A PRESIDENT IN THE FAMILY: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas Woodson

Squabbles about Southern genealogies are usually confined to blue-haired ladies in local history societies—but not when the family in question is Thomas Jefferson's. The possibility of a sexual liaison between the third president and his slave Sally Hemings has occupied scholars and gossipmongers since Jefferson's lifetime. Most of the recent debate has focused on the four children with the surname Hemings (Madison, Beverly, Harriet and Eston). But there may have been another child, Thomas Woodson (so named because, the story goes, he was sent from Monticello to the nearby Woodson plantation as a lad). Though the existence of young Tom is up for debate, one of those claiming to be his descendants tells his side of the story here. Woodson presents new evidence, the most persuasive piece of which is Jefferson's Farm Book, in which he recorded all the names of his slaves. Scholars have noted that no young Tom was recorded in 1790 (his putative year of birth). Woodson was stunned, then, to see that in 1790, four slaves' names had been recorded, and one of them was erased, a fact never reported by Jefferson scholars. Woodson's book is a tad histrionic, filled with words like "astounding," "preposterous," "repulsed" and lots of exclamation marks. There is also a bit too much extraneous material about the author's family—details about his adoptive daughter's penchant for running away, for example. Still, Woodson makes his case effectively, and Jefferson buffs will relish this latest installment in the Jefferson-Hemings saga. (Apr.)