Ron,
not true, here is the research. Also I know of no one on this thread that called Jefferson an atheist .. certainly not me, and I am not an atheist either. My assertion is he was not influenced by religion in the creation of the Constitution ... as many today wish to assert. As per Sally ..
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But in 1997, Annette Gordon-Reed, a lawyer who studied the subject, sized up the same evidence and reached the opposite conclusion: a liaison was very likely, although it could not be proved, Ms. Gordon-Reed wrote in her book "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings."

The debate might have deadlocked there were it not for a new genetic technique of tracing ancestry through the Y chromosome, which descends through the male line, and for the research efforts of Eugene A. Foster, a pathologist who resumed a project to test whether Jefferson was the father of Hemings's children.

Jefferson had no male descendants, but blood samples from five descendants of his uncle, Field Jefferson, provided Dr. Foster with the authentic Jefferson Y chromosome. He also tested descendants of the Carrs and of Hemings's son Eston.

Dr. Foster found in 1998 that the Jefferson Y chromosome differed from that of the Carr family, but was identical to that of Eston Hemings's lineage. Jefferson was at Monticello at the conception of all of Hemings's known children, historical documents show.