This article originally appeared in the Scioto Gazette, a Chillicothe, Ohio newspaper, on August 1, 1902 under the sub-heading "The Gazette's Delver Into the Past Brings up a Romantic Story...Was Natural Son of the Sage of Monticello; Had the Traits of Good Training."

"Gentlemen, who in Chillicothe looks most like that statute?" I asked.

Instantly came the unanimous answer, "Why, Eston Hemings!"

The color of the bronze in the statue probably made the resemblance more perfect and striking.

Some time after my return from Washington, happening to have some business with Hemings, I told him of the incident.

"Well," answered Hemings quietly, "my mother, whose name I bear, belonged to Mr. Jefferson." and after a slight pause, added, "and she never was married."

"Mr. Hemings wife was lighter in color than her husband: indeed I am not sure that she was not a purely white woman. At any rate, the children had scarcely a visible admixture of colored blood; and I saw and talked with one of the sons, during the Civil War, who was then wearing the silver leaves of a lieutenant colonel, and in command of a fine regiment of white men from a north-western state. He begged me not to tell the fact that he had colored blood in his veins, which he said was not suspected by any of his command; and of course I did not.

This son, I have lately learned, is now fairly wealthy, and is proprietor and landlord of a large and popular hotel in a certain north-western city. The landlord and the hotel bear a family name--and the name is not Hemings.

Eston Hemings, being a master of the violin, and an accomplished "caller" of dances, always officiated at the "swell" entertainments of Chillicothe; and they were more frequent then than now, I think.

But notwithstanding all his accomplishments and deserts, the fact remained that he had a visible admixture of negro blood in his veins, and in Chillicothe before the war, between those who had, and the white, even the lowest of them--there was a great gulf, an impassable gulf: and Eston Hemings quietly moved away from Chillicothe, and I believe, told no one whither.