New DNA analysis adds evidence Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings

A clipping of hair labeled as Thomas Jefferson's in the collections of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, his primary home and plantation. Hugh Talman/Smithsonian Institution hide caption

For more than 200 years, one question about the nation's third president has lingered: Did Thomas Jefferson father children with Sally Hemings, a woman 30 years his junior whom he held in slavery?

The question has long been part of debates over slavery, race, power and Jefferson's legacy.

"Thomas Jefferson wrote the most famous phrase in American history — 'All men are created equal' — and yet, if he bore children with Sally Hemings who were born into slavery, it seemed like a paradox and a contradiction," Richard Kurin told NPR's Michel Martin for Morning Edition .

Kurin, a distinguished scholar and ambassador-at-large for the Smithsonian Institution, spent 15 years searching for Jefferson's DNA in an effort to answer the paternity question. The investigation began with strands of hair found in Jefferson's personal Bible and eventually involved scientists, archaeologists, genealogists, forensic experts and Jefferson's and Hemings' descendants.

The investigation's twists, as well as the science behind it, are detailed in Kurin's new book, History by a Hair .

Richard Kurin, a Smithsonian Institution scholar and author of History by a Hair , examines collection items connected to his research on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Danielle Kurin hide caption

Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Allegations that he fathered children with Hemings emerged in the late 1700s and early 1800s and have been debated by family members, biographers and historians ever since.