A President in the Family: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas Woodson

Abstract

Byron W. Woodson Sr. traces his descent from Thomas Woodson, who, according to Wood-son family oral history, was the first child of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. For years, white historians scoffed at this story, so the Woodson family happily cooperated when Dr. Eugene Foster proposed DNA tests that might clarify whether the Woodsons and others who claim descent from Hemings and Jefferson bore Jefferson's genetic markers. As Woodson's mother used to say, “Let's prove the oral history to be correct or prove it wrong.” Unfortunately for the Woodsons, the DNA tests came up with the wrong answer for them. While establishing a genetic link between Jefferson (or, to be precise, Jefferson's uncle) and the descendants of Sally Hemings's youngest son, Eston, they could not establish any link to the Woodsons. Those of us with some personal distance from this story may rack it up as one of life's ironies. The Woodson clan, after all, had worked tirelessly to convince white Americans that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings's children; it simply turned out that their ancestor evidently was not one of them.