Jefferson Lunch Serves Up ‘Family Feud’

They may not look alike or accept that they’re related, but when the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and of one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, sat down at a white-linen luncheon Sunday afternoon, it was like an episode of “Family Feud.”

Before everyone even tucked in their napkins, goodwill lost its footing and the bickering began. The occasion was the 86th annual meeting of the Monticello Assn., a group of 700 descendants of Jefferson and his wife, Martha. This year, for the first time, about 35 descendants of Hemings, long thought by some to have been the mistress of the third president, were invited as guests.

Although the meeting was closed to the public and reporters, hints of what was going on among the 200-plus diners inside the Jefferson Ballroom at a hotel here were quick to leak.

First came a motion to evict the predominantly black Hemings faction and other nonvoting members from the room while the group mulled over scientific evidence made public last fall showing all but conclusively that Jefferson fathered Hemings’ youngest son, Eston. There was also discussion on whether the Hemings family should be admitted to the exclusive and, for now at least, all-white Monticello Assn. Among other things, membership carries the privilege of burial at Monticello, Jefferson’s neoclassical home in the hills above Charlottesville.

“People sitting at my table got up and said they wanted me and my cousins to leave,” said Dorothy Westerinen, 41, a descendant of Eston Hemings. “It was painful to hear that.”

The motion to remove the guests lost, 33 to 20. But from that point on, those in attendance said later, the tone of the gathering changed.

Association members also discussed their desire for more scientific and historical data to determine whether a Jefferson male other than Thomas could have fathered a child with Hemings, and they pressed for careful consideration of any evidence before opening their ranks.

Last year, DNA tests were conducted, comparing the Y chromosome in males who trace their ancestors to Monticello, with that of male descendants of Hemings. Researchers said the scientific data matched the descendants of Eston Hemings with the male line of Jeffersons. When historical evidence was added, researchers said it all but confirmed a liaison between Thomas Jefferson and Hemings, putting a scientific imprimatur on what had long been regarded as fact on the Hemings side.

The new evidence led to an invitation from the Monticello Assn., spurred by member Lucian K. Truscott IV, to the Hemings descendants to be guests at this year’s Jefferson family reunion. The gathering was generally cordial, but some made clear their unease with the prospect of broadening the family tree.

The tension peaked when Truscott, a critic of the arms-length treatment accorded the Hemings, asked the association’s executive committee to accept the Hemings group as honorary members.

A two-thirds vote would have been required. But outgoing president Robert Gillespie wouldn’t allow it, saying later that honorary membership is, by tradition, reserved for officials at Jefferson’s beloved University of Virginia, and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which operates Monticello.

Members did approve an advisory panel to study any new evidence, including scientific tests and oral histories, with an eye toward changing their admissions criteria.