell they had any African ancestry.
Anyway, Annette Gordon Reed’s books on Sally and her family are extremely thorough and will answer any questions you have on this fascinating family. And if really interested there are several great websites; you can also tell a definite resemblance between some of Hemings’ descendants and TJ, including
I’m not familiar with any written stories of Sally H. before Callendar’s, but that’s not surprising. It could well have been word of mouth. It may bear mentioning that Jefferson was the subject of numerous rumors that weren’t true; he and John Adams were damned near whoremasters when in Europe by some accounts that Jefferson laughed at and Adams was appalled by but few people then or now take seriously. The great love of his life after his wife seems to have been Maria Cosway, an Anglo-Italian artist he met in Paris. She was married (her husband was probably gay going by descriptions of him) and it’s unknown if they physically consummated the relationship, but they corresponded for the rest of TJ’s life.
