Visitors to Monticello recorded memories of late afternoon dinners at Monticello “served in half Virginian, half French style in good taste and abundance,” but the records rarely mention the enslaved cooks and their families who made these meals possible. Nike KD 11
In 1805, a remarkable shipment was dispatched from a sizable Indian village near what is now Bismarck, North Dakota. A large hand-hewn boat headed down the Missouri River toward the President’s House in Washington, D.C., thousands of miles away, where Thomas Jefferson eagerly awaited word of the...
Despite thousands of surviving documents — he wrote and received nearly 47,000 letters — Monticello’s curators have only recently fully understood Jefferson’s comprehensive system for drafting and organizing his correspondence. nike
Monticello Associate Curator Diane Ehrenpreis takes us through Jefferson's interest in innovation and technology and the story behind his revolving desk. Nike KD 11
The winter of 1803-1804 was particularly busy for President Thomas Jefferson. The Barbary Pirate War smoldered, the U.S. flag was raised over New Orleans for the first time, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition AIR MAX PLUS
The year is 1804. James Bowdoin III, now the American minister to Spain, comes across a marble sculpture while visiting Paris. Believing that Thomas Jefferson would enjoy it, he ships the piece to Virginia with a letter written, “a Cleopatra copied and reduced from the ancient one now at Paris.”...
On February 5, 1769, Thomas Jefferson replied to his cousin’s request that his son study law under him. Writing from Shadwell , his boyhood home, Jefferson said he must decline: "I do not expect to be here more than two months in the whole between this and November next, at which time I propose to...
This summer, Monticello’s Restoration Department will be removing the East Portico’s mid-20th-century wooden beadboard ceiling and restoring its Jefferson-era finish, a traditional three-coat lime plaster. An 1807 letter from mason and plasterer Hugh Chisholm to Jefferson provides the best...
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson took a serious fall in Paris, dislocating and possibly breaking his right wrist. The injury healed slowly, and though he regained use, stiffness and pain in his joint troubled him as he aged. Years later, retired to Monticello and searching for comfort, Jefferson got a...
