Dorothy Westerinen grew up knowing her family was somehow related to Thomas Jefferson. She just didn’t know how.

Her mother, Julia Jefferson Westerinen, had been told the connection was through one of Jefferson’s relatives. Sally Hemings — the woman Jefferson enslaved at Monticello — was never part of the family story.

“We had no idea of her existence,” Westerinen said.

That changed in the 1970s, when the family learned it descended from Eston Hemings, the youngest son of Sally Hemings and, historians have long concluded, Thomas Jefferson.

Now a new genomic investigation has provided what researchers say is the strongest scientific evidence yet that Jefferson himself — rather than another Jefferson male — fathered Hemings’ children.

For Westerinen, who lives in Greenport, the new findings provide scientific confirmation of what her family has believed for decades.

“I’m almost more proud of Sally Hemings than I am Jefferson,” Westerinen said, I feel like she was just a real hero, in letting her children have the advantage of being free upon Jefferson’s death.”

The 15-year investigation is chronicled in Smithsonian scholar Richard Kurin’s new book, History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery.

Kurin will discuss the book Saturday, Oct. 3, at the North Fork Arts Center in Greenport, joined by Westerinen and her brother, Art. (Tickets are available here.) The event will be moderated by Liz Welch, Kurin’s book collaborator and one of the co-founders of the North Fork chapter of Coming to the Table.

The story is also about Dorothy’s late mother, and a family history that one generation deliberately buried and another eventually brought into the open.

A history deliberately buried

Westerinen said her family’s first significant clue came after the 1974 publication of historian Fawn Brodie’s Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. One of Julia Westerinen’s aunts recognized the family names Hemings and Jefferson and contacted Brodie. The ensuing research pointed toward a startling conclusion: Their line ran through Eston Hemings.

Suddenly, Westerinen said, the family learned not only that its connection to Jefferson was much closer than they had been told, but that they had Black ancestors.

“We had no clue, none whatsoever,” she said.

For Dorothy’s mother Julia, born in 1934 and raised as a white woman, the revelation became far more than an exercise in genealogy. She embraced the Hemings connection and eventually made telling that story a significant part of her life.

That stood in stark contrast to an earlier generation of the family.

Eston Hemings, born at Monticello in 1808, eventually moved his family to Wisconsin, adopted the surname Jefferson and lived as a white man. His descendants continued living as white.

Westerinen said her grandfather, William Jefferson, and his brothers knew the truth about their ancestry.

“They knew the truth,” she said. “Sometime in the 1930s they decided to bury that and not tell their children.”

Years later, when Julia began looking into the family genealogy herself, Westerinen said she was warned: “Don’t look too hard because you’re not going to like what you find.”

Westerinen views that decision through the racial realities of the time.

“I’m not saying they were racist,” she said of her ancestors. “I just think they wanted their children to have the benefits of … being white. That’s a key to the world, pretty much.”

But ultimately, Julia did precisely what she had been warned against, and kept looking. Long before she knew the full story, Julia had already been drawn to Jefferson. Her husband was a history buff and former history teacher, and the couple visited Monticello on their honeymoon. At the time, Julia knew only that her family was somehow related to Jefferson. Decades later, her daughter would learn just how close that connection was.

In 1998, the family history an earlier generation had tried to bury became international news.

‘The press descended on us’

That year, researchers published DNA testing showing that a male-line descendant of Eston Hemings shared a Y chromosome with the Jefferson male line. The DNA came from Westerinen’s uncle, John Weeks Jefferson.

The test could not identify Thomas Jefferson individually, but combined with the historical record, it dramatically strengthened the case that Jefferson fathered Hemings’ children.

Life briefly became surreal for Westerinen’s family.

“The press descended on us like a horde of locusts,” she recalled. “We had news vans lined up outside our house.”

Her mother appeared on television. Westerinen did radio interviews and wrote opinion pieces. Oprah Winfrey flew members of the family to Chicago for a program that brought together descendants from different branches of the Jefferson and Hemings families.

For Julia, one of the most consequential developments was meeting descendants of Madison Hemings, Eston’s older brother.

“They just welcomed us with open arms,” Westerinen said. “They called us cousin.”

Julia subsequently formed a close friendship with Madison Hemings descendant Shay Banks-Young. The two traveled together speaking at colleges in a program called “Conversations in Black and White.”

Those conversations also challenged Julia.

Westerinen said her mother had raised her children to believe strongly in equality. But Julia had also spent her life being perceived as white and had never fully recognized some of the advantages that came with it. Banks-Young helped her see them.

“That really kind of opened up her world,” Westerinen said, “and made her realize what white privilege really is.”

It was, Westerinen said, perhaps the biggest impact the discovery had on her mother.

Rejected — then embraced

Not everyone welcomed the Hemings descendants.

At a 1999 meeting of the Monticello Association, an organization of Jefferson descendants, Westerinen and other Hemings descendants encountered fierce resistance from members who rejected their claims of kinship.

“It was really shocking,” Westerinen said. “The women were practically drawing their skirts up and … hissing at us. It was just crazy. I had never, of course — how would I have experienced any kind of prejudice? I mean, I was white.”

It was an eye-opening moment for Westerinen.

“A good majority of the Jeffersons wanted nothing to do with us,” she said.

There were exceptions, including Jefferson descendant Lucian Truscott IV, who publicly championed recognition of the Hemings descendants.

And Westerinen said attitudes have changed markedly since then. Some descendants who once rejected the Hemings branch have since apologized and sought reconciliation.

“They did come a long way,” she said. “Some of the people who were drawing their skirts away from us were now saying, ‘We’re sorry. We totally apologize for our past behavior, and we want to embrace you and our family.’”

A final vindication

The new genomic investigation chronicled in Kurin’s book addresses the scientific uncertainty that remained after 1998.

Researchers eventually obtained DNA from a lock of hair attributed to Jefferson and compared his genome with DNA from living descendants of the Hemings and Jefferson families. The results, according to Kurin’s book, provide direct genetic evidence tying Jefferson himself to descendants of Hemings’ sons Madison and Eston. The scientific paper detailing the findings has not yet completed peer review.

For Westerinen, the findings confirmed what she had long considered settled. But there was one person missing when the results arrived. Her mother Julia died several years ago.

“She would have just been so excited about this,” Westerinen said. “She loved this stuff and was very happy to be involved in it.”

Before her death, Julia had provided DNA for Kurin’s investigation. Westerinen said Kurin kept the family informed as the research progressed and eventually walked them through the results.

For Dorothy, that moment represented something larger than establishing the identity of a famous ancestor. Her mother had spent decades embracing a history that her father’s generation had deliberately concealed, and defending a connection that other Jefferson descendants had publicly disputed.

Now came what Westerinen called her mother’s “final vindication.”

“We’re all regretting the fact that she’s not here to experience this,” she said.

‘A very unequal power situation’

Yet the ancestor Westerinen speaks about with the greatest admiration is not the president whose words helped define American democracy.

“I’m almost more proud of Sally Hemings than I am Jefferson,” Westerinen said.

Westerinen has deeply conflicted feelings about Jefferson, a man she describes as brilliant while also judging his relationship with her ancestor through the reality of slavery and its profound imbalance of power.

“He basically raped my great-great-great-grandmother,” she said. “Obviously it started out in a very coercive way.”

Historians cannot know the precise nature of the relationship because Hemings left no known written account. Westerinen herself acknowledges the complexity, but said one fact is inescapable.

“Obviously she had no choice of staying with him; she was a slave,” she said. “It was always a very unequal power situation.”

Westerinen sees in Hemings’ story a woman exercising what power she could within a system that gave her extraordinarily little, particularly in securing freedom for her children.

“That’s the only power she pretty much had, and she used it,” Westerinen said. “Thank God for that.”

It is a history Westerinen never imagined would eventually follow her to Greenport.

Born in Maryland, she moved to Staten Island with her family in 1968. She first encountered the North Fork as a teenager attending summer camp on Nassau Point in Cutchogue. Decades later, she bought a Greenport home in 2019, renovated it and moved in full time in 2022.

Now Kurin is coming to Greenport to discuss an investigation that has consumed 15 years — joined onstage by Dorothy and Art Westerinen, whose mother helped carry the Jefferson-Hemings story into the public consciousness a generation earlier.

Westerinen suspects Julia has something to do with that.

“I think it’s because of my mom,” she said. “I believe he really had such a nice connection with her that he’s doing it on her behalf.”

And if Westerinen hopes the audience leaves the theater with anything, it is something broader than a lesson about Jefferson, Hemings or DNA.

For much of her life, she had no idea she had Black ancestry. Her own family had intentionally erased that knowledge within a generation. Science eventually helped restore it.

“You don’t know what your background is,” she said. “I had no idea that I had Black origins.”

For Westerinen, that discovery carries a lesson.

“We are all family, basically,” she said. “How can you look down on other people when you don’t know what your own possible background is?”

Richard Kurin will discuss “History by a Hair: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings & Solving a 200-Year-Old Mystery” with Dorothy and Art Westerinen at 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, at the North Fork Arts Center, 211 Front St., Greenport. General admission is $20 and admission is free for those 25 and younger. Tickets available here.