Early Life and Education
Sarah Jane Woodson, the fifth daughter and youngest child of eleven of Jemima (Riddle) and Thomas C. Woodson (1790–1879), was born free in Chillicothe, Ohio on November 15, 1825. Her parents had moved to the free state of Ohio about 1821 from Virginia, where they had gained freedom from slavery.
They founded the first black Methodist church west of the Alleghenies. In 1830 the Woodsons were among founders of a separate black farming community called Berlin Crossroads, since defunct. The nearly two dozen families by 1840 established their own school, stores and churches. Her father and some brothers became black nationalists, which influenced Sarah Woodson's activities as an adult.
Her father believed that he was the oldest son of Sally Hemings and President Thomas Jefferson; this tradition became part of the family's oral history. It was not supported by known historical evidence. In 1998 DNA testing of descendants of the Jefferson, Hemings' and Woodson male lines showed conclusively that there was no match between the Jefferson and Woodson lines; the Woodson male line did show western European paternal ancestry. According to historians at Monticello, no documents support the claim that Woodson was Hemings' first child, as he appeared to have been born before any known child of hers.
In 1839 Sarah Woodson joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), founded in 1816 as the first independent black denomination in the United States. Her father and two older brothers, Lewis and John P., were ministers in the church. The Woodson family emphasized education for all their children. Sarah Jane and her older sister Hannah both attended Oberlin College; Sarah Jane completed the full program and graduated in 1856, among the first African-American women college graduates.
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