Eugene Foster

By The Week Staff

last updated 8 January 2015

The pathologist who linked a president to his slave

Eugene Foster

1927–2008

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In 1802, a political enemy of Thomas Jefferson began a rumor that Jefferson had fathered a child with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. For almost 200 years, the third U.S. president’s admirers and detractors argued over the charge with equal vehemence. Then, in 1998, pathologist Eugene Foster made headlines by examining genetic evidence and determining that the rumor was almost certainly true.

By that time, Foster had already retired, said The New York Times, having spent most of his career at the University of Virginia Medical School and the New England Medical Center at Tufts University. But when he learned of a new technique that could track the Y, or male, chromosome down through generations, he decided to tackle the mystery. “Jefferson had no male descendants, but blood samples from five descendants of his uncle, Field Jefferson, provided Foster with the authentic Jefferson Y chromosome.” Foster also tested descendants of Jefferson’s nephews and Hemings’ son, Eston. The only Y chromosome that matched Jefferson’s lineage came from Eston Hemings’ descendants. Writing in Nature magazine, Foster said that he could not rule out the possibility that a Jefferson other than Thomas was the father of Eston. “But that seemed unlikely, he said, after taking account of all the historical evidence, which included Jefferson’s recorded presence at Monticello at the conception of all Hemings’ known children.”

Although members of the Monticello Association, who claim descent from Jefferson through his daughter Martha, have refused to admit Hemings’ descendants to their ranks, Foster’s findings are now generally accepted. He died of prostate cancer and leukemia.