Monticello, Virginia, USA

September 5, 2023

Outside Charlottesville, high up on a hill, is Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. The name derives from Italian, meaning “little mountain”. Originally, the property consisted of a 5,000 acre plantation growing tobacco and labored on by slaves. Jefferson designed the home at the age of 26 and the similarities with the University of Virginia (UVA) campus buildings which he also designed is easy to see. Today, the home, along with the UVA campus have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Jefferson was very much a renaissance man and you get an idea of his various interests as you walk through the home. There is everything from a mastodon jaw

To Oliver Cromwell’s death mask.

To Elk horns brought back from the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Jefferson even designed a clock hanging in the entrance hall that tells, not only the time of the day, but also the day of the week. If you look at the following photo you can see weights hanging down the side of the wall that worked the clock by gravity. Jefferson realized that the slow falling of the weights as the week progressed could also be used to tell the day. It’s not visible in the photo, but the black stripes on the wall actually have the days of the week, starting from Sunday. Looking at the top weight you can see that we were there on Tuesday morning.

Jefferson loved a gadget. He wrote the Declaration of Independence on a swivel chair of his own design and he used a polygraph which enabled him to make exact copies of everything that he wrote. His use of the machine has been a boon to historians as he kept copies of many letters that he wrote. You can see both the swivel chair and the polygraph in his office in the following photo.

Here is a portrait of the great man. The likeness in this painting was used for his portrait on the United States two dollar bill.

Here are his actual boots. They have aged remarkably well and look rather comfortable.

And here is a map of the United States showing the country when he became President in 1801. Jefferson also had a good nose for a bargain. During his presidency, the size of the country would double with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, under which the United States acquired 828,000 square miles in the middle of the continent from the French for a mere fifteen million dollars.

After his wife Martha died, Jefferson spent a number of years in France. While there, he noticed that the French would sometimes locate beds in alcoves in the walls of homes to save space. On returning to Monticello he adopted the practice.

The outside of the house is reminiscent of The Rotunda at the University of Virginia, which Jefferson also designed. It is also depicted on the tails side of the United States five cent coin (nickel). Jefferson, himself, is on the heads side.

By the standards of the time, Jefferson lived a long life, dying aptly enough on July 4, 1826 at the age of 83. Coincidentally, his friend and rival, John Adams, the second President of the United States, died later the same day. Jefferson is buried on the grounds under an epitaph that he wrote, “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.”