Two centuries ago, on February 13, 1819, James Tallmadge, a member of the Democratic-Republican Party formed by Thomas Jefferson, offered an amendment to a bill regarding the admission of the Territory of Missouri into the United States. The so-called Tallmadge Amendment proposed banning further...
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...
A Statement by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation The issue of Jefferson’s paternity has been the subject of controversy for at least two centuries, ranging from contemporary newspaper articles in 1802 (when Jefferson was President) to scholarly debate well into the 1990s. It is now the Thomas...
In mid-September 1817, Thomas Jefferson was preparing to leave Poplar Forest and return home to Monticello, but he had a few errands to run first. He set off for Lynchburg, roughly a dozen miles to the northeast, where he visited the shop of James Newhall. The thirty-five-year-old Newhall was a...
Some brought photographs, others brought books and at least two people brought quilts. But most of those bearing their family treasures at a recent Jefferson School African American Heritage Center event had questions. “Memories Matter,” a Black History Month program sponsored jointly by Monticello...
On Saturday, September 17, Monticello, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Virginia, hosted a public race summit for thousands on the West Lawn of Jefferson’s famous home. Memory, Mourning, Mobilization: Legacies of Slavery and Freedom in America featured...
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed and leading Jefferson scholar Peter Onuf discuss their new book, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of Imagination during the national launch of their book at Monticello. From April 19, 2016.
Happy Birthday, Garden Book! On March 30, 1766, Jefferson wrote, "Purple hyacinths begin to bloom" at Shadwell, initiating a 50-year journal of his gardening hopes, observations, successes and failures. Monticello's Curator of Plants, Peggy Cornett, and Monticello guide Bill Bergen introduce this...
