":::::::Gwillhickers, you don't want extensive info here, but you argue there must be other arguments. Well, there are not any worth repeating. The National Genealogical Society, the DNA study, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (which runs Monticello), prominent Jefferson biographers such as Joseph Ellis and Andrew Burstein, all have determined that the weight of historical evidence plus the DNA results shows well enough that Thomas Jefferson is the father. The MacArthur Foundation awarded Annette Gordon-Reed in 2010 a fellowship for her persistent work that ""changed the course of Jeffersonian scholarship"". Her second book on the Hemingses of Monticello (2008) won 16 major history and literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for history, and is based on Jefferson's paternity and long relationship with Hemings. But somehow you think there might not be consensus. You can read much of Gordon-Reed's ""Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy"" online if you don't want to get it from the library. You really need to see how she analyzes the historiography. I'm not giving any more space here to such groups as the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society and its commissioned scholars report that is holding out for a minority view. There are not equally viable explanations; you're not paying attention to what I wrote: historians generally based their denial on Jefferson's grandchildren claiming one or both of the Carrs were the father(s) and Jefferson's daughter saying he was not there at the time of one conception; he was there for each conception and the DNA conclusively disproved the Carr connection. In addition, there is the evidence of his special treatment.  In the last decade, histories written about Jefferson, about black-white relations in VA and the South, all incorporate his paternity of Hemings' children. It's been widely accepted.   

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