Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (56 page)

“
T
HE
POLITICAL
OR
PUBLIC
CHARACTER
”
Gerald W. Mullin,
Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia
(New York, 1972), 8.

“
I
T
IS
THE
STRONG
IN
BODY
”
TDLTJ,
20.

THE
KIND
OF
MAN
PEOPLE
NOTICED
I have drawn on several sources for my discussion of Peter Jefferson. See
TDLTJ,
17–26;
JHT,
I, 9–33; Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 5–18; and Parton,
Life,
9–10.

WHAT
BECAME
A
LBEMA
RLE
C
OUNTY
The county was founded in 1744. For an overview, see John Hammond Moore,
Albemarle, Jefferson's County, 1727–1976
(Charlottesville, Va., 1976), 1–67, which covers the period from the second quarter of the eighteenth century through the Revolution. See also S. Edward Ayres, “Albemarle County, Virginia, 1744–1770: An Economic, Political, and Social Analysis,”
Magazine of Albemarle County History
25 (1966–67): 37–72.
JHT,
I,
435–39, discusses Peter Jefferson's lands, slaves, and estate. For a sense of Virginia as a whole, see Michael A. McDonnell, “Jefferson's Virginia,” in Cogliano, ed.,
A Companion to Thomas Jefferson,
16–31.

AFTER
THE
L
ONDON
PARISH
TDLTJ,
22.

THE
WILDERNE
SS
OF
THE
MID
-A
TLANTI
C
Alan Taylor,
American Colonies
(New York, 2002), 117–37, tells the story of Virginia from 1570 to 1650; 138–57 carry the account forward to 1750 in the “Chesapeake Colonies.” For more background on the formation of the planter culture of Virginia and of the larger Chesapeake region, Daniel K. Richter,
Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts
(Cambridge, Mass., 2011), is excellent, especially 187–211; 346–368 are illuminating on slavery. See also Norman K. Risjord,
Jefferson's America, 1760–1815,
3d ed. (Lanham, Md., 2010), 1–33, for a portrait of America in 1760; April Lee Hatfield,
Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century
(Philadelphia, 2003); James Horn,
Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994); and Edmund S. Morgan,
American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia
(New York, 1975). For a discussion of Anglican influences, see Daniel J. Boorstin, “The
Church of England in Colonial Virginia,” in
The American Past in Perspective,
vol. I
,
To 1877,
ed. Trevor Colbourn and James T. Patterson (Boston, 1970), 33–43. For details on Bacon's Rebellion, see Wilcomb E. Washburn,
The Governor and the Rebel: A History of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1957), and Anthony S. Parent, Jr.,
Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660–1740
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003).

BORN
ON
A
PRIL
13, 1743
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 11. The April 13 date is according to the New Style calendar.

ONCE
SINGLEHANDED
LY
PULLED
DOWN
Ibid., 13.

UPRI
GHTED
TWO
HUGE
HOGSH
EADS
Ibid.

A
SUPERLATIVE
AND
SENTIMENTAL
LIGH
T
Jefferson,
Writings,
3–4.

“T
HE
TRADITION
I
N
MY
FATHER
'
S
FAMILY
”
Ibid. The recollections are in an autobiography Jefferson wrote between January 6, 1821, and July 29, 1821. (Ibid., 3, 101.) He ended his narrative with his arrival in New York to become secretary of state in 1790.

THE
ANCIENT
ROOTS
I believe the best work on the pre-Monticello Jeffersons can be found in the scholarship of Susan Kern, who was enormously helpful to me and to whom I owe a great debt. In both her dissertation on the subject and in her resulting book
The Jeffersons at Shadwell
(New Haven, Conn., 2010), Kern paints a remarkably detailed portrait of the lives of Thomas Jefferson's ancestors and particularly of his parents, Peter and Jane Jefferson. The results of her archaeological work and analysis of Shadwell, she wrote, “demands reinterpretation of historians' characterizations of Peter Jefferson, Jane Randolph Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson's boyhood experience. The material provisions of the plantation suggest that Peter and Jane Jefferson fashioned a world wholly familiar to Virginia's elite.” (Ibid., 5.)

A
T
AGE
TEN
, T
HOMAS
“Memoir of Thomas Jefferson Randolph,” Edgehill-Randolph Papers, Collection 1397, Box 11, University of Virginia.

“F
IN
DING
A
WILD
TURKEY
”
Ibid
.

T
HE
FAMILY
HAD
IMMIG
RATED
TO
V
IRGINIA
TDLTJ,
20.

L
ISTED
AMONG
THE
DELE
GATES
Ibid.

T
HE
FUTURE
PR
ESIDENT
'
S
GREAT
-
GRAN
DFATHER
Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
292–93. See also
JHT,
I, 7.

THE
DAU
GHTER
OF
A
JUSTICE
Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
293.

SPECULATED
IN
LAND
AT
Y
OR
KTOWN
Ibid.

H
E
DIED
ABOUT
1698
Ibid.

H
E
KEPT
A
GOOD
HOU
SE
Ibid.

A
DINNER
OF
ROAS
T
BEEF
AND
PERSICO
Ibid.

B
ORN
IN
C
HESTERFIELD
C
OUNTY
Ibid., xiii, 18.

W
ITH
J
OSHUA
F
RY
Jefferson,
Writings,
3.

“M
Y
FATHER
'
S
EDUC
ATION
”
Ibid.

P
ETER
J
EFFERSO
N
BECAME
A
COLONEL
Edgar C. Hickish, “Peter Jefferson, Gentleman,” unpublished manuscript, Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

PROVED
HIMSELF
A
HERO
TDLTJ,
19–20. See also Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 13–14. Arthur T. McClinton and others,
The Fairfax Line: A Historic Landmark
(Edinburg, Va., 1990), includes an account by the surveyor Thomas Lewis of the September 10, 1746, to February 24, 1747, expedition to map “the southwest line of Thomas Lord Fairfax's princely domain in Virginia.” Peter Jefferson was said to have been at one point “very indisposed.” (Ibid., 44.)

FOUGHT
OFF
“
THE
ATTACKS
”
TDLTJ,
20.

“
NEVER
WEARIED
OF
DWE
LLING
”
Ibid., 19.

V
IRGINIA
'
S
LE
ADING
FAMILY
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 7–10. See also Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
17–19; Jonathan Daniels,
The Randolphs of Virginia
(Garden City, N.Y., 1972); Clifford Dowdey,
The Virginia Dynasties: The Emergence of “King” Carter and the Golden Age
(Boston, 1969); and H. J. Eckenrode,
The Randolphs: The Story of a Virginia Family
(Indianapolis, 1946).

I
N
1739,
HE
WED
J
ANE
R
ANDOLPH
TDLTJ,
18.

I
SHA
M
R
ANDOLPH
JHT,
I, 13–17.

B
ORN
IN
L
ONDON
IN
1721
Ibid., 13. See also Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
44.

D
UNGENES
S
IN
G
OOCHLAND
C
OUNTY
Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
19.

WALLED
GARDENS
Ibid
.

TRACED
ITS
COLONIAL
ORIGINS
Daniels,
Randolphs of Virginia,
17–18.

THRIVED
IN
V
IRGINI
A
Ibid.

HOME
TO
E
NGLAND
I
N
1669
Ibid., 18.

PREVAILED
ON
A
YO
UNG
NEPHEW
, W
ILLIAM
Ibid., 17. Daniels wrote: “Almost certainly William came to Virginia at the behest—or with the encouragement—of his Uncle Henry Randolph.” (Ibid.)

A
T
SOME
POINT
BETWEEN
1669
AND
1674
Ibid., 17. William Cabell Bruce,
John Randolph of Roanoke 1773–1833: A Biography Based Largely on New Material
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1922), however, says that he specifically came over about 1673 at around age 24 (Ibid., I, 9.)

TAKING
HIS
U
NCLE
'
S
PLACE
Daniels,
Randolphs of Virginia,
18.

A
N
A
LLY
OF
L
ORD
B
ERKELEY
Ibid., 24.

SHIPPING
,
RAISING
TOBACCO
,
AND
SLAVE
TRADING
Ibid., 27.

FAMILY
SEAT
ON
T
URKEY
I
SLAND
Bruce,
John Randolph of Roanoke,
I, 10.

DESC
RIBED
AS
“
A
SPLENDID
MANSION
”
Ibid.

M
ARY
I
SHAM
R
A
NDOLPH
Daniels,
Randolphs of Virginia,
23.

“
ARE
SO
NU
MEROUS
THAT
THEY
ARE
OBLIGED
”
Ibid., 32–33.

A
CAPTAIN
AND
A
MERCHANT
Ibid., 40–42. See also Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
44, and Virginia Scharff,
The Women Jefferson Loved
(New York, 2010), 3–4.

A
“
PRETTY
SORT
OF
WOMAN
”
Scharff,
Women Jefferson Loved,
3.

“
A
VERY
GENTLE
”
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 10. The merchant, Peter Collinson, also warned that such Virginians were liable to “look perhaps more at a man's outside than his inside,” advising his correspondent, the botanist John Bartram, to “pray go very clean, neat and handsomely dressed to Virginia.” (Ibid.)