Mr. Richard F. Snow
Editor, American Heritage
90 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10011

29 January 2001

Dear Mr. Snow,

I am responding to the article in your March 2001 issue ("Children of Monticello") written by my fellow Monticello Association member, Lucian Truscott. I am the member that made the motion at our Annual Meeting two years ago to exclude the Sally Hemings group from participating in our annual business meeting, because as far as I am aware it is never appropriate in any organisation to have prospective members participate with current members in discussions about membership. I understand that this year's Annual Meeting will be open only to members of The Monticello Association so my motion indeed has had the desired effect.

In his.article Mr. Truscott makes a number of distracting factual errors, such as confusing Thomas Jefferson's grandson with his son-in-Iaw, and saying that Thomas Woodson is "universally acknowledged" as a child of Sally Hemings'. But despite the strong Tom Woodson family history that Thomas Jefferson was his father, the DNA tests demonstrated conclusively that no Jefferson (including Thomas) was his father. While there was a DNA match to "some" Jefferson, Eston Hemings' family oral history passed down the story that he was not the child of Thomas Jefferson, but rather of an uncle. Mr. Truscott also claims that The Monticello Association has been cavalier in its scrutiny of membership applications, without knowing that genealogy has been a preoccupation of The Monticello Association from its beginnings and we have meticulously kept records of all of Thomas Jefferson's acknowledged descendants. Since Mr. Truscott is a fiction novelist and screenwriter he must have a vivid imagination.

To Mr. Truscott's credit he makes some useful admissions. For example, I was particularly pleased to see him finally acknowledge that little of the opposition within the family stems from "racism", and also to see him admit that the 1998 DNA tests established only that one of Sally Hemings' children was probably fathered by "a Jefferson male", but not necessarily Thomas Jefferson. Careless coverage in the media has led many Americans to believe that DNA testing proved once and for all that Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more of Sally Hemings' children, when in reality he was one of more than two dozen possible candidates for paternity, many of whom presumably had access to her. Interestingly, we have located the gravesite of Madison Hemings' son William, and have suggested that his body be exhumed for further DNA testing. The Hemings family members have refused to co-operate. This hardly persuades me that they are as confident in their paternity claim as they claim, and if they insist upon concealing potentially relevant evidence, then I see little reason for The Monticello Association to add credence to the myth that Thomas Jefferson fathered any of Sally Hemings' children.

I don't pretend to speak for everyone in The Monticello Association who is hesitant to recognise the Hemings and Woodson descendants as members of Thomas Jefferson's family, and I certainly bear them no ill will. But the Monticello Association is a group of descendants with inherited legal rights in the graveyard at Monticello. The burden of proof of paternity lies with the Hemings' and not with us. Proper legal formalities must be followed, and most of us will insist on strict compliance with these requirements. We all should be alarmed that such non-factual, non-scientific, and non-legal approaches are being put forward by some to bulldoze a kinship where it simply cannot be substantiated under current science and law.

Sincerely,

Mr. John Hamilton Works, Jr.

President, The Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society
Past President, The Monticello Association
Lineal descendant of Thomas Jefferson