Because Sally Hemings looked very much like Jefferson’s former wife Martha Wayles Skelton, Jefferson could have been attracted to Sally. Sally resembled Martha because Sally and Martha shared the same father, which made them half sisters. Jefferson missed his wife and loved her so much that he could have wanted that love from someone who looked like and was related to his beautiful wife. Annette Gordon-Reed also believed that since Sally and Martha looked so much a like and Jefferson was yearning for love. This love could have lead Jefferson to have an affair with Sally well after his wife’s death.

In 1776, Jefferson was chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. He later left Congress and returned to Virginia and served in the legislature. He was elected governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781. Later in 1784, he went to France and became minister. When Jefferson went to France, it was thought that this was the first time that Jefferson was seen with Sally Hemings when she accompanied both of his daughters to France. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson became president of the United States. Later in his life, he founded the University of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson was a man of dignity and grace and to some people the idea that he had sexual relations with Sally Hemings would ruin his image of a great man.

Conducting a DNA test, a team of scientists tested the Y-chromosomal DNA samples from the male-line descendants of Field Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson’s uncle), John Carr (grandfather of Jefferson’s nephews), and Eston Hemings (one of Sally Hemings’s six children). It was found that there is a genetic link between the Jefferson and Hemings descendants. There was no genetic link between the Carr and Hemings family, so there is no evidence that Sally had an affair with one of the Carr nephews. According to Annette Gordon-Reed, “there is a highest possibility that Jefferson was the father to at least one of Sally Hemings’ children and perhaps father to all six of her children.” Although Thomas Jefferson’s paternity of one or more of Sally Heming’s children cannot be established with absolute certainty in either historical or legal terms, many elements of the issue are widely accepted. Some historical evidence that was mentioned earlier was that Sally Hemings was a slave at Monticello and she lived in Paris with Jefferson and two of his daughters from 1787 to 1789. Thomas Jefferson was at Monticello at the time of conception of

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