Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (57 page)

“
THE
POWERFUL
S
COT
CH
E
ARLS
”
Ibid., 7. Jefferson was always skeptical about the value of such claims to nobility. His mother's family, he wrote, “trace their pedigree far back in England and Scotland, to which let every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses.” (Jefferson,
Writings,
3.) See also
PTJ,
I, 62.

“I
ROSE
A
T
6
O
'
CLOCK
”
Diary of William Byrd II, February 27, 1711, Elliot J. Gorn, Randy Roberts, and Terry D. Bilhartz, eds.,
Constructing the American Past,
I, (New York, 2004), 71. An additional passage from the day describes the Byrds' treatment of a slave, Jenny: “In the evening my wife and little Jenny had a great quarrel in which my wife got the worst but at last by the help of the family Jenny was overcome and soundly whipped.” (Ibid.)

V
ISITIN
G
V
IRGINIA
AND
M
ARYLAND
Edmund S. Morgan,
Virginians at Home: Family Life in the Eighteenth Century
(Charlottesville, 1963), 7.

“
THE
YOUTH
OF
THOSE
MORE
INDULGENT
SETT
LEMENTS
”
Ibid.

INSTRUCTED
IN
MUSIC
Ibid., 18.

TAUGHT
TO
D
ANCE
Ibid.

“
WAS
INDEED
BEA
UTIFUL
”
Ibid.

A
PROSPEROUS
,
CULTURED
,
AND
SOPHIS
TICATED
FAMILY
Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
1â13. For a discussion of the political impact of Jefferson's social background, particularly on affairs in Virginia, see Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler, “Growing Weary in Well-Doing: Thomas Jefferson's Life Among the Virginia Gentry,”
The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
101 (January 1993): 5â36. See also Jack P. Greene,
The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689â1776
(New York, 1972), and Charles S. Sydnor,
Gentlemen Freeholders: Political Practices in Washington's Virginia
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1952), for assessments of the politically, economically, and culturally privileged world in which Jefferson grew to maturity.

HIS
STUDY
ON
THE
FIRST
FLOOR
Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell
, 29.

A
CHERRY
DESK
Ibid., 43.

P
ETE
R
J
EFFERSON
'
S
LIBRARY
Ibid., 33â38. Kevin J. Hayes,
The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson
(Oxford, 2008), 15â29, is also useful.

“W
HEN
YOUNG
”
Hayes,
Road to Monticello,
27.

V
O
YAGE
R
OUND
THE
W
ORLD
AND
J
OHN
O
GILBY
'
S
A
MERICA
Ibid., 26â27.

“
FROM
THE
TIME
WHEN
”
TDLTJ,
37.

A
WORLD
OF
LEISURE
Ibid., 23â24.

“M
Y
FATHER
HAD
A
DEVOT
ED
FRIEND
”
Ibid., 24.

BELIEVED
HIS
FIRST
MEMORY
Ibid., 23. His great-granddaughter reported that Jefferson “often declared that his earliest recollection in life was of beingÂ â¦Â handed up to a servant on horseback, by whom he was carried on a pillow for a long distance.” (Ibid.)

BOUND
FOR
T
UCKAHOE
JHT,
I, 18â20.

“H
ENRY
W
EATHERBOURNE
'
S
BI
GGEST
BOWL
”
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 7.

T
HE
J
EF
FERSONS
WOULD
STAY
Why not bring the Randolph children to Shadwell and remotely manage Tuckahoe, rather than moving his own family to Tuckahoe and remotely managing Shadwell? Was Peter Jefferson in an inferior position, essentially coming to work for Randolph? Some Randolph descendants thought so, and later enjoyed asserting that their more celebrated Jefferson cousins descended from a father who had taken wages from an ancestor of theirs.

Writing a century later, in 1871, however, Jefferson's great-granddaughter noted that the fact that Peter Jefferson “refused to receive any other compensation for his services as guardian is not only proved by the frequent assertion of his son in after years, but by his accounts as executor, which have ever remained unchallenged.” In an arch footnote, the great-granddaughter added: “In spite of these facts, however, some of Randolph's descendants, with more arrogance than gratitude, speak of Colonel [Peter] Jefferson as being a paid agent of their ancestor.” (
TDLTJ,
22â23.) As Jefferson was to learn, the Randolphs were an eccentric clan. One 1775 incident was reported to Jefferson by Archibald Cary: “A dispute arose at dinner at Chatsworth between Peyton Randolph and his brother Lewis Burwell, who gave the other the lye, on which Peyton struck him, Burwell snatch'd a knife and struck him in the side, but fortunately a rib preventing its proving mortal. He was prevented by the ladies from making a second stroke. You'll judge what poor Mrs. Randolph must suffer on this unhappy affair, but she is become familiar with misfortune.” (
PTJ,
I, 250.)

T
HE
ROOTS
OF
TH
AT
NEAR
-
OBSESSION
Fawn M. Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History
(New York, 1998), 48, speculates on the psychological impact of Jefferson's life at Tuckahoe, though she focuses on his affection for his own home, not his avoidance of conflict, which I think a likely legacy.

“T
HE
WHOLE
COMMERCE
”
Jefferson,
Writings,
288.

ANOTHER
SMALL
CHILDHO
OD
MOMENT
TDLTJ,
23.

T
HOMAS
'
S
MOTHER
, J
ANE
R
ANDOLPH
J
EFFERSON
Jane Jefferson has long been depicted as a riddle, a mystery at the heart of the story of Thomas Jefferson. There are several reasons for this. For one, Jefferson appears to have spoken more often and more fully about his father than about his mother, leaving more family stories that, combined with the extant public records available for leading colonial men (who held office and left more traces than women of the day), have given us a more detailed sense of Peter Jefferson than we have had for Jane Jefferson. Another reason is the Shadwell fire in 1770 destroyed family papers that may have shed light on the relationship between mother and son. And another reason lies in Jefferson's larger reticence about the women in his life. Evidence of Jefferson's musing about either his mother or his wife is sparse. The relatively thin traditions about Jane Jefferson have led some writers to speculate that mother and son were estranged. See, for instance, Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson,
40â46.

Reflecting on Merrill Peterson's observation that “By his own reckoning she was a zero quantity in his life” (Peterson,
Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography
[New York, 1970], 9), Brodie wrote: “No mother is a zero quantity in any son's life, and the fact that Jefferson, whether deliberately or not, managed to erase all traces of his opinion and feeling for her seems evidence rather of very great influence which he deeply resented, and from which he struggled to escape.” (Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson,
43.) More recent scholarship has attempted to revise the estrangement interpretation, most notably Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
and Scharff,
Women Jefferson Loved,
3â57.

“
A
WOMAN
OF
A
CLEAR
”
TDLTJ,
21â22.

A
METICULO
US
RECORD
KEEPER
Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
230.

T
HOMAS
'
S
SISTER
E
LIZABETH
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson,
48.

“T
HE
M
OST
FORTUNATE
OF
US
ALL
”
PTJ,
I, 10.

“S
HE
WAS
AN
AGR
EEABLE
”
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 16â17. See also Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
70. From the traditions we have of Jane Jefferson, bluster and threats were out of character. In contrast to her own mother, Mrs. Isham Randolph, Jane Jefferson was described by the family as “mild and peaceful by nature, a person of sweet temper and gentle manners.” (Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, 41.) Even allowing for familial sentimentality, this description of Mrs. Jefferson of Shadwell differs from that of Mrs. Randolph of Dungeness, who was said to be “a stern, strict lady of the old school, much feared and little loved by her children.” Her daughter Jane, however, was different. Ibid., 681. The source of these traditions is Ellen Wayles Randolph.

REBUILT
S
HADWELL
AFTER
IT
BU
RNED
Kern,
Jeffersons at Shadwell,
64.

“H
E
WAS
BORN
”
Jefferson,
Writings,
3.

SURVEYING
AND
MAPMAKING
Ibid., 3â4.

“H
E
DIED
A
UG
UST
17
TH
, 1757”
Ibid., 4.

A
BRIEF
MENT
ION
IN
A
LETTER
PTJ,
I, 409. “The death of my mother you have probably not heard of,” Jefferson wrote William Randolph. “This happened on the last day of March after an illness of not more than an hour. We suppose it to have been apoplectic.” (Ibid.)

PA
YING
A
CLERGYMAN
MB,
I, 444.

“
MY
MOTHER
'
S
HOUSE
”
PTJ,
I, 34. The characterization was in a letter Jefferson wrote to John Page.

H
E
DID
NOT
MOVE
MB,
I, 212.

HER
Y
OUNGER
BROTHER
'
S
“
CON
STANT
COMPANION
”
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 40â41. See also
TDLTJ,
38â39.