Sisters want research on their DNA history

Aurorans take cue from Jefferson study, hope to prove Washington link

Bob Jackson, News Staff Writer

Published July 5, 2001 at midnight

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November 12, 1998

Two black sisters who claim an ancestral link to George Washington have asked for help from researchers who used DNA testing to determine Thomas Jefferson fathered a child by a slave.

Janet Allen and Linda Bryant believe their great-great-great-great-grandfather, West Ford, was Washington's illegitimate son.

"We want our legacy for our children and our children's children in American history besides slavery,'' Bryant said. "We are not looking for Washington to open up his estate and give us money. We are looking to proclaim our heritage.''

Dr. Eugene Foster, a retired pathology professor in Charlottesville, Va., who took part in the Jefferson study, said he is intrigued by Allen and Bryant's request.

"I have spoken with Linda Bryant and told her I'm interested, but that I had to be in touch with my colleagues to see whether they would be interested in it because they are the ones who really did the DNA testing,'' Foster said.

Foster worked on the Jefferson case with seven scientists from Oxford and Leicester universities in England, and Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Testing in the Jefferson case showed that Easton Hemings, son of slave Sally Hemings, was genetically linked to Jefferson. It was the first scientific evidence of a long-rumored sexual relationship between Jefferson and his slave.

The Aurora sisters think Foster can do the same for them.

To date most of their evidence of a relationship between Washington and a slave comes from a 1986 doctoral thesis by their cousin, Judith Saunders Burton, a Vanderbilt University educator.

Burton's thesis is based on artifacts, correspondence, minutes of government meetings, archival records, journals, magazines, newspapers and oral interviews.

Here's her contention:

Ford was born in 1784 to slave Venus Ford on the Bushfield Plantation in Westmoreland County, Va., where Washington's sister-in-law, Hannah Washington, lived. George Washington was a frequent visitor.

Ford bore a striking resemblance to George Washington and was freed at age 5, when Hannah Washington died. He was the only one of her slaves to be emancipated.

He was then befriended by George Washington. Ford attended church with Washington, traveled and hunted with him.

Washington died in 1799, when Ford was 15. Ford then managed the Mount Vernon estate until it was sold in 1858. He died in 1863.

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