Dear Sam- as a stupid person, I eagerly await your analysis (no irony or
sarcasm intended). Aside from the Hemings/Jefferson controversy, this
whole
DNA ancestry thing is interesting. I have one off topic question. What's
the
purpose of this type of testing of individuals? It's interesting to know
the
answer, but does it advance knowledge of human evolution or what?
Stupidly yours, Stultus Americanus
"samsloan" <samhsloan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:1179273525.317124.179110@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> New DNA Tests done on the Hemings-Jefferson Controversy
>
> Because of the controversies surrounding the 1998 DNA tests that were
> made on one descendant of Sally Hemings and on five relatives of
> Thomas Jefferson, a new set of DNA tests have been done in 2007.
>
> In 1998 when the first tests were made, DNA testing of this sort was
> still in its infancy. The tests were only done on eight alleles. Some
> of these alleles are no longer considered to be useful for testing.
> Nowadays, as many as 67 alleles are tested. Thus, new tests were in
> order.
>
> In the original 1998 tests, five descendants of Field Jefferson, the
> uncle of Thomas Jefferson, were tested along with one descendant of
> Eston Hemings Jefferson, the youngest son of Sally Hemings, plus five
> descendants of Tom Woodson and three descendants of the Carr Brothers.
>
> The five Woodson descendants were tested because the family of Minnie
> Shumate Woodson claimed that Tom Woodson was the son of Thomas
> Jefferson and that he was the "Yellow Tom" who, according to James
> Thompson Callender, bore "a striking though sable resemblance to the
> president himself".
>
> Descendants of the Carr Brothers were tested because it had long been
> alleged that the Carr Brothers were the real fathers of Sally's
> children. The basis for this was that their father, Dabney Carr, was
> the brother-in-law of Thomas Jefferson, being married to Jefferson's
> sister. After Dabney Carr died at an early age, Thomas Jefferson
> helped care for the Carr Brothers and they grew up at or near
> Monticello. Thus, they had the op****tunity of access to Sally at the
> time that she bore her five children.
>
> The relatives of Thomas Jefferson and the descendant of Eston Hemings
> were tested to achieve resolution of the controversy that has been
> burning since 1802 concerning allegations that Sally Hemings was the
> concubine of Thomas Jefferson and that he was the father of her five
> children.
>
> The result of the tests were that the five Woodson descendants and the
> three Carr descendants were completely excluded from being the
> relatives of Eston Hemings. Their DNA types were completely different,
> excluding any possibility of a relation****p with Jefferson.
>
> On the other hand, the DNA of the descendant of Eston Hemings was a
> perfect match with all five of the Jefferson descendants, except that
> one Jefferson descendant had a mutation of one digit, a change from 15
> to 16, on DYS392 . Such small changes are well within the normal range
> of mutation over the passage of time.
>
> The result of these tests was the publication of an article in Nature
> magazine entitled "Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last Child".
>
> This article set off a tremendous firestorm of controversy, as
> detractors pointed out that the tests did not prove that Jefferson was
> the father. They simply failed to eliminate Jefferson as a possible
> father. Somebody else with the same DNA, such as his brother Randolph,
> could also be the father.
>
> However, the DNA tests revealed something completely unexpected, which
> was that Thomas Jefferson did not have a DNA type typical of white
> Americans or Europeans. His DNA was something completely different,
> something that had never been encountered before. Something totally
> unknown.
>
> A new DNA type was created just for the purpose of classifying Thomas
> Jefferson's DNA. He was assigned DNA haplotype K2. Since type K is
> deemed to be close to one of the original haplotypes, this means that
> Thomas Jefferson was considered to have DNA close to that of the
> original modern man, from whom all men alive today are descended. That
> so called Y-Chromosome Adam is believed to have lived 60,000 to 90,000
> years ago in Africa.
>
> New DNA tests have been done in 2007 for two purposes:
>
> 1. To confirm using modern methods the results of the 1998 tests which
> found a DNA match between male relatives of Thomas Jefferson and one
> descendant of Sally Hemings and
>
> 2. To determine the origin of Thomas Jefferson and to determine
> whether his ancestry originated from European, African, Middle
> Eastern, Native American or Space Invaders.
>
> I have the results of these new DNA tests and I am in the process of
> translating them into layman's terms so that stupid people can
> understand them.
>
> Sam Sloan
>
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