A Founding father and His Family Ties
By MADISON J. GRAY
Thomas Jefferson & His Negro Family
March 3, 2001
As
a child, Julia Jefferson did not know that her family was believed to be
directly descended from Thomas Jefferson. But her father knew. And he kept it a
secret.
"They met in the 40's and decided to kill the story," she recalled
of her father, William McGill Jefferson, and his brothers, who agreed not to
tell their children.
Why wasn't having a famous forefather something to brag about?
Well, the Jeffersons were white. And they believed that their ancestor was
one of the children of Sally Hemings, a slave who lived on Thomas Jefferson's
estate, Monticello. And for a white family living in suburban Evanston, Ill., in
the 1940's, black ancestry was not something to advertise.
"Those were terrible times for black people, and I would like to think
they were trying to protect us," said Julia Jefferson, now Julia Westerinen.
But in 1998, new DNA evidence that traces Y chromosomes passed from father to
son strongly indicated that Mrs. Westerinen's brother John is a descendant of
Jefferson and Hemings.
After the revelation, John, who likes his privacy, largely remained out of
the public eye. But Mrs. Westerinen was swept into the media river, met some of
her distant black cousins on "Oprah" and went off on a speaking tour
with one of them, all because she embraced her new black heritage.
"It's such an American thing to have a drop of this and a drop of
that," she said on NBC's "Nightly News" after the results of the
DNA evidence were released. "I'm Scotch, Irish, English, French, Welsh and
black."
In a recent interview at her Staten Island home, Mrs. Westerinen smiled,
remembering the to-do that followed that broadcast. "When I went home that
evening, all types of press left messages," she said. "I did
interviews back-to-back. Someone even called in to one of the shows and welcomed
me to the black race."
Although the story of a long relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally
Hemings was not new — it was widely rumored in Jefferson's time — the news
that scientific evidence showed that Jefferson could have fathered at least one
of her children riveted the public.
African-American scholarship in the 1970's and 1980's had already renewed
interest in the relationship, and it was through a book that Mrs. Westerinen
learned her family's secret long before the DNA test results. Fawn M. Brodie, a
biographer, wrote "Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History," published
in 1974, which mentioned an affair between Hemings and Jefferson. One of Mrs.
Westerinen's cousins, Jean Jefferson, read the book and remembered that one of
their ancestors was named Eston Hemings, also known as E. H. Jefferson. She
called Ms. Brodie.
"They made the connection between us and E. H. Jefferson," Mrs.
Westerinen said.
Eston Hemings was said to be the youngest son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally
Hemings, and accounts of the time said that he had fair skin, so it was easy for
him to assimilate into white society. When he moved to Madison, Wis., in 1852
with his wife, Julia, he changed his name to E. H. Jefferson.
His third child, Beverly, grew up to be a respected businessman in Wisconsin,
building omnibuses. Beverly's son Carl Smith Jefferson became chief counsel of
the Milwaukee Railroad Company, and at some point moved to Evanston. Carl's
second son, William McGill Jefferson, raised his children, including Julia, in
that suburban Chicago town. The family later moved to Pennsylvania, and then to
Maryland, where Julia married Emil Westerinen and had four children. In 1968,
her family moved to Staten Island. Mrs. Westerinen became vice president of a
company that makes furniture.
After the Brodie book was published, researchers spoke to Mrs. Westerinen's
family for articles in scholarly publications. But some historians disputed the
claim that Jefferson had fathered black children.
Scientific advances prompted researchers still interested in the subject to
contact Mrs. Westerinen in 1998. The DNA test they wanted to try could track
only an unbroken line of males, so her brother John volunteered his blood. The
test showed that the Y chromosome of E. H. Jefferson's great-great-grandson John
matched those of descendants of Thomas Jefferson's paternal grandfather (the
only unbroken line of white Jefferson males). Soon, The Seattle Times reported
the story.
"All types of media were ringing our phone like crazy," said Mrs.
Westerinen, 66. The sheer number of interview requests almost overwhelmed her.
But her daughter-in- law Susan encouraged her to go on Oprah Winfrey's show. Ms.
Winfrey had long been interested in the Jefferson-Hemings connection and invited
Mrs. Westerinen and her family to Chicago for a taping.
But the family did not know that Ms. Winfrey had also invited
African-American descendants of Sally Hemings to the show. Afterward, Mrs.
Westerinen said, "Oprah treated us all to lunch," where she saw that
"physically, there were a lot of resemblances. A lot of my black cousins
look just like my uncle John." One of the distant cousins Mrs. Westerinen
met at the lunch was Shay Banks-Young.
Ms. Banks-Young, 56, an African- American who lives in Columbus, Ohio, and
works as a first aid instructor for the Red Cross, said she had long been aware
of her family's connection to Thomas Jefferson. "I've known about my
history pretty much as long as I can remember," she said. "It wasn't
something people made a big deal over."
She said that she did not dwell much upon the issue until she met Alex Haley,
the author of "Roots." "He was excited to meet me when I told him
my family name is Hemings," she said. "He encouraged me to put
together my family chart and document the information."
After meeting Mrs. Westerinen, Ms. Banks-Young invited her to appear with her
on a television show to talk about the Jefferson-Hemings family. Mrs. Westerinen
then returned the favor. She had been approached about a lecture tour, and asked
Ms. Banks-Young to join her.
In the lectures, Mrs. Westerinen and Ms. Banks-Young talk about their Hemings-Jefferson
family history, slavery and race in America. Their next lecture is on Monday at
the University of Delaware in Newark.
Mrs. Westerinen said she believed that speaking about America's racial divide
would help close it. "Until you identify a problem, you can't solve
it," she said. "It was once not polite to talk to black friends about
race, but now I can talk."
Both women say their immediate families have supported them. Mrs.
Westerinen's daughter Dorothy, 43, said: "One of the benefits of this is
that people are talking. Discussion of it has opened some minds."
But other Jeffersons have not accepted the DNA evidence.
In 1999, the Monticello Association, an organization of Jefferson
descendants, met at Monticello. Mrs. Westerinen and her daughter went to the
meeting looking to join the association. But a member made a motion to remove
them from the meeting. Others members voted to allow them to remain, but they
have not been allowed to join.
A younger black Hemings cousin, Shannon Lanier, also saw mixed reactions from
whites at the meeting.
"There were Jeffersons who threw their arms around me, and one woman who
looked at my outstretched hand and actually shuddered," he wrote in
"Jefferson's Children: The Story of One American Family" (Random
House, 2000), a book he wrote with the photographer Jane Feldman.
But the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, which is responsible for
maintaining the Monticello estate, has been pleased that Ms. Banks-Young and
Mrs. Westerinen have provided publicity by speaking about their family ties.
"Over the years we've seen that a number of people have gone from
considering this to be just a family story to considering this to be a national
story and an American saga in many respects," said Dianne Swann- Wright,
director of special programs at Monticello and a historian for an oral history
project dedicated to chronicling the lives of African- Americans who lived at
Monticello.
Dorothy Westerinen said she hoped that white members of the Monticello
Association would eventually admit that Thomas Jefferson fathered black
children.
"I think those who were ready to accept something like this accepted it,
and those who were not weren't going to accept it no matter what," she
said. "I feel like we've started the ball rolling."
Ms. Westerinen said she had gained a lot from the DNA news. "Our family
is like a sample family that was deeply divided and then came together,"
she said. "So think of what an example we can set for America."
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updated 3 October 2007
