Lewis Woodson - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Lewis Woodson was the oldest of eleven children born to Thomas C. and Jemima Woodson, both mixed-race slaves who had gained their freedom. He was born in January 1806 in Greenbrier County, Virginia (now part of West Virginia).

Woodson family oral history, dating to the early nineteenth century, has claimed that Thomas Woodson was the eldest child of Sally Hemings and her master President Thomas Jefferson. That account has been disputed by Jeffersonian historians; there is no surviving record of Sally Hemings' having given birth to a surviving child before 1795, except for accounts written by the newsman James Callender.

In addition, results of a 1998 Jefferson DNA study conclusively showed that there was no genetic link between the Jefferson male line and the Woodson male line. The study's major findings were that the Y chromosome of the Jefferson male line matched that of Sally Hemings' son Eston's descendant. The Woodson Y chromosome did show northern European ancestry.

Read more about this topic:  Lewis Woodson

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:

    “next to of course god america i
    love you land of the pilgrims” and so forth oh
    say can you see by the dawn’s early my
    country ‘tis of centuries come and go
    and are no more what of it we should worry
    in every language even deafanddumb
    thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
    by jing by gee by gosh by gum
    —E.E. (Edward Estlin)

    What’s fame? A fancied life in others’ breath,
    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

    Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect remains.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)