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ELMER ROBERTS, 53, a Los Angeles County probation officer, claims lineage to Thomas Jefferson through Jefferson's black slave and reputed mistress Sally Hemings. Roberts, a widower, doubts that racial equality has progressed sufficiently in 200 years. Though Roberts concedes that "the country has made progress in race relations in the past few decades," he still thinks of it "as a glass half empty rather than a glass half full."
Jefferson, he says, would be "unhappy about man's inability to learn anything about living with his fellow man, despite all the advances in technology." His ancestor would also be distressed by the rise of Big Government. Says Roberts: "He would be unhappy with the bureaucracy because farmers are very independent people."
JEAN DANA, 45, a well-to-do Greenwich, Conn., housewife, is descended from three signers of the Declaration of Independence: Oliver Wolcott, William Floyd and Elbridge Gerry. Should they see America today, they "would scratch their heads and ask, 'What did we create? How did it happen?' When you remember it happened only 200 years ago, it is just incredible, fantastic." She refers primarily to technological progress and deplores the fact that in some areas, "such as man getting on with man, we have made very little progress." Mrs. Dana laments the traumas of war, Watergate and congressional scandals, but she is aware that "there was also corruption in the first Governments of the United States." By periodically cleansing itself of corrupt elements, as it is able to do under its system of government, the nation has survived —and will survive.
OLIVIA ALEXANDER TAYLOR, 85, is a great-great-great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson and lives with her sister Margaret, 88, not far from Jefferson's Monticello estate in Virginia. An alert, lively spinster and retired teacher, Olivia Taylor regards Jefferson as "a very real presence in my family. He gave us a firm desire to live up to some of his qualities —integrity, intelligence and courage." Having a famous ancestor like Jefferson, she adds, "makes you try harder." Today, she says, "I'm unhappy about the country. We don't get the kind of leadership we should. The right kind of men don't go into politics." What would Jefferson think if he could see the nation now? "He was fond of gadgets, so he would have been intrigued with the labor-saving devices of modern society. But the billboards, the urban jungle of signs and poles would have appalled him." And, she adds, "I think all those signers would be shocked by our loss of personal liberty—our liberty to move around, to be safe in our homes and on the streets."