Op-Eds, Editorials & Letters to the Editor

3/5/2008
If alive, he still would be ahead of our time

Alf E. Mapp, a member of the Scholars Commission, responds in the Fredericksburg Free Lance Star to an article by Susan Dunn (author of "Dominion of Memories") in which she claims that Thomas Jefferson "fathered mixed race children."

2/1/2008

The essay "Thomas Jefferson, Man versus Myth," by David Mayer has been published as a monograph, or pamphlet, by The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship (at Rockford College, in Illinois), and is now available for purchase (for $5.95) at Amazon.com. The essay can also be viewed at the "Jefferson Image" section of this web page under "Jefferson and Intellectual Thought."

4/13/2006
Thomas Jefferson Day, 2006
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

6/26/2005

Herbert Barger, Jefferson Family Historian and Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society board member, has recently assisted the National Geographic Society with a vital Genographic Project. Spencer Wells, National Geographic geneticist, needed the Jefferson DNA for his project and Mr. Barger, who assisted Dr. Eugene Foster with the 1998 Jefferson-Hemings DNA Study, agreed to assist and provided Jefferson information for this important study. It is from Mr. Barger's data banks that Jefferson family genealogy and history is maintained.

The results were revealed to the public in the National Geographic film production, The Search for Adam, shown nationally on June 26, 2005. A Jefferson DNA donor is shown providing a mouth swab for the match. Using other similar swabs, Mr. Wells was able to determine that the Jefferson DNA matched to the Phoenicians, an ancient civilization living in what is now Syria and Lebanon. The Phoenicians were known as the Canaanites in the Bible.

5/9/2002
Keeping up with the Jeffersons

Editorial

The Washington Times

Is there a willful determination by some to sully the memory of one of America 's founding fathers as a debauched adulterer who some claimed "visited" one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, on a regular basis and fathered at least one child by her?
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6/1/2002
Fact Trumps Fiction on Jefferson Story

By Robert F. Turner

The Boston Globe

The allegation that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings was first published in 1802 in fulfillment of a blackmail threat by one of the most disreputable scandalmongers of the era, James Callender, who hated people of color and expected that the rumor would cost Jefferson his reelection.
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7/4/2001
The Truth About Jefferson

By Robert F. Turner

The Wall Street Journal

Were allegations about Thomas Jefferson's purported relationship with Sally Hemings just another bit of Clintonian--Monica Lewinsky spin?
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3/20/2000
Francis L. Berkeley Interview

This summary was prepared by Frank Buell, son-in-law of Herbert Barger, Jefferson Family Historian. It is based on an audio taped interview of Mr. Francis L. Berkeley conducted by Mr. Barger taken on March 29, 2000. Parts of this tape were unintelligible. There is one such incident contained in this summary which is represented by a blank line.

Mr. Berkeley was Curator of Manuscripts at the University of Virginia (UVA) for more than 25 years and was a member of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Board for approximately 29 years.

    Interview

Mr. Jefferson's Servants

by Capt. Edmund Bacon
Frontline

An important eyewitness account of Thomas Jefferson's overseer, Captain Edmund Bacon. "Mr. Jefferson freed a number of his servants in his will. I think he would have freed all of them, if his affairs had not been so much involved that he could not do it. He freed one girl some years before he died, and there was a great deal of talk about it. People said he freed her because she was his own daughter. She was not his daughter; she was ....'s daughter [identity illegible]. I know that. I have seen him come out of her mother's room many a morning, when I went up to Monticello very early."
Download Available

Meet Thomas Jefferson, Portrayed by Bill Barker

Colonial Williamsburg's Bill Barker is the best character interpreter of Jefferson there is, and for two days he wowed audiences in Grand Rapids, Lansing, and East Lansing at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Great Valley University.