Thomas Jefferson was born April 13, 1743 to Peter and
Jane Randolph Jefferson on their estate at Shadwell, in what is
today Albermarle County, Virginia, along the banks of the Rivanna
River. It was a significant location for an aristocratic youth
in the sense that it lay within the sparsely populated Piedmont
Region, between the gentrified Tidewater coastline and the Blue
Ridge Mountains of the frontier. In keeping with his borderland
origins, Jefferson would throughout his long life occupy a political
and psychological space that balanced the responsibilities of establishment
privilege with the lures of open, unexplored territory.
Peter Jefferson, a self-educated jack of all trades, moved
from the Tidewater to the sparsely populated Piedmont in his youth,
where he made a name for himself as a cartographer and surveyor.
He had a hand in establishing the border between North Carolina
and Virginia, and his prominence in affairs of state later led to
his appointments as sheriff, colonel, and ultimately, representative
to the House of Burgesses.
Jane Randolph Jefferson came from a leading Tidewater
family, and had a noble bloodline ranging back to various locations
in England and Scotland. Family lore held her as descended from
various European royalty ranging as far back as Charlemagne, and Peter
Jefferson was thought to have descended from a line of Welsh Kings.
Ostensibly, such conspicuous antecedents would have held little
charm for the egalitarian Jefferson in his maturity, but the thought
of possessing noble blood holds a certain fascination for any child,
and is not easily outlived.
While the Jeffersons established themselves in Virginia
from the earliest colonial days, they remained British in character
down through the generations. Jane Randolph, born in London, inspired Peter
Jefferson to name the Shadwell estate after the district of her birth.
This estate, along with other family holdings on both sides, were
constructed to a plan thoroughly English in design. Yet despite
this and other attempts to retain a sense of European heritage,
life on the frontier had its effect on winnowing colonial influence.
Neighbors were few and far between, and those that were in evidence
were largely natives. To combat this influence, a series of classically
trained tutors were arranged to provide for the young Jefferson's
education.
In his second year, Jefferson's family relocated from
Shadwell to the nearby Tuckahoe estate in order to live with a
wing of Jane Randolph Jefferson's family. They remained there for
seven years. During the course of their stay, a private tutor was
hired and a family schoolhouse erected to serve the purposes of
educating the Jefferson and Randolph children. Upon returning to
Shadwell at age nine, Jefferson commenced studies under the Scottish
Reverend William Douglas. In addition to laying the foundation
for Jefferson's wide interests in adult life, Douglas saddled Jefferson
with the idiosyncratic trait of speaking French with a Scottish
accent.
Jefferson's pastoral upbringing, on the very frontier
of European settlement, likely fueled his later love of the outdoors
and of natural history. In addition, his penchant for architecture
probably grew from his early observations of the constantly expanding
family estate. Moreover, his voracious reading habits and facility
with the violin were both established in these formative years.
And his father's involvement in the House of Burgesses, like his
grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather before
him, must have suggested statesmanship as an obvious career path
to the young Jefferson.
The idylls of this rural, aristocratic childhood came
tumbling down in 1757, when Peter Jefferson died unexpectedly at
the age of fifty. Jane Randolph Jefferson found herself a widow
at thirty-seven, and Jefferson the de facto patriarch at fourteen,
with a cadre of six sisters and a younger brother in tow. In his
will, Peter Jefferson elected not to follow the custom of primogeniture
to the letter, but nevertheless endowed his eldest son with the
majority of holdings upon reaching a majority at age twenty-one.
But for the next seven years, his inheritance, including 2,500
acres and over 20 slaves, would be managed by several guardians,
and Jefferson would feel ill-at-ease under the watch and ward of
his newly widowed mother.
Soon after his father's death, in order to further his
education and to gain relief from the encroachments of his uncomfortable domestic
situation, Jefferson became a boarder under the care of Reverend
James Maury at Maury's home near Charlottesville, not far from Shadwell.
Maury was also at this time a tutor to Jefferson's friend and
later brother-in-law Dabney Carr, and later provided an education
to James Monroe. As under Douglas, Jefferson's curriculum under
Maury focussed on the classical curriculum, and especially on the
language arts.
During the two years that Jefferson stayed with Maury,
he traveled home at weekends to help his mother and siblings in
the upkeep of the Shadwell estate. However, at age sixteen, Jefferson
made a cleaner break with his family tethers when he made the 150-mile journey
to the Tidewater center of Williamsburg in order to begin studies
at the College of William and Mary. Though Williamsburg was a
more cosmopolitan and populated area than the Piedmont, it hardly
qualified as a college town, much less a thriving metropolis. In
1760, when Jefferson arrived at Williamsburg, the town consisted
of one thousand residents, and the college of three buildings and
seven faculty members.
With characteristic precociousness, Jefferson made fast
friends with several of the most prominent men of Williamsburg society.
Before long, he was dining regularly in the company of the royal lieutenant
governor Francis Farquier, the philosopher William Small, and the
lawyer George Wythe, all of whom were his senior by at least a generation.
These three men were all thoroughly Europeanized in manner, if
not in origin, and did much more than any formalized course of study
to welcome Jefferson into the company of educated men.
Jefferson followed two years of study at the college with
five years of the study of law under the direction of Wythe. Per
Wythe's recommendation, Jefferson commenced his lifelong practice
of keeping a commonplace book, filled with reading notes that included
summaries and observations of the texts he examined. These were
Jefferson's most intensive years of study, featuring a strong diet
of philosophy and political theory to supplement his law curriculum.
To a lesser extent, works of history, literature, criticism, rhetoric
and oratory found their place amidst other European luminaries such
as Locke, Rousseau,
Montesquieu, and Voltaire.
Classical influences also had their place, although Jefferson was
not alone among his contemporaries in flatly dismissing the work
of Plato as a nonsense (See Philosophy
SparkNotes for multiple works by Plato.
Upon reaching majority in 1764, Jefferson came to inherent
the 2,750 acres of land left him by his father. In this way he
officially entered into Virginia society. And while Jefferson spent
significant time amongst his elders, he also made acquaintances
with his contemporaries. He shared rooms near the college for an
extended period with John Tyler, father to the eventual eleventh
President of the United States. In addition, an early disappointment
in love came during this period, when he unsuccessfully attempted
to court a highly sought-after sixteen-year-old by the name of Rebecca
Burwell. With the frustrations that accompanied his failure in
this regard came the first of many severe migraine headaches that
would sporadically plague him throughout his adult life.
Unfortunately, Jefferson's ill health at this time prevented
him from embarking on a long-planned trip to Europe, which had been
arranged in view of his then limited exposure to the world outside
of Virginia. Eventually he settled for a brief tour of the middle
Atlantic colonies, including stays in Annapolis, Philadelphia,
and New York. These travels did much to distract him from his disappointments
with Burwell and the recent death of his beloved sister, Jane.
Thus, at the age of twenty-three, Jefferson finally gained
something of an education beyond provincial book learning. He observed
a session in the Maryland state legislature, received a progressive
inoculation against smallpox, and generally rubbed elbows with people
of various backgrounds and origins. Most significantly, Jefferson
established many important contacts in his travels, including the
valuable acquaintance of the young Elbridge Gerry.
Upon returning to Williamsburg, Jefferson concluded his
law studies, and was admitted to the bar in 1767. In the next few
years, he initiated a successful law practice in Williamsburg, winning established
clients all across Virginia. Beyond this, in the interest of his
financial standing, he made various real estate deals to improve the
holdings he had already inherited.
Now, having reached his majority, and with the Shadwell
estate firmly under his control, Jefferson began to level land on
a nearby mountaintop in order to build his own country home, which
would eventually materialize in the shape of Monticello. And while
the foundation for Jefferson's dignified mansion was just being
poured, the foundations of Jefferson's rise to prominence as a statesman were
already solidified.
