Meet Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ queer descendants

Five generations later, the founding father's legacy continues to grow more complicated and colorful

Published

July 27, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)

Thomas Jefferson (Photo illustration by Salon/VCG Wilson/Corbis/Getty Images/HappyFoto)

Dorothy Westerinen celebrated the Fourth of July the way she usually does, by barbecuing and hanging out around the pool with her wife and close friends. But her relationship to America’s founding, particularly this year’s semiquincentennial, is far from usual. Through her late mother, Julia Jefferson Westerinen, Dorothy is a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson, the third president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman of African extraction who bore him children.