Saturday, August 25, 2007

Jefferson at Home: Personal Reminiscences

I got two books at the Monticello gift shop while I was there:  Jefferson at Monticello: Recollections of a Monticello Slave and of a Monticello Overseer, edited by James A. Bear, Jr. and The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery by John Chester Miller.You can buy the book by James Bear through the Monticello gift shop. It is an older book, published by the University  of Virginia Press in 1967. The Wolf by the Ears is available through a link from my Amazon Affiliate bookstore and at the Monticello store (call 434-984-9840).

Jefferson wrote about slavery, “but as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we neither hold him, nor safely let him go, justice is in one scale, and self preservation in the other.”  There is a new “Wiki” site for Jefferson scholarship on the main Monticello website. This is a Wiki site where only scholars invited by Monticello are allowed to submit entries, but the public may post comments. There are many entries for both “Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson” and for “Slavery” if you want to pursue these matters in further depth.

Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, as dictated to Charles Campbell by Isaac was recorded in 1847 in Petersburg, Virginia where Isaac was living in retirement and working as a blacksmith. The other memoir is The Private Life of Thomas Jefferson by Rev. Hamilton Wilcox Pierson, who interviewed Edmund Bacon, who was Jefferson’s overseer at Monticello for 20 years. This book was first published in 1862. Together, the two accounts are the primary source of information about Jefferson’s private life. Each man was 65 years old when their recollections were recorded.
Issac described Jefferson in this way:  “Mr Jefferson was a tall, straight-bodied man as ever you see, right square-shouldered. Nary man in this town walked so straight as my Old Master.”
“He kept three fiddles; played in the arternoons and sometimes arter supper….Mr. Jefferson always singing when ridin’ or walkin’; hardly see him anywar outdoors but what he was a singin.’ Had a fine clear voice; sung minnits (minuets) and sich; fiddled in the parlor. Old Master was very kind to servants.”
“Old Master had an abundance of books; sometimes would have twenty of ‘em down on the floor at once—read fust one, then tother.” 
Issac was trained as a tinsmith and ran one of the few money making enterprises at Monticello, a small nail factory. Monticello-made nails were used to build the nearby homes of James Monroe and James Madison. Jefferson liked to do this kind of work also. “My Old Master was as neat a hand as ever you see to make keys and locks and small chains, iron and brass. He kept all kind of blacksmith and carpenter tools in a great case with shelves to it in his library, an upstairs room.”
“For amusement he would work sometimes in the garden for half an hour at a time in right good earnest in the cool of the evening.”
Captain Bacon, the overseer, describes Jefferson as “6 feet two and a half inches, well proportioned and straight as a gun barrel. He was like a fine horse; he had no surplus flesh. He had an iron constitution and was very strong….He had blue eyes. His countenance was always mild and pleasant. You never saw it ruffled. No odds what happened, it always maintained the same expression.”
“Mr. Jefferson was always an early riser—arose at daybreak or before.” He rode his horse daily unless the weather was very bad. “He was an uncommonly fine rider—sat easily upon his horse and always had him in the most perfect control.”
“Mr. Jefferson was very liberal and kind to the poor.” When Jefferson returned to Monticello from Washington, crowds would come to Monticello to beg from him. He would send them with notes to Captain Bacon, who knew them better than Jefferson, and wouldn’t give them anything if he knew they didn’t deserve it.
“Mr. Jefferson was the most industrious man I ever saw in my life.” As overseer, Bacon was in and out of his room at all times of day or night, and never saw him unoccupied.
“He was very fond of fruits and vegetables and raised every variety of them.”
Jefferson loved his grandchildren, who followed him around as he walked on the grounds and in the garden. As many as 8 or 9 of them lived at Monticello, which is really not a big house. He told them often they should learn useful employment. On Saturdays, the grandchildren would cut wood for the nail factory, earning 50 cents for a cord of wood.
There are many anecdotes in this fine little book that gave me a sense of what life must have like at Monticello. I now understand why Jefferson gave his occupation as “farmer” and believed that yeoman farmers would settle the west. Jefferson’s design for Monticello reflects a deep awareness of life as an integrated whole. I like to imagine him walking around the grounds of Monticello, followed by grandchildren, singing minuets as he walked, and noting every little detail of what was happening with an unruffled expression!

Posted by Kira Gale on 08/25/2007 at 05:26 PM

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