The Monticello Association

The Monticello Association and many historians have felt that history did not support the claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings. Recently new historical accounts have been written and DNA testing has been done as reported in Nature magazine.

This has opened the question for further review. The Executive Committee of the Monticello Association at its annual meeting in May 1999 announced that a committee had been formed to further investigate these new findings and to determine their impact on membership in the Association and/or burial in the family graveyard at Monticello. The committee will have a report by the time of the 2000 Annual Meeting.

Background

    The Monticello Association is a non-profit organization of lineal descendants of Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, who was also the designer, builder, owner and principal resident of Monticello. The Association's purposes are stated in Article II of its Constitution. Somewhat abbreviated, they are:
     (A) (first) To preserve and care for the graves and grounds of the Monticello graveyard, (second) to protect and perpetuate the reputation and fame of Thomas Jefferson and (third) to encourage association and friendship among Mr. Jefferson's descendants;
     (B) to defend the property rights of the lineal descendants of Colonel Thomas Jefferson Randolph as owners of the original Monticello graveyard; and
     (C) to affirm the rights of the descendants of Thomas Jefferson to burial in the addition to the Monticello graveyard as provided in the covenant under which this property was deeded.

 

In order to better understand this issue, it would be very helpful to first read the documents in our History section and/or the Interim Report.

Items of Interest

Overview

The Hemings-Jefferson Controversy: A Brief Account - Link to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation website

The DNA Testing

   The journal Nature contains the following articles, which are available to users who create a free account on their web site at http://www.nature.com/nature: 

Eugene A. Foster et al., "Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last Child," November 5, 1998 
Eric S. Lander and Joseph J. Ellis, "Founding Father," November 5, 1998 
Eugene A. Foster et al., letter to editor, January 7, 1999

     DNA Doesn't Link Jefferson, Woodson (currently broken)

Responses to the DNA Testing


Why the Jefferson Scholars Were the Last To Know - Annette Gordon-Reed, author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy


The Truth About the Thomas Jefferson DNA Study - Herbert Barger (currently broken)

Jefferson's DNA and Sally Hemings - Eyler Robert Coates, Sr (currently broken)

The Jefferson-Hemings Circumstantial Evidence - Eyler Robert Coates, Sr. (currently broken)

1999 Annual Meeting

Comments from James Truscott following the 1999 Annual Meeting

Meeting Minutes

2000 Annual Meeting

Interim Report - Membership Advisory Committee

Meeting Minutes

2001 Annual Meeting

Meeting Minutes

Final Report - Membership Advisory Committee 

2002 Annual Meeting

Meeting Minutes 

Legal Information (links currently broken)

Virginia Code
Meaning of child and related terms
Evidence of paternity
How parent and child relationship established
Admission of genetic tests
Evidence relating to parentage

Black's Law Dictionary definitions

Descent

Hereditary succession. Succession to the ownership of an estate by inheritance, or by any act of law, as distinguished from "purchase." Title by descent is the title by which one person, upon the death of another, acquires the real estate of the latter as his heir at law. 2 B. Comm. 201; Com. Dig. "Descent," A; Adams v. Akerlund, 168 Ill. 632, 48 N.E. 454; Starr v. Hamilton, 22 Fed. Cas. 1,107; In re Donahue's Estate, 36 Cal. 332; Shippen v. Izard, 1 Serg. & R. (Pa.) 224; Brower v. Hunt, 18 Ohio St. 338; Allen v. Bland, 134 Ind. 78, 33 N.E. 774.

Classification. Descents are of two sorts, lineal and collateral. Lineal descent is descent in a direct or right line, as form father or grandfather to son or grandson. Collateral descent is descent in a collateral or oblique line, that is, up to the common ancestor and then down from him, as from brother to brother, or between cousins. Levy v. McCartee, 6 Pet. 112, 8 L. Ed. 334. They are also distinguished into mediate and immediate descents. But these terms are used in different senses. A descent may be said to be a mediate or immediate descent of the estate or right; or it may be said to be mediate or immediate, in regard to the mediateness or immediateness of the pedigree or consanguinity. Thus, a descent from the grandfather, who dies in possession, to the grandchild, the father being then dead, or from the uncle to the nephew, the brother being dead, is, in the former sense, in law, immediate descent, although the one is collateral on the other lineal; for the heir is in the per, and not in the per and cui. On the other hand, with reference to the line of pedigree or consanguinity, a descent is often said to be immediate, when the ancestor from whom the party derives his blood is immediate, and without any intervening link or degrees; and mediate, when the kindred is derived from him mediante altero, another ancestor intervening between them. Thus a descent in lineals from father to son is in this sense immediate; but a descent from grandfather to grandson, the father being dead, or from uncle to nephew, the brother being dead, is deemed mediate; the father and the brother being, in these latter cases, the medium deferens, as it is called, of the descent or consanguinity. Levy v. McCartee, 6 Pet. 112, 8 L. Ed. 334; Furenes v. Mickelson, 86 Iowa. 508, 53 N.W. 416; Garner v. Wood, 71 Md. 37, 17 Atl. 1031 [emphasis mine]

Black's Law Dictionary, Second Edition; West Publishing Co., St. Paul. 1910, 359.

However, this definition changed in the next edition.

Lineal Descendant

One who is in the line of descent from the ancestor. In re Roebuck's Estate, 79 Misc. 589, 140 N.Y.S. 1107; Green v. Hussey, 228 Mass. 537, 117 N.E. 798. Lawful issue. Bassier v. J. Connelly Const. Co., 227 Mich. 251, 198 N.W. 989, 991. the term may include an adopted child; Denton v Miller, 110 Kan. 292, 203 P. 693, 694; who is as lawfully in the line of descent as if placed there by birth; Fisher v. Gardinier, 183 Mich. 660, 150 N.W. 358. Contra: State v. Yturria, 109 Tex. 220, 204 S.W. 315, 316, L.R.A. 1918F, 1079, reversing Id., (Tex. Civ. App.) 189 S.W. 291, 292; Rauch v. Metz (Mo. Supp.) 212 S.W. 357, 366.

Black's Law Dictionary, Third Edition; West Publishing Co., St. Paul. 1933, 564.

A Study of the Intersection of DNA Technology, Exhumation and Heirship Determination as It Relates to Modern-Day Descendants of Slaves in America, by Helen Bishop Jenkins


Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Study

Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
(There is both a web-based version of the report and an Adobe Acrobat file (pdf).

Minority Report

Response to the Minority Report

Announcement from James Truscott - 27 January 2000

Responses to Foundation Study

Research Report on the Jefferson-Hemings Controversy, A Critical Analysis, by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr.

Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society Scholar's Commission  Report

Complete Report

National Genealogical Society

National Genealogical Society Quarterly, v.89 #3 (Articles available online to NGS members or in genealogy libraries)

A special edition of the NGS Quarterly. Did Thomas Jefferson or did he not father the children of his quadroon slave, Sally Hemings? Writers in this special edition explore this man and this riddle.

Other Resources:

Thomas Woodson Family Website Link broken

The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society


 

The Monticello Graveyard

This is about as convoluted as it gets.

"Mr. Jefferson's hope, when he died, that Monticello might remain in the family, would not be realized. Although in his will he had left it to his daughter Martha subject to the payment of his debts, the burden of debt was too great, and the estate was offered for sale within a year of his death. It was not until November 1, 1833, however, that the sale was accomplished. The deed of sale in the records of Albemarle County shows that 552 acres "of the tract commonly known by the name of Monticello" was sold to J. T. Barclay on htat date by Thomas J. Randolph and Martha J. Randolph. The deed stated explicitly, "The parties reserve to themselves the family graveyard with free access to the same."

     Martha Jefferson Randolph lived less than three years after the sale of Monticello. In her will which was written January 6, 1836, in Boston, where she was living with her Daughter Ellen Randolph Coolidge, she left to her oldest son Thomas Jefferson Randolph "his Grandfather's portrait by Stuart, my four silver vegetable dishes complete, and lastly any property I may not have otherwise disposed of." It was under this last clause that the graveyard became the property of Thomas Jefferson Randolph when his mother died on October 10, 1836.

     Thomas Jefferson Randolph died October 8, 1875, and was buried in the little plot laid out a hundred and two year before, and where there now existed nearly fifty graves. In his will, dated January 24, 1875, he made a number of specific bequests of silver, portraits, and certain items which had belonged to Mr. Jefferson, and then he provided carefully and explicitly for his unmarried and widowed daughters in his bequest to them of Edgehill and of its adjoining lands. However, he made no mention of the Monticello graveyard, which he had inherited from his mother. Thus it became the undivided property of all heirs, and so it remains.

Kean, Robert H. History of the Graveyard at Monticello, The Collected Papers of the Monticello Association, Volume 1.