Archaeology is an historical discipline whose goals are to advance our understanding of what happened in the past and why. But unlike the documents on which historians rely -- think Jefferson's letters -- archaeological deposits do not come with dates. In archaeology, we have to do work for the...
Last week archaeologists began test excavations at an early-19th century stone house at Tufton , one of the four quarter farms that comprised Monticello Plantation. The stone house is an important part of the Monticello story, but how just how it fits and even when it was built remain unclear. The...
Lucian Truscott and Shannon Lanier pose in the Jefferson family cemetery (not part of Monticello). The family cemetery is owned by the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. In recognition of Presidents' Day and Black History Month, CBS This Morning aired a...
On December 28, 1993, Monticello Getting Word historians Lucia "Cinder" Stanton, Dianne Swann-Wright, and Beverly Gray traveled to Chillicothe, Ohio to interview five members of the Pettiford family—three of whom were descendants of Madison Hemings. Since then, Getting Word staff have traveled more...
In January 2000 the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation (the predecessor of today’s Thomas Jefferson Foundation) issued a report concerning the allegation that Thomas Jefferson was the father of some or all of the children of Sally Hemings , an enslaved woman at Monticello. A special research...
Monticello's former Robert H. Smith Director of Restoration, Bob Self, demonstrates the making a mortise and tenon joint, one of the classic techniques that would have been used by joiners James Dinsmore and John Hemmings at Monticello.
Fear of separation from loved ones was one of the great underlying terrors of slavery. Today we hear the story of a fight that broke out between two enslaved teenagers working in Monticello's Nailery and the dire consequences that followed.
Nance (Nancy) Hemings was an enslaved woman whom Jefferson inherited, gave as a wedding gift and later bought back to help run a weaving operation he established at Monticello.
