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Several members of the association have become empathetic with the other side of the family. John Works' brother David Works is one of those converts. An eighth-generation descendant of Jefferson, he says of the connection, "I bragged about it as a kid." When the Hemings first showed up at an association meeting, in 1999, "I was really turned off by the press and what I perceived to be the Hemings' really pushy approach. We just gave them ugly looks and were generally surly and mean," says the computer-systems administrator from Denver. "Because of the nastiness of the fight, I never got back to the facts of the argument." Then two Christmases ago, he decided to sit down and research the facts by reading the DNA study by Dr. Eugene Foster in the scientific journal Nature as well as a report issued in 2000 by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which runs the Monticello estate. Works' conclusion: "When you put it all together, the simplest and most likely answer was that Thomas Jefferson fathered Hemings' children."
Since then, Works has forged numerous friendships with the Hemings, communicating with them through an e-mail group that about 50 Hemings and 10 sympathetic Jeffersons use to broadcast everything from baby announcements to their views on George W. Bush. As someone who has observed the family dynamics of both clans, Works remarks, "On the Hemings side, everything is always friendly. It's a lot more fun on this side of the fence."
But it's a difficult fence to cross. In fact, David Works' brother John, an investment banker in Denver, has been the most vocal opponent of the Hemings' quest to be acknowledged by the association. "They thought they could bulldoze their way into the family," says John Works, who admits that the disagreement with his brother over the Hemings has fractured an already strained relationship. Responding to charges that the association is excluding the Hemings for racial reasons, he says, "Absolutely not. Ninety-three percent of the family can't be racist," he says, referring to the portion who voted to exclude the Hemings. "It's impossible."
AN ACADEMIC POINT?
To explore the matter more deeply, John works helped form a separate organization called the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society, which commissioned a study by 13 university scholars to assess the likelihood that Thomas Jefferson fathered Hemings' children. In 2001 the group concluded, by a vote of 12 to 1, that his parentage was unlikely. One author of the study, Professor Lance Banning of the University of Kentucky, says, "The case for his paternity is not without its chinks and limitations."
Chief among Banning's doubts is the fact that the DNA test was not a true paternity test, which would have required exhuming Jefferson's remains as well as those of Hemings' children to get DNA samples. The test that was done proves only that a Jefferson male, not necessarily Thomas, was the father, and there were other adult males in Jefferson's family who lived nearby. What's more, there are several documented denials of the relationship, by Jefferson's former overseer at Monticello and Jefferson's daughter, granddaughter and grandson. Jefferson himself never acknowledged the sexual relationship.