History by a Hair

When the Smithsonian’s Richard Kurin learned that a museum curator found hair inside a Bible in the Smithsonian’s collections, his own hair stood on end. This wasn’t just any Bible. It was Thomas Jefferson’s personal Bible. Could the hair belong to Jefferson? If so, it might help resolve one of the oldest and most contested questions in American history: Was Thomas Jefferson the father of Sally Hemings’s children?

The mystery hair sent Kurin on a years-long quest for answers. Now, he’s ready to share what he found. Join us as well follow him from the Smithsonian to Monticello, DNA laboratories, and the living rooms of Jefferson and Hemings descendants. Can scientists reconstruct a genome from a 200-year-old strand of hair? And what might that DNA reveal?

Guests:

Richard Kurin, Smithsonian distinguished scholar, and ambassador-at-large

Leslie Greene Bowman, president emerita of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation

Arthur (Art) Westerinen, great-great-great grandson of Sally Hemings through her son Eston Hemings

Robert Fleischer, senior scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Center for Conservation Genomics

Beth Shapiro, co-director of the Paleogenomics Lab at UC Santa Cruz

Richard E. Green, professor of bimolecular engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-director of the Paleogenomics Lab

David Miller, sixth generation descendent of Thomas Jefferson through his daughter Maria Eppes

Clara Lee-Nutt, great-great-great granddaughter of Sally Hemings through her son Madison Hemings

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• Did Thomas Jefferson Father Sally Hemings' Children? | Smithsonian Magazine