Jefferson's Library of the Americas
Jefferson's first interest in the geography of North America doubtlessly came from his father Peter Jefferson. From 1745-1750 Peter Jefferson employed himself as a surveyor of boundaries and maker of maps and indeed it was his work with Joshua Fry as senior surveyor on the Fairfax Line and a subsequent map of the Virginia territory that posterity and his son would remember. After Peter's death in the autumn of 1757 Thomas Jefferson inherited from his father his first book on America, Oglvie's Description of America.1 A self-described bibliophile, Jefferson's library would continue to grow during his years in school, however in 1770 the Jefferson family house at Shadwell burned to the ground. Thomas Jefferson informed his friend John Page of the loss:
My late loss may perhaps have reached you by this time, I mean the loss of my mother's house by fire, and in it, of every paper I had in the world, and almost every book. On a reasonable estimate I calculate the cost of the books burned to have been £200. sterling. Would to god it had been the money; then had it never cost me a sigh!2
Jefferson immediately began to amass another library. Purchasing
"two of the best libraries in 
Virginia"
(the libraries of Richard Bland and Peyton Randolph) both with
excellent records of early Virginia history, Jefferson by 1773,
had amassed a library totaling over one thousand two hundred and
fifty-six volumes. This was just the beginning for Jefferson's
library would eventually "contain more books about the region
than any other library in the world."3
Like his father, Jefferson possessed a keen interest in his native land Virginia and had "always made it a practice . . . of obtaining any information" relative to Virginia "which might be of use . . .". These notes Jefferson said were "bundled up without order" until he was given the opportunity in 1781 to "employ their substance." Jefferson undertook to complete a request for information on the state of Virginia forwarded to him by a good friend. The answers to Marquis de Barbé-Marbois circulated list of inquires eventually became Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, one of the most important scientific works of the eighteenth century. In the manuscript, Jefferson among other things attempted to examine the boundaries, rivers, seaports, mountains, cascades, the "subterraneous riches" of the land, and climate. It was as John Logan Allen in his essay "Imagining the West: The View from Monticello" states, "the first written evidence we have of Jefferson's developing image of western geography."
In May 1784 Congress elected Jefferson minister plenipotentiary to France. Jefferson decided upon arrival in Paris he would have a "few copies struck off" of his manuscript for private distribution. Notes on the State of Virginia brought Jefferson considerable attention within the literary circles the American occupied and stimulated the author's further interest in the unexplored territories west of his native Virginia. "While residing in Paris," Jefferson wrote years later, "I devoted every afternoon I was disengaged, for a summer or two, in examining all the principal bookstores, turning over every book with my own hand, and putting by everything which related to America, and indeed whatever was rare and valuable in every science."
Upon Jefferson's return to the United States in 1789 he received notification of his appointment in Washington's cabinet as Secretary of State. Jefferson remained Secretary of State until the close of 1793, at which time he formally resigned and returned to Monticello. On March 2, 1797 Jefferson returned to Philadelphia, the next day he was installed as president of the American Philosophical Society and the following he would be became Vice President of the nation. Prior to leaving Monticello, Jefferson had prepared a paper that he hoped "the Society may admit" into the new volume of their Transactions. Examining the fossilized bones of a mammal that he named "the Great Claw" or "Megalonyx" and believing extinction to be impossible he surmised that it probably was still in the "never-ending circle" of nature, concluding, "our entire ignorance of that immense country to the West and North-west, and of its contents, does not authorize us to say what it does not contain." The secretary of the society read Jefferson's report, and although it was soon realized that he incorrectly classified the remains, his report had spurred interest and the societies promotion of research in natural history. Certainly, Jefferson's enthusiasm for discovery and the diffusion of knowledge would not wane.4
In 1801, Thomas Jefferson was elected President of the United States. "I have been much pleased with the expectation that under a president who is a Philosopher and a Person of General Science," Natchez scientist William Dunbar wrote surveyor Andrew Ellicott, "Learning and the arts will be patronized, Invention and discovery encouraged and rewarded."5 Jefferson had unsuccessfully attempted to organize an expedition of discovery westward earlier, but the Presidency presented the opportunity to see this vision realized.
Books were for Jefferson his windows on the world and using the valuable resources found within his library and the associations made at the American Philosophical Society, he prepared Meriwether Lewis to lead the Corps of Discovery. Lewis en-route west named a river for Jefferson, "the author of our enterprise" and indeed Jefferson was the author of the enterprise, as he would author others in the years following.
In 1809 Jefferson retired to Monticello happily "at leisure to enjoy my family, my friends, my farm and books!" However after the destruction of the nation's library in Washington by the British during the War of 1812 Jefferson offered up his library in replacement. "I envy you that immortal honour," John Adams wrote him upon hearing of the sale to Congress. In 1815 "the choicest collection of books in the United States," Jefferson's library of 6,700 titles was sold to the nation and with it one of the greatest collections on America ever amassed.
Books that Lewis and Clark Brought on the Expedition:7
Barton, Benjamin Smith. Elements of Botany; or, Outlines of the Natural History of Vegetables (Philadelphia, 1803).
Kelly, Patrick. A Practical Introduction to Spherics and Nautical Astronomy; being an attempt to simplify those.sciences. Containing.the discovery of a projection for clearing the lunar distances in order to find the longitude at sea. (London, 1796).
Kirwan, Richard. Elements of Mineralogy (London, 1784; 2d ed., 1794)
Le Page du Pratz, Antoine. The History of Louisiana, or the Western Parts of Virginia and Carolina (London, 1763; 2d ed., 1774).
Mackenzie, Alexander. Voyages (London, 1801; American ed., 1802).
Miller, John. An Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus, vol. 1 (London, 1779); An Illustration of the Termini Botanici of Linnaeus, vol. 2 (London, 1789
The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris.published by order of the Commissioners of Longitude (London, 1781-1804).
A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Science; comprehending all the branches of useful knowledge, with accurate descriptions as well of the various machines, instruments, tools, figures, and schemes necessary for illustrating them, as of the classes, kinds, preparations, and uses of natural productions, whether animals, vegetables, minerals, fossils, or fluids. By a Society of Gentlemen (London, 1753; 2d ed., 1764).
-- Christine Coalwell, Monticello Research Department, December 2001
1A typewritten inventory of Peter Jefferson's Will is available at the University of Virginia. This book was most likely lost to fire in February 1770, when the Jefferson's home at Shadwell burned.
2The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950- )I: 33-4 as quoted in Jefferson's Books, Douglas L. Wilson (Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Monticello Monograph Series, 1996) 18. Douglas Wilson estimates the library lost in the 1770 fire to have totaled 300-400 titles, ibid. 19.
3Dayton, Duncan and Ken Burns, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery: An Illustrated History (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1997) 6. Quoted from Thomas Jefferson's Autobiography reprinted in Thomas Jefferson Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (Library of America: New York, 1984).
4Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 4, no. 30, 246-60; Silvio A. Bedini, Thomas Jefferson and American Vertebrate Paleontology, (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1985) 8, 10.
5Dunbar to Ellicott, October 3, 1801 Andrew Ellicott Papers, Library of Congress.
6Sowerby, E. Millicent. Catalogue of the library of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983) in five volumes, IV, 159-356.
7Jackson, Donald. Thomas Jefferson & the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman and London, 1993. P. 133-4. Also see, Jackson, Donald. "Some Books Carried by Lewis and Clark." Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society. 16. (Oct. 1959). 3-13.