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Monticello, two miles southeast of Charlottesville
in Virginia, is the home of Thomas Jefferson
- third President of the United States of America and one
of the nation's founding fathers.
Who was Thomas Jefferson?
Thomas Jefferson - the son of a planter - practiced
law and served in local government until he was chosen in
1776 to draft the Declaration of Independence which
has been regarded ever since as the charter of American and
universal liberties. The document - still often-quoted today
- states that all men are equal and that the government is
the servant, not the master, of the people.
In 1800 Thomas Jefferson became the President, the first
peaceful transfer of authority from one party to another in
the history of the young nation. His purchase of Louisiana
Territory from France's Napoleon
nearly doubled the size of the United States and he steered
his country away from involvement in any more damaging wars.
Although remembered more for his intellectual achievements
than his term in office, the estate epitomises its ingenious
and eccentric owner who shaped Monticello over a period
of 40 years, calling it his 'essay in architecture'. Jefferson
incorporated his own ideas into the design which you can explore
today on a tour of the estate, which was acquired and preserved
by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in 1923.
Things to see and do in
Monticello:
Jefferson spent many years in France on diplomatic service
and so loved the Parisian architecture he saw that he spent
most of his life recreating in Monticello. French features
include the dramatic dome over the parlour (the first American
home with one) and the external appearance that the three-story
building was only one-story tall - modelled on the Hotel
de Salm in Paris.
Jerfferson's inventions
Monticello is filled with many of Jefferson's innovations
designed for greater convenience. In his bedroom there are
prominently placed clocks, space-saving alcove beds, a light
maximizing mirror, and a 'turning machine' - a revolving
wardrobe. He organised his chamber so he would get out of
the right side of bed to write (he wrote 20,000 letters in
his lifetime) and the left side to dress.
Other gadgets here include a concave mirror in the
hall so visitors appeared to be standing on their head, Lewis
and Clark expedition fossils, a floor painted the exact
same shade of green as grass, a two-pen polygraph (a
pre-carbon copy way to produce two copies of a letter at once),
and a compass attached to a weather vane outside to show wind
direction. Jefferson was a scientifically-minded man who recorded
the temperature and the speed and direction of wind methodically
every day and kept records on climate, bird migration, and
flora with the hope of creating a national meteorological
database. He carried with him many pocket-sized observation
and measurement instruments earning him the reputation of
being a 'travelling calculator'.
The Great Clock
A picturesque feature of the estate is the Great Clock,
designed by Jefferson and built by Peter Spruck in
1792, which still works today. One face of the clock faces
the house's interior with hours, minutes and seconds; the
clock face on the outside wall dictates only the hour, which
was accurate enough for outdoor laborers. A Chinese gong chimes
the hour so loudly that slaves in the fields could hear it
three miles away. This is a seven-day clock, displaying a
marker on the wall from Sunday at the top down to Saturday
which drops so far down that the marking for the end of the
week is only visible in the basement (the clock was originally
designed for a taller house). Every Sunday the clock is wound,
raising its weights to the ceiling.
Mulberry Row
The remains of Mulberry Row, the old slave quarters,
reflect the darker past of Monticello. In its day, Mulberry
Row would have been a thriving, working street with a washhouse,
dairy, a blacksmiths, and a carpentry. Jefferson was opposed
to slavery - he called it "an abominable crime,"
- yet he owned more than 200 slaves, one of whom he was reputedly
romantically attached to. The film Jefferson In Paris
forced the American public to reckon with the possibility
that the Father of Independence kept a slave mistress for
more than 35 years. Most biographers have ignored or dismissed
stories of a liaison with his daughter Mary's slave-child
while in Paris. At the time, he was a widowed father with
two girls who had promised his dying wife he would never re-marry.
The slave-girl was 14-years-old and the half-sister of his
wife. When they returned from Paris she was pregnant. To some
this was a serious passion, to others she was a slave-child
who had no choice.
Thomas Jefferson's grave
Jefferson died at Monticello, aged 83 and in debt, on July
4 1826 - exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence.
As modest in death as he was in life, it was Jefferson's wish
that his tombstone reflect the things he had given the people
not the things that the people had given him. It only states:
'Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration
of American Independence of the Statute of Virginia for religious
freedom and father of the University of Virginia.' You'll
notice one glaring omission form his epitaph - there's no
mention that he was once president. |
