Monticello Doors to Open Wider for Jefferson’s Kin

For their first 85 years, the annual family reunions of Thomas Jefferson’s descendants were genteel affairs at Monticello, the elegant Colonial mansion he designed near the foot of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

No. 86 figures to be anything but. This weekend the Jefferson descendants in good standing will be joined for the first time by an expected 35 people who trace their lineage not to Jefferson’s wife but to his slave mistress, Sally Hemings.

In the past, the outsiders--most of whom are black--have been rebuffed as members of the family and refused admission as full members of the Monticello Assn., which organizes the reunions. After all, they lacked the written documentation of the association’s 700 members in good standing; the upstarts had based their case largely on oral histories.

But this year the Hemings descendants buttressed their oral traditions with genetic evidence showing that Jefferson was most likely the father of at least one of Hemings’ children. Is that enough to convince the association to embrace them as distant cousins?

“It is unlikely,” said Bob Gillespie, a Richmond, Va., attorney who is president of the tradition-minded association. “We invited them so we could talk this over. We want them to know we’re optimistic, but we want them to know that oral histories won’t work. We want to see what other sources we could come up with, what kind of evidence that would give us a comfort level.”

Like the man himself, matters relating to Jefferson’s unacknowledged family are complex and subject to a variety of interpretations. Until recently, most scholars dismissed suggestions that Jefferson would have had an illicit relationship with any of his slaves. His writings were clearly patronizing toward his black slaves and antagonistic to mixing the races.

Few Historians Doubt Eston Hemings’ Link

Few historians now dispute that Jefferson fathered Hemings’ last son, Eston. A retired Virginia pathologist, Eugene A. Foster, announced last fall that comparisons of the DNA of Eston Hemings’ descendants and those of Thomas and Martha Jefferson established a clear link.

In fact, many historians accept that Jefferson probably was the father of all seven of Hemings’ children. Although the DNA trail is inconclusive or nonexistent, the circumstantial evidence--Jefferson was at the same place as Sally Hemings nine months before the birth of each of her seven children, for example--is highly suggestive.

“The evidence is mounting,” Gillespie conceded. “At one time I thought it was impossible, but I can’t deny that he fathered the children. But I don’t know that it’s been nailed down yet to invite them into the association. This is something that needs long-term, serious study.”

That’s nonsense, said Lucian Truscott IV, a Los Angeles writer and, as Jefferson’s great-great-great-great grandson, a member of the Monticello Assn. During an appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show last year, he invited his “cousins” to be his guests at the next family reunion. His intent was to embarrass the association and to publicize the Hemingses’ claim of family membership. It worked: Gillespie issued a formal invitation to Hemings’ descendants.

“Those backwater bluebloods are doing everything in their power to see that it doesn’t happen,” Truscott said. “They’re trying to look for a loophole to bar the entry of the Hemingses into a regular membership into the association, which actually carries only one right: to be buried in the Monticello cemetery.”

Truscott said he plans to press the Hemingses’ case during an association business meeting Sunday. “My daddy wrote my name on the bottom of a $10 dues statement and that was it. Nobody wanted any DNA or research to determine a damn thing about me.”

Hemings Had 3 Sons, 4 Daughters

Hemings had four daughters as well as three sons. If any of their descendants are alive today--and dozens may be--they themselves are not aware of it because no written or oral records have been passed down over the decades.

By contrast, oral records of her three sons were handed down from generation to generation. Her youngest son, Eston Hemings (1808-1856), passed as a white man.

After being granted his freedom as a young man, Eston Hemings moved to Ohio and lived with his brother Madison for a while. Later, he adopted his father’s surname and moved on to Wisconsin, where he lived the rest of his life among whites. His heirs are the only line that are generally acknowledged as direct descendants of Jefferson.

“I don’t know who started covering it up in the family,” said Julia J. Westerinen, a Staten Island, N.Y., portrait artist and descendant of Eston Hemings. “I was white until 1976, when I first learned about Sally Hemings. My parents didn’t know, and I don’t think my grandparents did either--at least they didn’t say anything about it.”

Westerinen is bringing three of her four children, a grandchild and several other family members and friends to Monticello for the reunion. “I’m fascinated with the whole story. I embrace my black heritage now. It’s very exciting because it’s a true American story of race and history and land.”

Mary Ester Jefferson, who lives in Diamond Bar, Calif., and is also a descendant of Eston Hemings, said no one had offered her membership in the Monticello Assn., and she did not know whether to expect one this weekend.

“If they’re willing to accept our branch and not our cousins’ branch,” she said, “I’d be concerned that it would look like they were accepting us because we’re the white ones.”

Madison Hemings (1805-1877) never denied his African American roots. His ancestors, who were raised as blacks and lived and married as blacks, were told that their family’s roots reached all the way back to Monticello.

“I have always known my lineage to Thomas Jefferson since I was a child,” said Shay Banks-Young, a Columbus, Ohio, native and health management trainer. “It took me the rest of my life to learn that the rest of the world knew it too.”

Less is known about Hemings’ third and oldest son, Thomas C. Woodson (1790-1879), who was given to an Ohio family and raised as a free black, according to family histories.

Robert C. Golden of Pittsburgh, a retired May Department Stores executive and president of the Woodson Family Assn., plans to go to this weekend’s reunion.

“I think I was invited because they realize that our history is so strong there have to be some connections,” Golden said. “At least, I hope that’s why I was invited.”

Banks-Young says that, no matter what happens at the Jefferson family reunion this weekend, “it isn’t going to change a thing about my life or who I am. What can they give me that I don’t already have except a plot in a place I don’t want to be? I have no desire to be buried on a plantation, no matter if it is Monticello or what the name is.

“This is an opportunity to meet and greet and get to know this line of my family that I didn’t know about,” she added. “Our children have a right to know each other, whether they accept us as family or not.”