WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- DNA tests performed on the descendants of former U.S.
                  President Thomas Jefferson and of one of his slaves offer new evidence that the author of
                  the Declaration of Independence fathered a child with the slave, according to a study in the
                  science journal Nature.

                  Genetic analysis indicates that the third president of the United States was
                  the father of the youngest son of his slave Sally Hemings -- Eston Hemings
                  Jefferson, according to the report.

                  "I have found that we have strong genetic evidence, but not absolute proof,
                  that Eston Hemings, who was Sally Hemings' last child, was probably
                  fathered by Thomas Jefferson," said retired pathology professor Dr. Eugene
                  Foster, who led the study.

                  The study validated oral histories passed down by Eston Hemings'
                  descendants, and may lead to a vote of the Monticello Association, which
                  maintains a graveyard on Jefferson's Charlottesville, Virginia, estate, to allow
                  his descendants to be buried there.

                  "I feel wonderful. I feel vindicated," said Julia Westerinen, 64, of Staten
                  Island, New York, Eston Hemings' great great granddaughter.

                  No DNA match to slave's eldest child

                  Many historians had believed that Thomas Woodson, the first son of Sally
                  Hemings, was fathered by Jefferson.

                  So Foster enlisted the help of geneticists at Oxford and Leicester
                  Universities in Britain and Leiden University in the Netherlands to look at the
                  genes of known descendants of Hemings and of Jefferson's family.

                  "We found that Thomas Woodson, who was the ancestor of a large
                  African-American family who believed that Thomas Jefferson was their
                  father, we have found no evidence to support that," Foster said.

                  They compared the DNA of Woodson's descendants to the DNA of people
                  known to have descended from Jefferson's paternal uncle. "There were
                  some genealogists who knew who they were and where they were," Foster
                  said.

                  The DNA did not match the DNA of Jefferson's uncle.

                  John Taylor King, a Woodson descendant and retired president of
                  Huston-Tillotson College in Austin, Texas, said his family, which had a
                  reunion at Monticello in 1992, stands by oral histories that have been passed
                  down from generation to generation.

                  "We contend (Jefferson) was not a philanderer. He was 33 when his wife
                  died, and he fell in love with Martha's (his wife's) half sister (Sally Hemings)
                  and they were together for 36 years. That's part of our family history and we
                  stand by it," he said.

                  The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, which owns and operates
                  Monticello, has not ignored the estate's African- American heritage, offering
                  a separate tour of slave quarters there, publishing a brochure documenting
                  the story of Sally Hemings and hosting reunions of slave descendants.

                  "We've always welcomed the descendants of Jefferson's slaves," foundation
                  president Dan Jordan said.

                  'Almost total, complete similarities'

                  The study is sure to rekindle debate among historians over the seeming
                  hypocrisy of an American patriot who argued that all men were created
                  equal, yet owned slaves.

                  "The most difficult thing about Jefferson was that he was a slave owner," said
                  Annette Gordon-Reed, a New York author whose book on Jefferson and
                  Hemings inspired Foster's research.

                  Foster also traced one living descendant of Eston Hemings, whom he
                  declines to identify.

                  His European colleagues looked at aspects of the Y chromosome, which are
                  passed down virtually unaltered from father to son. The Y chromosome is
                  the male chromosome -- males have an X and a Y chromosome while
                  females have two X chromosomes.

                  "There are almost total, complete similarities," Foster said.

                  Foster said the study also disproved the belief of some historians that the
                  Woodson family had been fathered by Jefferson's nephews, Samuel and
                  Peter Carr, the sons of his sister. "(The idea was) that accounted for the
                  striking physical resemblance of them to Thomas Jefferson," Foster said.

                  "We examined the descendants of Samuel and Peter Carr and find no
                  evidence they had anything to do with the paternity of the child of Sally
                  Hemings," Foster said.

                  Foster, who used to teach pathology at the Tufts University School of
                  Medicine, said he did the study as an "intellectual exercise."

                          Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited