John Wayles Jefferson

John Wayles Jefferson, born John Wayles Hemings (May 8, 1835 – July 12, 1892), was the son of a former slave; he served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. A businessman who owned a hotel in Madison, Wisconsin, after the war he achieved wealth as a cotton broker in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the eldest son of Eston Hemings (1808–56), a freedman who was seven-eighths European in ancestry and "white" under Virginia law, and Julia Ann Isaacs Hemings (1814–1889), a free woman of color. His family moved from Charlottesville, Virginia to Chillicothe, Ohio in 1836. They later moved to Madison, Wisconsin in 1852, where they changed their surname to Jefferson and entered the white community; both decisions were based on their ancestry.

Jefferson is believed to have been the grandson of Sarah (Sally) Hemings, a slave, and her master Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States. DNA tests conducted in 1998 confirmed that a male-line descendant of John's brother Beverly had a male ancestor in common with male-line descendants of Thomas Jefferson's uncle Field Jefferson. This supported the family's tradition of descent from Thomas Jefferson and disproved the Jefferson family tradition that his Carr nephew(s) had fathered Sally Hemings' children, as the Carr DNA did not match. For most historians, this data, together with the weight of historical evidence, has confirmed the Hemings family's claim of descent from Thomas Jefferson.