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CORRECTION: At 13:01 and 15:45, I show a picture of Alexander Hamilton while talking about Thomas Jefferson.   Grrrr .... they really look alike!   –Ken

Thank you for listening to your critics in the comments.  It’s shows that you’re open to learning more

When history becomes overtly political it stops being a search for academic truth and becomes psychological manipulation.

Real history is getting harder and harder to find...

There's no elephant in this room other than the one you trying to place. Your point here is to only create reasonable doubt as a tactic

Sober minded research on a topic I thought was an automatic yes. Best channel on YouTube. I enjoy recommending your channel to people. Keep up the good work man

"The past is never dead. It's not even past" is a famous quote by William Faulkner. This case proves it.

I appreciate your interrogation of what are considered to be off-limits topics. We need a lot more of this, and thank you for being such a stalwart champion for challenging established narratives.

Oh man, this was intensely satisfying. Being spun 180° from certainty to ambiguity is one of my favorite things. Thanks!

I lived in Charlottesville as a kid, left and moved back in '99; now I live within walking distance from Monticello and Ash Lawn. The City is incredibly liberal and up until the early '00s Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were all almost deified, but Jefferson stood out with statues, plaques and seemingly half the city named after him; seperate from UVA which took it to another level. Then it suddenly changed, the older generations still did but it was incredibly popular for the students to bash their parents hero, the rich white guy that held slaves. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and runs Monticello, leapt at the opportunity to bring more attention to their primary income generator. They got endowments and grants to excavate and restore the slave quarters and introduce new tours and merchandise. None of that changes the facts, but it's obvious to many of the locals that their endorsement of these findings is entirely based on finances and not historical truth.

The problem is that there are too many activists in academia nowadays that want something to be 'true' that they will discard evidence to the contrary or cherry pick research that supports that belief. It's why so many scientific and medical journals fall for fake research papers because it supports their ideology or beliefs. It's why you have researchers claiming that there were substantial populations of African origin within England at a time when there was no interaction between those population - claims that African populations in England were over-represented in plague pits because of marginalisation. When you dig into the research you find that they were highly selective in which skeletons they looked at, did no DNA testing (or excluded the results as they were contrary to the narrative.)

We'll never know with any certainty who fathered the children but those with vested interests or activists will push the narrative that suits their agenda.

Maury: "Tom, the test results say, you MIGHT or MIGHT NOT be the father."

I had this debate with a biology professor during my general ed. I made a lot of the same arguments Ken makes here, and she got visibly angry. It was awkward for me, but the rest of the class reportedly enjoyed it.

I have no respect for the Monticello Foundation's unscholarly claims.

As a genetic genealogist, I thought I'd provide a broad explanation of how DNA evidence for something like this works. (Maybe it‘ll help someone who has a similar mystery to solve in their family ;)

Basically, there are three kinds of DNA matching that can be used to prove a genetic connection between two people with a common ancestor.

1. Y-DNA: As discussed in this video, Y-DNA works only for men if the common ancestor is in the direct male line for both descendants. Its main advantage is its relatively high reliability over long time spans. However, it's expensive for the average person, and while the non-paternity rate (NPR) is low (around 1% in Western populations), you'll have trouble finding the point of failure if two nominal agnatic relatives don't share the same Y chromosome.

2. Mitochondrial DNA: Mitochondrial DNA is similar to Y-DNA, except that it's inherited from your mother through a strictly matrilineal line. Its two advantages over Y-DNA are that men have it too (although they don't pass it on) and that it's much more certain who someone's mother is, for obvious reasons. When they dug up Richard III under a parking lot, they were able to identify him using mitochondrial DNA, but not Y-DNA, probably because of a non-paternity event somewhere in Richard's or his tested relatives' paternal line.

3. Autosomal DNA: This is the most common type of DNA used in genealogy. It makes up the vast majority of your DNA, which you inherit roughly equally from your mother and father. You can get one of these tests for around 50 bucks from the major genealogy sites and will most likely find thousands of relatives, more or less distant, who have already tested there. Unlike Y-DNA and mtDNA, autosomal DNA can theoretically produce matches from every ancestral line, not just strictly paternal or maternal ones. The downside is that it becomes difficult to go back more than a few generations in most cases. Shared DNA decreases with more distant relatives, and you also have to eliminate all other possible connections except the one you're trying to prove, which becomes increasingly difficult the further back you go.

Here's who I was able to prove descent from using autosomal DNA after testing myself and eight of my close relatives:

8/8 great-grandparents

14/16 great-great-grandparents

20/32 third-great-grandparents

23/64 fourth-great-grandparents

After that, the numbers decrease sharply, both in absolute and relative terms.

Obviously, all of these methods require genealogical preparation on the part of both you and your matches, and serious research usually involves testing dozens of people and employing complex statistical methods to calculate different probabilities.

To summarize, all three methods work really well for proving descent from ancestors up to your great-grandparents. Beyond that, confidence drops from "99% certain" to "very likely, but not certain" rather quickly. That's where circumstantial evidence comes in, and where we let historians do the rest.

It’s refreshing to know that some creators actually read the comments.

The most recent tests as of today links Thomas Jefferson's DNA to the children of Sally Hemmings.

When I toured Monticello in 2004, they said nothing about it.
When I returned in 2016, they made a point of informing EVERYONE that Jefferson "took advantage" of his slave and fathered children with her, emphasizing that Jefferson held all the power in the relationship.
Quite a marked difference.
The correct answer is "we don't know".
I've read about the actual evidence and the discussions both for and against, along with the basis for the controversy, several times over the past 20 years. This video is the very first time I've seen the entirety of the issue discussed on a social media platform.  Well done.

At this point, I don’t trust any narrative around race. There’s too much emotion, people usually can’t stay rational.

Unfortunate timing, an update may be in order in light of a recent DNA study which indicates he was the father.

I’m glad you’re addressing this because too many people have instantly made a conclusion without actually looking at the evidence and what was initially said regarding the DNA