History of Shadwell, (Albemarle County) Virginia United States of America

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Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, was born in Shadwell, Albemarle county, Va., April 13, 1743; third son of Peter and Jane (Randolph) Jefferson; grandson of Isham and Jane (Rogers) Randolph, of Goochland, Va. His first paternal ancestor in America came from near the mountain of Snowdon, Wales, about 1612, and had three sons: Thomas, who died young; Field, who settled on the waters of the Roanoke, and left numerous descendants, and Peter, who settled at Shadwell. Peter, the father of Thomas, was a surveyor of Albemarle county, having been associated with Professor Joshua Fry, of the College of William and Mary, in completing the survey of the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, begun by Colonel Byrd, and in making the first map of Virginia. He died, Aug. 17, 1757. Jane Randolph, the mother of President Jefferson, a native of the parish of Shadwell, London, England, was born in 1720 and died at the home of her son Thomas in Monticello, Va., in 1776, leaving six daughters and two sons. Thomas was prepared for college at the English school, 1748-52, at the Latin school, 1752-57, with the Rev. Mr. Maury, 1757-59, and was graduated at the College of William and Mary in 1762. At college he received a thorough training in philosophy and mathematics under the instruction of Dr. William Small, of Edinburgh, Scotland, and on graduating he studied law under the direction of George Wythe, the instructor of John Marshall. About this time he also came under the influence of Francis Farquier, the ablest statesman of the time in Virginia, who largely directed his youthful mind in statecraft. He was elected surveyor of Albemarle county, as successor to Nicholas Lewis, Oct. 14, 1763, and in 1764 was elected justice of the peace and a vestryman of the parish, also assuming the management of his mother's estate. He was admitted to the bar in 1767 and elected a member of the Virginia house of burgesses in 1769. Here he made the acquaintance of George Washington, who was also a member of that body, and at Williamsburg during the session Jefferson, who never delivered a speech, listened to the Revolutionary debates on the injustice of colonial taxation without colonial representation and the various means proposed for redressing these grievances. Here was born in his brain the spirit that finally produced the Declaration of Independence. He was married at "The Forest," Jan. 1, 1772, to Martha (Wayles) Skelton, widow of Bathurst Skelton, and daughter of John Wayles, of Charles City county, Va., and he took his wife to his new home at Monticello, presided over by his mother. His house at Shadwell had burned in 1770, which necessitated his removal to Monticello. In 1773, on the death of his wife's father, their estate was greatly enlarged, as his wife inherited 50,000 acres of land and 135 slaves. Jefferson now divided his time between his law practice, the care of his rapidly increasing acres, planted largely in tobacco, and his duty as a member of the house of burgesses. In March, 1775, he was present in St. John's church, Richmond, and listened with about one hundred and fifty other Virginia legislators to the famous oration of Patrick Henry, and in the house of burgesses at Williamsburg in the same year he drew up the instructions from the Virginia deputies to the delegates from Virginia to the Continental congress at Philadelphia, and he was elected an alternate delegate with John Randolph to that body. He took his seat as a delegate in the second congress upon reaching Philadelphia Pa.,June 20, 1775, after taking the oath of office he was at once recognized as a leader and placed on the defence committee of thirteen, the other members from Virginia being Washington, Henry and Lee. Before leaving for Philadelphia he transferred his law business to his kinsman, Edmund Randolph, and this transfer closed his career as a lawyer. He served in congress until Christmas, 1775, when he returned to Virginia, and after giving attention to the business of his estates he returned to Philadelphia, May 13, 1776, and again took his seat in the session of the Continental congress. He was appointed, June 11, 1776, with Franklin, Adams, Sherman and Livingston, a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was residing at a house in the neighborhood of Market and Seventh streets, Philadelphia, when he drew up a rough draft of the instrument. The desk on which he wrote it was inherited by his granddaughter, Eleanor Wayles Randolph, on her marriage to Joseph Coolidge, of Boston, Mass., and was in her custody until her death, when it was placed in the state department at Washington, where the instrument itself was preserved. The committee reported, June 28, 1776, and meantime Massachusetts, in January, South Carolina in March, Georgia and North Carolina in April, Virginia in May, and New Hampshire, New Jersey and Maryland early in June, had instructed their delegates to vote for independence. As New York and Pennsylvania had delayed action, congress also deferred, to hear from these states, and it was not until July 2 that it came before congress and was debated for three days. It came up for final vote, slightly modified from the original draft, July 4, and late in the afternoon of that day it received the unanimous vote of the delegates from all the colonies. Thomas Jefferson's great work was done, and he resigned his seat in congress soon after, having been re-elected a member of the Virginia house of burgesses, in which body he served on the committee to revise the Virginia statutes. In October, 1776, he was appointed, with Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, a U.S. commissioner to Paris, but his duties at home, and principally the ill-health of his wife, deterred him from accepting the mission. The legislature of Virginia, in January, 1779, elected Mr. Jefferson governor of the state, as successor to Patrick Henry, and he was re-elected in 1780, serving 1779-81. During his administration the state supplied its quota of troops to sustain the army in its operations in the Carolinas and Virginia, and through his instigation and influence the capital was removed from Williamsburg to Richmond. In December, 1780, the British fleet under Arnold entered the Chesapeake, and with 900 men captured Richmond, which place it held, and burned, when the Virginia militia, summoned by Governor Jefferson, who had made the temporary capital at Charlottesville, drove the troops out of the city. A favorable wind enabled Arnold and his men to escape capture. The fleet, however, remained down the bay, waiting the movements of Cornwallis, who, on his arrival in June, 1781, sent Colonel Tarleton with the British cavalry to Charlottesville, hoping to capture the governor and legislature. Jefferson was at Monticello at breakfast with the speaker and several members of the legislature, and while Tarleton was encamped on the field between the Rivanna river and Charlottesville preparing to capture the latter place, Governor Jefferson and his guests escaped over Carter's mountain. After capturing seven members of the legislature, Tarleton rode to the gate at Monticello, hoping to find the governor. On taking possession of the house he ordered that nothing be disturbed, and with his own hand he turned the lock, fastening Jefferson's private apartment from the curiosity of his men. In striking contrast to this, Cornwallis occupied Elk Hill, Jefferson's James river place, as his headquarters for ten days, and when he left destroyed the barns and crops, the furnishings of the house, including the library, and carried [p.65] away the stock and slaves. While Jefferson was governor he was elected a visitor of the College of William and Mary, and he effected a change in the organization of the faculty and course of study by abolishing the grammar school and the chairs of divinity and oriental languages and substituting a chair of law and politics, one of anatomy, medicine and chemistry, and one of modern languages, and adding to the duties of the professor of moral philosophy the branches of the law of nations and the law of nature; to those of the professor of moral philosophy the additional duties as professor of fine arts, and to the work of the professor of natural philosophy and mathematics the branch of natural history. Led to a study of the subject of education, he reported to the general assembly of Virginia in 1779 three bills for the establishment of a general system of educatIon for the state. The first bill provided for three years' free instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic to all the boys and girls of the state, rich and poor alike, for schoolhouses to be built on every five or six square miles of the territory of the state, and for the establishment of ten or twelve colleges for the intermediate degree of instruction for the benefit of students in easy circumstances and for those intending to enter the university. The second bill provided for a university with a view of the enlargement of the College of William and Mary for the purpose; and the third bill provided for a state library. The first section of the first bill was partially adopted by the legislature in 1796; the differences between the Church of England, which controlled the College of William and Mary, and the Presbyterians, prevented the adoption of the second bill, and the third was thought premature. Governor Jefferson, in order to place the civil and military authority of the state under one control, declined re-nomination and advised the selection of Gen. Thomas Nelson, who was commander-in-chief of the state militia, for the office of governor, and he was elected. Mrs. Jefferson died Sept. 6, 1782, and the event so affected the mind of Jefferson as to render him for a time incapable of directing his personal affairs or taking part in the public events then pending. Anxious for the future of the statesman, congress unanimously urged upon him the commissionership to France to treat for peace, trusting that a sea voyage would restore his health. He very reluctantly and with many forebodings accepted the commission, but before he was ready to sail the preliminary treaty was concluded. In June, 1783, he was returned to the Continental congress, and he took part in the deliberations of that body in its ninth session at Annapolis, Md., from Nov. 26, 1783, to June 3, 1784. He was appointed chairman of the committee on the currency and introduced the decimal currency suggested by Governor Morris. Congress elected him, on May 7, 1784, a commissioner to France to aid Franklin and Adams in concluding commercial treaties with the European powers, and he sailed from Boston, July 5, 1784, accompanied by his daughters Martha and Marie, reaching Paris in August, where he joined the other commissioners. He was appointed sole minister plenipotentiary to the king of France, under the confederation by the 11th Continental congress, and he received his commission, May 2, 1785, dated March 10, 1785. He made a careful study of the industries of the old world, the condition of the people, the plans and results of educational methods and the political necessities of the citizens viewed from a Republican standpoint. He also made valuable selections of trees, seeds, plants and live stock intended for distribution for propagation in the United States, and he visited the universities in order better to carry out his long-cherished plan of a great national university to be located within the borders of his native state and near the national capital. He labored also in the interests of science, literature and the arts, and carried home with him many valuable examples in each field of research, intended to enrich the libraries and scientific collections of the new world. While abroad he received, in 1787, from his friend James Madison, a copy of the federal constitution as adopted by the states. He was disappointed in the instrument because the tenure of office of the President had not been fixed at seven years, making the incumbent ineligible for a second term, and because of the absence of a bill of rights. He approved the central government and the separation of the judiciary from the legislative powers, and the provision of an upper and lower house of congress He also expressed [p.66] the hope that the appellations Excellency, Worship, Esquire, or even Mister, should not apply to any holder of office in the government of the United States. He reached Norfolk, Va., Nov. 18, 1789, accompanied by his daughters, after six years' residence abroad, and after witnessing the marriage of his daughter Martha to Thomas Mann Randolph, Feb. 23, 1790, he reached New York, March 21, 1790, a full year after the inauguration of President Washington, who had held vacant the office of secretary of state subject to his acceptance. He took his place in Washington's cabinet with considerable reluctance, as he was not in political accord with Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, the dominant spirit in the administration, whose tendencies were toward a monarchical form of government and a distrust of republicanism. His life in France had made Jefferson a republican, and he held that "the natural law of every society and the only sure guardian of the rights of man was the will as expressed by the majority." His political views were freely and emphatically expressed in the cabinet, and Hamilton and Knox were especially antagonistic. In the election of 1792, while he supported the re-election of Washington, the numerous Democratic clubs organized throughout the country emphatically voiced opposition to the administration, and, led by George Clinton, of New York, made a feeble opposition, Clinton receiving 50 electoral votes, Jefferson 4 and Burr 1. The new party was known as Republican, and Jefferson persistently adhered to the title as more appropriate than that of Democrat, which name was urged by the clubs, he not deeming the people yet prepared for absolute sovereignty. His position in the cabinet during the second administration was still more unpleasant, and while the President was anxious to have both political parties as advisers, Hamilton and Knox each threatened to resign, and on Jan. 2, 1794, Jefferson withdrew, and Washington appointed Edmund J. Randolph of Virginia as his successor. At the close of the year Randolph resigned, and the President urged Jefferson to resume the portfolio, which he positively declined to do, and he retired to Monticello. In 1796 he was made the Republican candidate for President, the Federalists having named Vice-President Adams, and in the election that followed the change of two electoral votes would have made Jefferson President. The election was attended with intense excitement and bitter invective. The Federalists saw in Jefferson a dangerous antagonist because of his popularity with the common people. The election resulted in John Adams receiving 71 votes; Thomas Jefferson, 68; Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, Federalist, 59; Aaron Burr, of New York, Republican, 30; Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts, Republican, 15; Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut, Independent, 11; George Clinton, of New York, Republican, 7, and John Jay, of New York, Federalist, 5. This made Adams President and Jefferson Vice-President. He presided over the deliberations of the U.S. senate during the 5th and 6th congresses, 1797-1801, and wrote the Kentucky resolutions of 1798, which voiced his opinion of the dangers of a strong central government. In 1800 he received 73 electoral votes, Aaron Burr also receiving 73 votes, which exactly divided the Republican electoral college. John Adams received the votes of 65 of the Federalist electors, Charles Pinckney the votes of 64, and John Jay the vote of 1 elector. The result gave the house of representatives the duty of electors, and the representatives from ten states voted for Jefferson, who was declared President, and the votes of the representatives from four states made Aaron Burr Vice-President. Jefferson was inaugurated at Washington, March 4, 1801, and in making up his cabinet he appointed James Madison, of Virginia, secretary of state; Albert Gallatin, of Pennsylvania, secretary of the treasury; Henry Dearborn, of Massachusetts, secretary of war; Robert Smith, of Maryland, secretary of the navy, and Levi Lincoln, of Massachusetts, attorney-general. No change occurred in his cabinet during the first administration. The political campaign resulting in his election had so embittered President Adams, his former friend and co-worker in carrying out the separation of the colonies from the mother country, that just before the close of his administration Adams appropriated for the Federal party all the available offices in his gift, and in this way distributed the spoils of office to the defeated party. To avoid meeting the incoming President, Adams left the White House with his family at sunrise, March 4, 1801, and began his journey to Quincy, Mass., ignoring the ordinary courtesy of attending the inauguration of his successor and of extending to the new President and family a hospitable welcome to the President's house. Thus Thomas Jefferson, at the opening of the nineteenth century, took up the task imposed upon him by a new political party that he had created, with scant courtesy from the party he had dethroned, and inaugurated a political policy that was pronounced by his enemies as the philosophy of a Jacobin. Popular government by the people was the talk of a carefully guarded conservatism, and liberality in education, religion and politics, a free press, hostility to monopolies, faith in the power of the people, in peace, in science, in material progress and in popular honesty, was to be put to trial. Paternalism, corporate greed, caste, the taint of nobility, banks sustained by government patronage for private [p.67] gain, and entangling foreign alliances were to be frowned down. America for the Americans, and gradual expansion within the bounds of the American continent to make room for the increasing population, was to be the policy of the new administration. An army and navy on a peace footing, with no ostentatious preparations for war in times of peace, depending on the militia of the states and on state volunteers in times of danger, for defence, and the exclusion of monarchical institutions on the American continent, were the chief outlines of the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, and for these theories he was charged in 1801 with being a "dangerous demagogue," a "theorist," a "French Republican," a "maker of epigrams," and one not to be trusted with the administration of a government that had been created by Hamilton and presided over by Washington and Adams. After selecting his cabinet, he appointed Robert R. Livingston, of New York, minister to France; Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, minister to Spain, and, in 1803, James Munroe, of Virginia, minister to Great Britain. Munroe was soon after transferred to France as special envoy to Bonaparte in Paris, where for $15,000,000 he secured for the United States the extensive domain of the territory of Louisiana. He also so conducted the naval war against the Barbary States as to restore peace where for years American commerce had been in constant jeopardy. In the U.S. congress the Federalist senators had dwindled to five and the representatives of the party in the house numbered but twenty-seven. The country was at peace with the world, and the fears that calamity would follow a change of administration were unrealized. He was reelected in 1804 under the amended constitution providing for separate candidates for President and Vice-President by each party, the 162 Republican electors voting for Thomas Jefferson for President and George Clinton, of New York, for Vice-President, the 65 Federalist electors voting for Charles C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, for President, and Rufus King, of New York, for Vice-President. The President made no change in his cabinet except to transfer Robert Smith from the navy department to the attorney-general's office, and to appoint Jacob Crowninshield, of Massachusetts, secretary of the navy. Attorney-General Smith resigned in December, 1805, and John Breckinridge, of Kentucky, was appointed his successor, and on his death, Dec. 14, 1806, C?sar A. Rodney, of Delaware, became attorney-general. William Pinkney was made U.S. minister to Great Britain in 1806, John Armstrong U.S. minister to France in 1804, George W. Erving charg? d'affaires in Spain in 1805, and in August, 1805, at the request of Alexander I. of Russia, President Jefferson appointed as U.S. minister at St. Petersburg William Short, of Virginia, who had served with him in France as his secretary of legation, and afterward as charg? d'affaires and also as minister resident at the Hague and at Madrid. The senate met Dec. 2, 1805, but the President did not send in the nomination till Feb. 24, 1806, after Mr. Short had been in Russia six months, and then the senate unanimously rejected the appointment, and the wish of Emperor Alexander was not gratified until President Madison sent John Quincy Adams in 1809. President Jefferson favored the much debated policy of an embargo on foreign trade in 1807; instituted the Lewis and Clark exploring expedition; introduced Democratic simplicity in conducting the social functions of the administration, and originated the President's message to take the place of the President's speech on the assembling of the two houses of congress. His views on offensive partisanship were expressed Nov. 8, 1806, in a letter to Surveyor C. Parker of Norfolk, Va., in these words:?"I have never had a wish to control the right of private opinion or of suffrages in the offices of the government?I have only believed it wrong, where they disapprove those principles of administration which the will of the nation has sanctioned, that they should employ the influence of their office in aid of an active opposition to them. No person not doing this has ever been disturbed in the right of his personal suffrage." Upon the inauguration of James Madison as his successor, March 4, 1809, Mr. Jefferson retired from public life, and gave his remaining years to the cultivation of his farm and the building of the University of Virginia. This latter work had been long in contemplation and was the result of a careful study of the architecture of the universities of Europe. His hope to use the College of William and Mary as the foundation of the university had departed, and it only remained for him to plant the new institution at Charlottesville, within easy sight of Monticello. He had already opened the Rivanna river to navigation, established a nail factory, a blacksmith shop, grist and saw mills, and a factory for [p.68] making domestic cloth. He had on his farm full-blooded merino sheep which he had imported from Spain, and improved hogs from Calcutta; and the broad lawns of Monticello were planted with rare trees, shrubs and fruits obtained in Europe. Monticello, with its extensive mansion containing spacious rooms with sixty beds?and seldom were they unused?was the Mecca of statesmen and scholars. Madison, Munroe, Webster, Lafayette, Cabell, Cooke, Dupont, de Nemours, George Ticknor and a host of others had slept under his roof and consulted with him on the great university he was planning. The result of these consultations and his own unceasing industry resulted in what is described by George Ticknor in a letter to Prescott, the historian, after visiting the completed structure, as: "a mass of buildings more beautiful than anything architectural in New England, and more appropriate to a university than could be found in the world." William T. Harris, commissioner of education, writes: "Jefferson's university is more and more copied or appreciated in the regulations and practical details of colleges and universities, north and south." Jefferson himself wrote the deed for the land, struck the first peg to mark its foundation and with a twelve-inch rule laid out the outlines of its walls. He made the drawings and specifications for material and attended to every detail of its construction. The University was incorporated in 1819, and was opened for students in 1824. In selecting the first faculty the chairs were filled by instructors of foreign birth and education except the chair of law and politics and that of ethics; both of these chairs Rector Jefferson insisted should be held by Americans. In 1826, in response to an invitation to be present at the national capital to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of American independence, he wrote: "All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God." On Jan. 10, 1816, referring to the movement made in New England, to send missionaries to the South, one to every one thousand souls?he wrote: "The sway of the priests in New England is indeed formidable. No mind above mediocrity dares there to develope itself. If it does, they excite against it the public opinion which they command, and by little but incessant teasing persecutions drive it from among them. The present emigrations to the Western country are real flights from persecution, religious and political." Jefferson received the honorary degree of LL.D. from William and Mary college in 1782, from Yale in 1786, from Harvard and Brown in 1787, and from the College of New Jersey in 1791. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; president of the American Philosophical Society; and rector of the University of Virginia from its foundation to the time of his death. Financial distress fell upon Jefferson at the time of the embargo bill, which he signed, and which ruined the business of tobacco planting in Virginia. His enforced absence from home as a political servant of the people, on a small salary during the best years of his life, added to his losses, which he further augmented by endorsing a twenty thousand dollar note for a friend. To meet the demands of his creditors he sold his library to congress in 1814 for $23,000, said to have been less than one fourth its real value. The Tammany society of New York city raised for him in 1826 the sum of $8500, to which the city of Philadelphia added $5000 and Baltimore $3000. At his death the sale of his estate fully discharged his debts, but left his widowed daughter, Mrs. Randolph, and her children, without a home or means of support. The states of South Carolina and Virginia, upon learning of her necessities, promptly voted her $10,000 each, which enabled her to educate her children and live comfortably the ten years which she survived her illustrious father. Jefferson is the author of: Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774); The Declaration of American Independence (1776); Notes on Virginia (1781); Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate (1797); Life of Captain Lewis (1814), and numerous political and philosophical pamphlets. His works, chiefly letters, were published by his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, in 1829; a complete edition of his works in nine volumes was edited by Henry A. Washington by order of congress in 1853, and his writings were collected and edited in ten volumes by Paul Leicester Ford in 1892. See also biographies by Randall, Tucker, Parton and Schouler. He was buried on his own estate at Monticello, the grave being originally marked by a stone on which was inscribed the following inscription written by himself: "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." By order of congress, a square massive granite pillar replaced the stone. This became disfigured from the continued demand of relic hunters, and the legislature of Virginia erected a shaft ten feet high upon which [p.69] the original inscription was transcribed with the additional data added by the state, "Born April 2, o.s., 1742; died July 4, 1826." "Thomas Jefferson still survives," were the last words of John Adams. Each man had greeted the dawn of that fiftieth natal day of American independence and died before its sun had set, Jefferson at 12:40 P.M. and Adams a few hours later. His name was placed in the Hall of Fame for great Americans, New York university, receiving in the election in October, 1900, ninety votes out of the ninety-seven possible, a number exceeded only by Washington, Lincoln, Webster, Franklin, who received ninety-seven, ninety-six, ninety-six, ninety-four votes, respectively.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Shadwell, (Albemarle County) Virginia

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