The Ellen Coolidge Letter

This handwritten letter by Ellen Randolph Coolidge, granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, was written on 24 October 1858 to her husband, Joseph Randolph Coolidge. Ms Coolidge’s letter is written in very clear penmanship. It was obviously written for the purpose of explaining to her husband (and through him to others) that the purported relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings could not have occurred. From Ellen Coolidge LetterBook, University of Virginia Alderman Library.

Correspondence between John Works and Annette Gordon-Reed

When the transcription errors concerning the letter dated 24 October 1858 from Ellen Randolph Coolidge to her husband, Joseph Coolidge, in Annette Gordon Reed’s book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), discovered and documented in The Jefferson Hemings Myth: An American Travesty and also included in the Jefferson Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission, John Works notified the Dean of New York Law School, where Annette Gordon-Reed was at that time an adjunct professor at the school, of these transcription errors in a series of correspondence beginning with a letter dated 4 July 2001. In her letter to her husband, Ellen Randolph Coolidge, describing the rooms at Monticello, said that Jefferson’s bedroom had no private entrance that wasn’t perfectly accessible and visible to all of the household. She also said that no one could have entered his bedroom without being seen and that no female staff entered his room unless he was not there. (A total of 12 words were changed in a key sentence to totally reverse Ms Coolidge’s original clear meaning. She clearly wrote “no female domestic servant entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be there and none could have entered without being exposed to the public gaze”. However, her letter was altered to read, “no female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be in the public gaze”). This does not appear to be just a small “typo”—turning “that” into “than” or even dropping an entire line of text in the transcription process. In contrast, more than a dozen words in the original sentence—which is the most important sentence in the entire letter for the issue Ms Coolidge was addressing—were either changed or moved around so that an entirely new sentence, supporting the thesis in Gordon-Reed’s book, rather than refuting it, was created. No other errors occurred in her transcription. Altering historical documents is a more serious offense than plagiarism, as it misleads other scholars in their search for the truth. In contrast, plagiarism merely appropriates the work of another—without deceiving the reader as to the substantive truth of any statements of fact in the appropriated material. 

LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY

This was a series of articles by S.F. Wetmore in the Pike County (Ohio) Republican, a weekly newspaper in Waverly, Ohio. Historians did not become aware of the articles until the mid 1950s.

Nature's false headlinE

A false headline, “Jefferson Fathered Slave’s Last Child”, to an article in the 5 November 1998 issue of Nature magazine generated anew the rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with an enslaved woman Sally Hemings.

Index Card for Sally Hemings

Sally Hemings is alleged to have had a 35 year affair with the President of the United States, which produced at least 5 children. Yet, there is almost no information on her character, personality or activities at Monticello. In its year-long study, the Scholars Commission demonstrated its lack of information about her by placing what was known on a 3 x 5 index card. This text is reproduced from The Jefferson – Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission, edited by Robert F. Turner (Carolina Academic Press 2001, 2011) p. 69.

Letter from Henry Randall to James Parton

When James Parton was preparing his Life of Thomas Jefferson (1874), he contacted Henry S. Randall, who had written a previous biography of Jefferson in 1858, about the "Dusky Sally Story". Randall responded by letter in 1868, the major portion of which appeared in Parton's book. The full text was later published in James Parton – The Father of Modern Biography, by Milton E Flower (1951). This text is taken from In Defense of Thomas Jefferson: the Sally Hemings Sex Scandal, by William G Hyland Jr, (Thomas Dunne Books, 2009) pp. 204-207. There are several important observations in the letter attributed to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's grandson. It should be noted that there was at least a 10 year gap between the conversation and the writing of the Randall letter. Randall admits that the conversation with Randolph was based on his "recall".

2020 & 2023
Sally Hemings Living Quarters at Monticello

The Thomas Jefferson (Memorial) Foundation, which owns Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, has reconstructed the recently-“discovered” bedroom of Sally Hemings under the South Terrace Colonnades. Various reports describe it as “just steps away from”, “next to”, or “adjacent to” Jefferson’s own bedroom. It is the contention of Monticello that the room is further evidence of a relationship between the two. If Sally Hemings lived in this room (likely with sister Critta), she didn’t do so until after she turned 35 when she bore no more children. When Sally Hemings was 23-35, when all 4 of her surviving children were conceived, she likely lived in her own log cabin on Mulberry row, building “s”. John Works provides a detailed look into this issue. Why hasn’t Monticello recreated Sally Hemings cabin?

2010
THE JEFFERSON-HEMINGS CONTROVERSY: A NEW, CRITICAL LOOK

DRUMBEAT

In a detailed review of the Jefferson-Hemings controversy, John Works, former President of the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society and former President of the Monticello Association, brings a unique understanding to the chain of events that led the media to assert Jefferson's paternity of slave children. The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: A New, Critical Look appeared in Drumbeat, the quarterly publication of the Sons of the Revolution.

who was sally hemings?

There are only glimpses of the historical figure of Sally Hemings. The Scholars Commission described her as an "enigma".

Madison Hemings and the “Treaty” Legend

Those who choose to believe that Thomas Jefferson fathered slave children rely for support on a newspaper interview of Madison Hemings and ignore that it is hearsay decades after the purported sources of this information and without independent verification.

Flawed Evidence

Absent any direct evidence that Thomas Jefferson had a relationship with Sally Hemings, a number of evdentiary fallacies have been advanced to support the conclusion of Jefferson’s paternity.