DNA tests on Thomas Jefferson's hair provide 'extraordinary proof' he fathered children with slave Sally Hemings

From the Newshound archive · first published 21 September 2026.

Smithsonian researchers have delivered what they call "extraordinary proof" that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his enslaved woman Sally Hemings, after 15 years of work sequencing the third president's entire genome from strands of his hair. A team of archaeologists, genealogists, molecular geneticists and historians compared Jefferson's DNA with samples from 13 living descendants believed to be from the Jefferson-Hemings line. Smithsonian scholar Richard Kurin, who led the project and has written a book on the findings, said the evidence is "very clear" and compelling. Speculation about Jefferson and Hemings has swirled since the early 19th century, when Alexander Hamilton and John Adams were already raising the question.

The same DNA techniques developed for the Jefferson project were later used to help convict Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann.

Beth Shapiro, an ancient DNA expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the Jefferson work laid the groundwork for all the forensic tools that followed.

Heuermann was caught partly through DNA recovered from a pizza crust he discarded outside his Manhattan office.