Eston Hemings - Descendants

Descendants

In the 1970s, Jean Jefferson, unaware of her connection to the Hemings family, read Fawn Brodie's biography, Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait. She recognized Eston Hemings Jefferson's name in the book from family stories and contacted Brodie. The historian helped Jefferson start putting the pieces of the family history back together. They discovered that in the 1940s, her father and his brothers had decided against continued telling of the Hemings-Jefferson story to their children, out of fear the younger people would be discriminated against. The family's new knowledge of their history enabled DNA researchers in 1998 to locate Jean's cousin John Weeks Jefferson, a male descendant of Eston Hemings Jefferson, for testing. His Y-chromosome matched that rare haplotype of the Thomas Jefferson male line.

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Famous quotes containing the word descendants:

    Your descendants shall gather your fruits.
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    And what if my descendants lose the flower
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