Jefferson, Callender and the Sally Story

Rebecca L. McMurry and James F. McMurry, Jr. M.D.

Reviewed by Richard E. Dixon

The source of the enduring myth that Thomas Jefferson fathered a "Paris baby," born to his slave Sally Hemings, was a series of newspaper articles by James T. Callender in 1802. Until now, these articles could only be read on microfilm at selected locations. The McMurrys, through painstaking transcription, have made these articles available to the public for the first time.

In 1998, DNA tests linked the male line in the Jefferson family to Hemings' youngest son, Eston. The staff at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, owners of the Jefferson home Monticello, then issued a report that Thomas Jefferson had fathered not only Eston, but three other children by Sally Hemings. The prestige of the Monticello name generated worldwide publicity. Prominent in the Monticello report were excerpts of the Callender articles.

The McMurry book displays the articles in chronological order demonstrating how Callender picked up on local gossip in 1802 during Jefferson's first term and parlayed it into a series over the next six months, when Callender drowned in the James River. The Monticello report presented the articles as "evidence," but the McMurry book demonstrates clearly that Callender had never visited Monticello, had no source he could quote, and had no proof of any connection between Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

It has also been routinely repeated by historians that Sally Hemings was the daughter of John Wayles, father of Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha. This would make Sally the half sister of Martha Jefferson. The McMurrys reveal the source of this rumor is no more substantial than an 1805 letter to the editor by an unidentified writer, which caused a new flurry of the Callender slanders.

The Paris baby, named "Tom" by Callender, is claimed to be the ancestor of a present day Woodson family. Except for the Callender articles, there is no proof that Sally had a son before 1798, eight years after the claimed birth of Tom Woodson. An important result of the DNA tests, which has been ignored by the paternity Abelievers,@ showed that the Woodsons are not descendants of Thomas Jefferson. This raises an important question why Monticello continues to reference the discredited Callender articles and the Woodson myth on the Monticello webpage.

This book won't make the rumors go away but the McMurrys have performed an important service of original research. It is disappointing that more prominent Jefferson historians are not examining the Hemings myth with the same objectivity.