What they found in his hair

One · What happened

Hair clipped in 1826, sequenced in 2026

After Jefferson died on 4 July 1826, his grandson-in-law Nicholas Trist clipped some of his hair. Three of those locks are still in the Monticello collection. The new paper, titled The DNA legacy of Thomas Jefferson, was posted as a preprint on bioRxiv. Other scientists have not yet reviewed it formally. Its authors include Richard Green, Beth Shapiro and Richard Kurin. They sequenced DNA from the hair and compared it with living descendants. In the paper's own words, they find clear evidence of Thomas Jefferson ancestry in descendants of both his wife Martha Wayles Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

The 1998 study most people remember, published in Nature, matched the male line of Eston Hemings's descendants to the Jefferson male line. It could not single out Thomas himself from other Jefferson men, since nobody had his DNA. What is new is his DNA. Kurin, speaking to TODAY, put the chance that Jefferson fathered a child with Hemings at ninety-nine point nine percent. That is his phrasing on television. The paper's figures are a little more cautious, and it is still a preprint.

Two · What it is doing

Defending him, or enjoying it

Some readers heard the news and their shoulders went up. Jefferson wrote the sentence about all men being created equal. He is on the nickel. He has been part of how you understand your own country since you were in third grade, and it feels like somebody is taking a crowbar to a thing you love. So you look for the weak point in the study. It is only a preprint, you tell yourself, and the earlier study was ambiguous, and you wonder why now and who benefits.

Other people felt a small, warm satisfaction. They have been saying this for years and now there is DNA. The founder comes down another peg. Some of that is a real hunger for the truth to be told about people who were enslaved. Some of it, if they are honest, is the pleasure of watching a statue wobble when it belongs to the other side's story.

Both reactions are about us. They are about which story of America we have staked ourselves on. Neither one has much room in it for Sally Hemings, who was a real woman, owned by the man in question, and who did not get to decide very much about her own life. She tends to disappear inside the argument about him, whichever side of it you are on.

Three · Where the ground is

Scripture never cleaned up its heroes

The Bible's great king is David. Second Samuel 11 tells, in plain unflattering detail, how he took another man's wife and had the man killed to cover it up. Then in chapter 12 the prophet Nathan tells David about a rich man who stole a poor man's only lamb, and David is furious at the rich man, and Nathan says to him, You are the man! Scripture put that in the record about its own hero. It did not bury the story to protect the monarchy.

I find that one of the most freeing things about the Bible. It never needed its heroes to be clean, because it was never asking you to trust them. Psalm 146:3 says it flatly. Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. A founder is a son of man. So is every hero you have. When one of them turns out to be worse than you hoped, it hurts, and the hurt is worth looking at, because some of it is the pain of finding out how much you had trusted a man.

A sin is still a sin at a distance of two centuries

Owning human beings was sin. Scripture lists enslavers among the lawless and ungodly in 1 Timothy 1:10. A man who used his power over a woman he owned did a great wrong to her, whatever the customs of his day. Nobody needed a DNA result to say so. Jefferson knew enough to write about the moral problem himself, and he kept people in bondage until the day he died.

Enjoying it is its own problem, though. First Corinthians 13:6 says love does not rejoice at wrongdoing. A reader who finds himself pleased that a dead man's sin is confirmed has something to bring to God too. The man is past our correction now and stands before a Judge who needs no preprint. What is left for us is honesty about him, grief for the people he wronged, and a hard look at the things we ourselves would prefer stay in a drawer.

You are the man

Nathan's sentence was not written for David alone. Every believer eventually hears it about himself, and nothing but the gospel makes hearing it survivable. Christ died for all of it. That covers the sins nobody has found out about yet. You do not have to protect your heroes, or yourself, from the truth coming out. First John 1:7 says that if we walk in the light the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Historians will be arguing about Jefferson long after this week. What the news stirred up in you is smaller, and it is yours.

1. 01

   Read 2 Samuel 11 and 12 in one sitting.

   Read all of it, the part where the baby dies too. After that, read Psalm 51, which the heading ties to Nathan's visit. It is what a king sounds like once he quits defending himself.

2. 02

   Pray for the Hemings descendants by that name.

   Families have carried this for two centuries, and some of them did not want it handled this way this week. Pray for them before you form any more opinions about Jefferson.

3. 03

   Skip the argument before it starts.

   With your brother-in-law, in the group chat, wherever it was headed. Defending Jefferson or burying him, either one, can wait. Ask the other man about his week instead.

4. 04

   Name one hero you have been trusting too much, and tell the Lord.

   A pastor, a politician, a father, a founder. Say his name in prayer, and tell the Lord you have been trusting that man more than you ought to.

5. 05

   Bring one hidden thing into the light with one person.

   Something in your own drawer that you have been glad nobody tested. Tell your wife this week, or if it is heavier than that, a pastor or a biblical counselor. First John 1:7 puts the cleansing right next to the light.