Tag

Sally Hemings

History by Hair? Blog

History by Hair?

Finally, it is out! The much-ballyhooed book History by a Hair! The book is motivated by a 15-year DNA study by Richard Green, Samuel Vohr, and 12 others, including the Smithsonian’s own Richard Kurin, who prompted the study and wrote the book. The book, published by Crown, has the following write-up: The definitive account of how a discarded strand of…
M. Andrew Holowchak
September 29, 2026
If Jefferson’s Paternity of Sally’s Kids Is So Very Well Supported by Evidence, Why Won’t the Pro-Paternity People Debate the Issue? Blog

If Jefferson’s Paternity of Sally’s Kids Is So Very Well Supported by Evidence, Why Won’t the Pro-Paternity People Debate the Issue?

Some two months ago, I asked historian Courtney Crowley, who has become a member of our team at “Thomas Jefferson Lives” (aka, The Real Thomas Jefferson), if she could email four persons in the “Onufian Family”—Annette Gordon-Reed, Andrew Burstein, Kevin Gutzman, and of course “dude” himself, Peter Onuf—and ask whether any would participate in a debate on Jefferson’s avowed paternity.…
M. Andrew Holowchak
August 13, 2026
Can We Trust Madison Hemings’ Testimony in the Putative Jefferson-Hemings Affair? Blog

Can We Trust Madison Hemings’ Testimony in the Putative Jefferson-Hemings Affair?

Harvard professor Annette Gordon-Reed—who has won numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, for her book The Hemingses of Monticello (2009)—is widely acknowledged to be the world’s foremost authority on the nature of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his toothsome slave, Sally Hemings. In chapters 13 through 16 of that book and in several subsequent interviews and talks, she goes…
M. Andrew Holowchak
August 3, 2026
Framing a Legend Blog

Framing a Legend

“Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known and seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men. ~Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on Religion,” 1776 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER 5 OF FRAMING A LEGEND:…
M. Andrew Holowchak
November 24, 2025
Institutionalized Wokism as the Norm in Jeffersonian Scholarship Blog

Institutionalized Wokism as the Norm in Jeffersonian Scholarship

Abbeville Institute Press recently (2025) published my book--Sally Hemings, Race, and Song-and-Dance Historiography: The Corruption of Jefferson Scholarship by Institutional Wokeism. The book has 24 short, easily digestible essays—inasmuch as my writings can be construed as easily digestible!—in  three sections. I proffer some comments on why I wrote the book. In the introduction I define “wokeism” roughly as “being awake…
M. Andrew Holowchak
June 25, 2025
A Slimy Turn of Events at Monticello Blog

A Slimy Turn of Events at Monticello

When Dan Jordan left the presidency of Monticello in 2008, the job was gifted to Leslie Greene Bowman (MA, history, University of Delaware). Prior to Monticello, Bowman oversaw Winterthur, a historic house in northern Delaware. During her tenure at Monticello, Bowman created a new visitor center, opened the upstairs of Monticello which was long closed to visitors due to its…
M. Andrew Holowchak
June 5, 2025
Fear and Propaganda: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth Blog

Fear and Propaganda: The Jefferson-Hemings Myth

For 25 years, The Thomas Jefferson (Memorial) Foundation has been pushing the story of Jefferson’s involvement of Sally Hemings. In 2000, after conclusion of their analysis of the 1998 DNA study concerning Jefferson’s avowed paternity of Hemings’ children, their story was that it was very likely that Jefferson fathered all of Hemings’ children, but in 2018, the qualifiers were removed:…
M. Andrew Holowchak
December 12, 2024
“The Whole Affair Has Been Conducted by Amateurs” Blog

“The Whole Affair Has Been Conducted by Amateurs”

In the November 5, 1998, piece for Nature, a group of scientists, led by pathologist Dr. Eugene Foster, had published a piece titled “Jefferson Fathered Slave’s Last Child.” Utilizing what was at the time state-of-the-art Y-chromosome DNA analysis—the Y-chromosome is identical in a particular line of males (e.g., Jefferson’s Y-chromosome is the same as this father’s, his grandfather’s, his brother’s,…
M. Andrew Holowchak
September 10, 2024
How Sally is Saving Monticello Blog

How Sally is Saving Monticello

Recently, I watched the Abbeville Institute’s Zoom conversation with Mike Kitchens on the loss of historic antebellum homes. Many have been lost to demolition or neglect.  But there is another kind of loss threatening these historic sites. While it is important to discuss the people who built and kept these plantations afloat, some house museums are focusing disproportionately on the…
Celia Jones Prehn
August 28, 2024
The Unimpeachable Authority of Annette Gordon-Reed on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Blog

The Unimpeachable Authority of Annette Gordon-Reed on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

“Travelling through a desert, a man saw a woman, standing alone and with her eyes fixed to the ground. “‘Who are you,’ asked he. “‘I am Truth,’ she replied. “‘Why have you left the city and retreated to the desert?’ “‘Times have changed. In days bygone, few people lied. Yet now, all people lie.’ “Human life is a vile and…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 31, 2024
Jefferson as the “Architect of American Liberty” Blog

Jefferson as the “Architect of American Liberty”

In Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty, (Basic Books, 2017), John B. Boles offers us another biography of Thomas Jefferson. In his brief introduction, he mentions that his aim is to present Jefferson as “politician, party leader, executive; architect, musician, oenophile, gourmand, traveler; inventor, historian, political theorist; land owner, farmer, slaveholder; and son, father, grandfather.” He cautions readers that his portrait…
M. Andrew Holowchak
April 23, 2024
Sally Hemings’ Bedroom Blog

Sally Hemings’ Bedroom

“Historians have made a discovery just in time for the July 4th holiday” (2018), writes Natalie Dreier of the National/World News. “They have found the living quarters for Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who bore six children to one of the country’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson.” Where at Monticello is this bedroom? Michael Cottman of NBC News says that Hemings’ bedroom was…
M. Andrew Holowchak
December 13, 2023
A “Proof” Gone Bad in the Jefferson Paternity Issue Blog

A “Proof” Gone Bad in the Jefferson Paternity Issue

After the 1998 DNA study in Nature indicted Thomas Jefferson apropos of the paternity of Eston Hemings and the rest of Sally Hemings’ children, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation (hereafter, TJMF)—now merely the Thomas Jefferson Foundation—formed a committee to examine the DNA study and strands of historical evidence. In 2000, the foundation declared, “The DNA study, combined with multiple strands…
M. Andrew Holowchak
September 13, 2023
Assessing the Consilience Argument for Jefferson’s Paternity of Sally Hemings’ Children Blog

Assessing the Consilience Argument for Jefferson’s Paternity of Sally Hemings’ Children

It is too common today, vis-à-vis Jefferson’s avowed sexual involvement with Sally Hemings, to fall back on what I call the Consilience Argument: in effect, the argument everything (biological and historical evidence) argues for a relationship and nothing argues against it. That begins with the 2000 Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation’s 2000 study of the DNA evidence and historical evidence. They…
M. Andrew Holowchak
July 21, 2023
The Myth of Tom and Sally Blog

The Myth of Tom and Sally

In 1993 the Washington Post published an article on research being conducted by an accomplished Richmond lawyer named Robert Cooley. According to this article, among many additional details in regard to the subject, Cooley had been working with scholars for years to examine land deeds owned by the descendants of Thomas Jefferson, for the purpose of investigating specifically what land…
H.L. Dowless
October 17, 2019
Taking Back Thomas Jefferson Review Posts

Taking Back Thomas Jefferson

“There is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1826, days before death It is now accepted as a fact that one of the preeminent Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson – the Apostle of Liberty and Reason – engaged in an illicit sexual relationship with one of his slaves, Sally…
James Rutledge Roesch
March 10, 2015