Saturday, May 06, 2000
Jefferson reunion tests family ties
Local woman a descendant of Hemings
By Walt Schaefer
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jacobs Center teacher Pricilla Lanier talks with Kevin Whigham, 14.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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GOLF MANOR — Priscilla Lanier left her home Friday for Thomas Jefferson's Virginia estate, Monticello, with a prayer in her heart.
“All I ask is that we be recognized for who we are — direct descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, a slave ... with whom the president had a 38-year love affair,” said Ms. Lanier, who lives here with her son, Shawn, 22.
It's unlikely her prayer will be answered.
James Truscott, president of the Monticello Association, a group of about 700 descendants of Mr. Jefferson and his wife, Martha, told USA Today: “The committee we set up to study the issue hasn't had time to finish its work.”
Responding to Mr. Truscott's statement, Ms. Lanier said: “I'm very disappointed. What more proof do they have to have? But it's their decision. I'm no trustee of that group or of any importance to that committee. It's an all-white committee. It's sad your family denies you. This is about family, and it's not right for them to deny us.”
Ms. Lanier said the association has been critical of the validity of the lineage and had appointed a committee a year ago to review evidence. She expected the group to vote at its Sunday meeting about inviting Hemings ancestors into the generation-old association. There are between 600 and 700 known Hemings ancestors, she said.
Ms. Lanier is the great-great-great-great-great granddaughter of Sally Hemings.
“I really do not want to think of this as a racial issue; I prefer to view it as a family issue,” she said. “Since we are all descendants of Thomas Jefferson, we should be treated equally.”
Ms. Lanier, 49, a special education teacher at Jacobs Center Junior High School in Winton Place, will attend her first reunion this weekend. Her son, Shannon, 20, a student at Kent State University, received an invitation. He is writing a book about the family lineage and its link to the country's third president.
Other descendants of Hemings also will attend the reunion at Thomas Jefferson's Charlottesville, Va., home, as they did last year. The 1999 reunion erupted with public rancor among the family members, with some Hemings descendants leaving so upset they have decided not to return this weekend. Others intend to be there as a matter of principle.
“What happened last year was an embarrassment, and the racial overtones were not lost on me,” Shay Banks-Young, a Hemings descendant, told USA Today. “I may not want to sit in the front of the bus, but nobody is going to tell me I can't.”
Many historians agree that Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings.
DNA testing has linked Mr. Jefferson to two of the couple's five children, Ms. Lanier said. However, DNA testing could not be performed on Ms. Lanier's link to history because there is no uninterrupted line of male descendants to prove it. DNA testing requires the presence of a Y chromosome, present only in males. “But there is plenty of oral history and photographic documentation,” Ms. Lanier said.
USA Today reported that in November 1998, DNA tests offered new evidence to support the claim. The tests found that the Y chromosome DNA in a descendant of Hemings' son, Eston, matched that found in five acknowledged male relatives of Jefferson.
The genetic tests were not conclusive. Dissenters note that other men in the Jefferson family had the same DNA and one could be the father.
But when the DNA was combined with other historical evidence, including records showing Jefferson was in residence at Monticello when Hemings' children were conceived, most experts concluded that Jefferson is the father, according to USA Today reports.
Earlier this year, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation issued a report that there was a “strong likelihood” that Jefferson was father of at least one, and maybe all six, of Hemings' children.
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation owns Monticello. It is not linked to the family group. It permits the group to have a reception at Monticello during the reunion.
Ms. Lanier said that recent DNA testing on Tom Woodson, among the five offspring of Ms. Hemings, returned results that he, too, was likely to be a direct descendant of Mr. Jefferson.
Only Mr. Woodson — who changed his surname — and Madison Hemings remained members of the black community. The other three children, Harriet, Beverly and Eston, entered white society. All five were fair-skinned blacks.
No descendants of Harriet or Beverly have been found, most likely because light-skinned blacks entering white society severed all ties with black relatives to protect them from being identified as black, Ms. Lanier said.
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