A Family Get-Together of Historic Proportions
The New York Times
July 14, 2003
By JAMES DAO
Madison Hemings and his siblings were so light-skinned that they were able to blend into white communities. Many of their descendants did the same, leaving their slave ancestry behind.
Julia Westerinen of Staten Island, who organized the reunion, said she had thought for years that she was related to Jefferson’s white uncle — until scholars discovered that she was a descendant of Eston Hemings. She now identifies herself as black on census forms.
Her cousin Mary Jefferson contends that her mother, a working-class Italian, would not have married her father, the scion of a prominent Chicago family, had she known he was descended from slaves. Ms. Jefferson said that if her father knew he was related to Eston Hemings, he kept it a secret.
“When the DNA results came out, I was moved to tears,” she said. “It’s not that I was now a Jefferson. It was that I knew who my family was.”
Some reunion guests said they are still trying to uncover their heritage. Thomas D. Best, a retired college professor from California, said he was convinced he was descended from Sally Hemings’s daughter Harriet. He has been combing through genealogical records for years to find proof. “I don’t get a lot of support from my family,” he said. “My 95-year-old aunt told me, `You were born white, and you’re going to stay white.’ “