How many illegitimate mixed race children did Thomas Jefferson have?
The circumstantial evidence is suggestive. Jefferson, who traveled extensively for long periods, always happened to be in residence nine months before the birth of each of Sally Hemings’s seven children. Some of Hemings’s children were said to bear a striking resemblance to Jefferson. And in an 1873 interview, Sally’s fourth son Madison stated that his mother had been Jefferson’s “concubine,” and that he and his siblings were the president’s children. The Y chromosome keeps its family secrets and now, nearly two centuries later, DNA evidence has unequivocally linked a male descendant of Sally Hemings to the house of Thomas Jefferson.
