Hemings-Sally

Lucille Balthazar, only three generations removed from Madison Hemings of Monticello, heard of her connection to Jefferson from her father, William Giles Roberts, although he rarely spoke of it.  He participated in the family mortuary business and owned a farm northeast of Los Angeles in the Apple Valley, where he had gardens and orchards.  Mrs. Balthazar knew her grandmother, Ellen Hemings Roberts, well and loved to go to dinner at her house.  Her grandmother “always set the table beautifully….each of us had our silver napkin rings with our name on it.”

Shay Banks-Young was a radio and TV personality and poet in Columbus, Ohio. After genetic testing in 1998 established a connection between Madison Hemings’s brother Eston and Thomas Jefferson, she went on the Oprah Winfrey show and met Eston’s descendant Julia Jefferson Westerinen.  Following that encounter, Banks-Young and Westerinen brought a discussion of racial issues, titled “A Conversation in Black and White,” to audiences around the country.