InfoBeat News - Morning Coffee Edition - 5/7/2001 Jefferson, Hemings descendants meet CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - Descendants of Sally Hemings attended a gathering of Thomas Jefferson's relatives Sunday despite tensions about whether the third president fathered any of his slave's children. The groups met outside the family estate at a gathering of the Monticello Association, an exclusive group that claims direct lineage to Jefferson and the right to be buried at his family cemetery. A report released last month by some Jefferson descendants asserted that the Hemings relatives should be turned away because their ties to Jefferson are based mostly on oral history, not science. For generations, Hemings' descendants passed down stories about their ties to the president. A DNA study in 1998 concluded that a Jefferson male was indeed the father of Eston Hemings, Sally's youngest son. While president, Jefferson was publicly accused of fathering Hemings' children and never denied it.