Jefferson-Hemings Controversy - Conclusions

Conclusions

With the Carr nephews disproved and a match for the Eston Hemings descendant found with the Jefferson male line, formerly skeptical biographers such as Joseph Ellis and Andrew Burstein publicly said they had changed their opinions and acknowledged Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children. As Burstein said in 2005,

"he white Jefferson descendants who established the family denial in the mid-nineteenth century cast responsibility for paternity on two Jefferson nephews (children of Jefferson’s sister) whose DNA was not a match. So, as far as can be reconstructed, there are no Jeffersons other than the president who had the degree of physical access to Sally Hemings that he did."

In 2000, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which operates Monticello, issued a report of its own investigation, which concluded in accepting Jefferson's paternity. Dr. Daniel P. Jordan, president of Monticello, committed at the time to incorporate "the conclusions of the report into Monticello's training, interpretation, and publications." These include new articles and monographs on the Hemings descendants reflecting the new evidence, as well as books on the interracial community of Monticello and Charlottesville; and new exhibits at Monticello show Jefferson as the father of the Sally Hemings children. In 2010, the Monticello website noted the new consensus that has emerged on Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children in the decade since those major studies.

In its January 2000 issue, the William and Mary Quarterly published Forum: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings Redux, a total of seven articles noting the changed consensus and the developing new views on Jefferson. Included among them was the results of an analysis by Fraser D. Neiman, who studied the statistical significance of the relationship between Jefferson's documented residencies at Monticello and Hemings' conceptions. She never conceived in his absence.

In May 2000, PBS Frontline produced a program Jefferson's Blood about the issues related to the DNA test and historical controversy. It noted in its overview:

"More than 20 years after CBS executives were pressured by Jefferson historians to drop plans for a mini-series on Jefferson and Hemings, the network airs Sally Hemings: An American Scandal. Though many quarreled with the portrayal of Hemings as unrealistically modern and heroic, no major historian challenged the series' premise that Hemings and Jefferson had a 38-year relationship that produced children."

In the fall of 2001, the National Genealogical Society published a special issue of its quarterly about the Jefferson–Hemings controversy. In several articles, its specialists concluded that, as the genealogist Helen M. Leary wrote, the historical, genealogical, and DNA evidence were sufficient by standard genealogical standards to conclude that Thomas Jefferson was the father of all of Hemings' children.