CHAP. I.] JEFFERSON BORN. 11 menced his preparations to make it his residence, two years anterior to his marriage. He was the third or fourth white settler within the space of several miles, and the trails of the hostile Monacans or Tuscaroras were yet fresh on his lands and through the adjacent hills. In a small clearing in the dense and primeval forest, he erected his house; and his young wife, bred up among surroundings so different, took up her abode in it soon after her marriage. Their oldest son and third child, Thomas Jefferson, the future President of the United States, was born on the second day of April, 1743, O. S. Shadwell was then included in Goochland, but it fell within the limits of Albemarle when that county was erected in 1744. Peter Jefferson was appointed one of the three original Justices of the Peace for the new county. It was an office then only held by gentlemen of the first consideration, as the Justices composed the County Court, which exercised almost unlimited jurisdiction, and controlled various important county affairs. He was made County Surveyor, an office also of the first trust, as it was his duty to survey and describe the lands sold by Government, and to discharge certain important administrative functions in other cases. In 1745, Colonel William Randolph, of Tuckahoe, died— entreating his early friend to assume the executorship and personal charge of his estate, and of his only and infant son, Thomas Mann Randolph. Peter Jefferson accordingly removed to Tuckahoe, on the north bank of the James, a few miles above Richmond, and he remained there seven years. With a chivalrousness of feeling which challenges our admiration, if not our surprise, he evinced his recollection of early kindnesses and the fervor of his friendship, by refusing to accept any other compensation for discharging this long and laborious trust, than his support while he lived on the estate. This distinctly appears from his account as an executor, lying before us. Thomas Jefferson was two years old when the family exodus took place, and he used to mention as his first recollection, his being handed up and carried on a pillow by a mounted slave, as the train set off down the river towards Tuckahoe. In 1749, Joshua Fry, Professor of Mathematics in William and Mary College, and Peter Jefferson, were associated in a commission to meet a like one from North Carolina, to survey 12 HIS FATHER'S CAREER. [СНАР. І. the line between their respective States, from the point where it had been left by Colonel Byrd and his associate commissioners, in 1728. They commenced at Peter's Creek, one of the upper tributaries of the Dan, and continued from thence west over the Blue Ridge, and through the wilderness beyond, to "Steep-rock Creek," a distance of ninety miles. They were subsequently employed to construct a map of the State-the first one founded on much beside mere conjectural data-and they completed it in 1751. A copy of it is before us, and though inaccuracies of course would be expected in a map not made exclusively from actual survey, and though a portion of it is only conjectural, it is a highly creditable production, all things considered.' Soon after Peter Jefferson's return to his former residence in Albemarle, he was appointed to the Colonelcy of the county, an office always regarded as of the first honor and importance under the Colonial Government, and particularly so when, as in the present instance, it conferred military command over an extensive portion of Indian frontier, and when, we may add, a war for territorial dominion with the French, on this very frontier, was regarded as imminent. Several years after Colonel Jefferson's appointment, we find, among his manuscripts, accounts of disbursements by him to military forces sent "to range against the Indians in Augusta," the adjoining county on the west. He was, however, regarded with peculiar respect and veneration by the Indians far and near, and his house was a favorite stopping-place for friendly chiefs, and for embassies on their way to and from the colonial capital. A great many years afterward (in 1812), his son, Thomas Jefferson, wrote a friend: "So much in answer to your inquiries concerning Indians, a people with whom, in the early part of my life, I was very familiar, and acquired impressions of attachment and commiseration for them which have never been obliterated. Before the Revolution, they were in the habit of coming often and in great numbers to the seat of government, where I was very much with them. I knew much of the great Ontassete, the warrior and orator of the Cherokees; he was always the guest of my father, on his journeys to and from Williamsburg. I was in his camp when he made his great farewell oration to his people, the evening before his departure for England. The moon was in full splendor, and to her he seemed to address himself in his prayers for his own safety on the voyage, and that of his people during his There is a copy of this map (numbered 112) in the New York State Library at Albany. CHAP. I.] HIS CHARACTER. 13 absence; his sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated action, and the solemn silence of his people at their several fires, filled me with awe and veneration, although I did not understand a word he uttered." In 1755, Colonel Jefferson was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. How long he retained this position does not appear, but in all probability until the time of his death. Already, as we may conclude from his civil and military commissions, the most prominent man of his county-and evidencing, by the celerity of his rise after his return to Albemarle, that ability, and standing both with the government and the people, which promised greater future honors and usefulness— he was suddenly cut off, August 17th, 1757, in the fiftieth year of his age. Many well attested facts and anecdotes are yet extant of the life of the father of Thomas Jefferson, which, though too desultory, and separately unimportant, to be embodied into a connected narration, give, taken together, a clear insight into his character. They all show that he was no ordinary man. He owed none of his success to good fortune or ingratiating manners. He was a man of gigantic stature and strength-plain, and averse to display-he was grave, taciturn, slow to make, and not over prompt to accept, advances. He was one of those calmly and almost sternly self-relying men, who lean on none-who desire help from none. And he certainly had both muscles and mind which could be trusted! He could simultaneously "head up " (raise from their sides to an upright position) two hogsheads of tobacco, weighing nearly a thousand pounds apiece! He once directed three able-bodied slaves to pull down a ruinous shed by means of a rope. After they had again and again made the effort, he bade them stand aside, seized the rope, and dragged down the structure in an instant.' Traditions have come down of his continuing his lines as a surveyor through savage wildernesses, after his assistants had given out from famine and fatigue, subsisting on the raw flesh of game, and even of his carrying mules, when other food failed, sleeping in a hollow tree amidst howling and screeching beasts. Letter to John Adams, June 11th, 1812.-Congress edition of Jefferson's Works vol. vi. p. 59. Both of these facts were mentioned by Thomas Jefferson to his family. 14 POLITICAL OPINIONS. [CHAP. I. of prey, and thus undauntedly pushing on until his task was accomplished. His mind was of a corresponding texture. He had the same love of mathematics which afterwards characterized his sonand much, if not all, of the same remarkable facility in understanding its processes. His judgment was swift and solid. His neighbors sought his advice; his friends soon learned to esteem. it unerring. His mind once made up, no danger could turn him aside-no obstacles thwart his iron will, and calm, but resistless energy. And he acted for another, in these particulars, as he acted for himself. His probity was so conspicuous, that other wealthy friends besides William Randolph, desired him to act as their executor, and in one or two other instances he consented. When the foregoing traits of character are considered, it becomes easy to understand the nature of that strong bond of alliance which subsisted, from the outset, between Colonel Jefferson and the Randolphs-to understand why that proud family so readily took the young surveyor, without fortune or finished education—a comparative adventurer-to their close family alliance and friendship. Those shrewd and practiced men of the world were not slow to discover that this stately young man would prove a tower of strength to friends, and a bulwark to be relied upon against foes. And the eye of woman rarely looks down with indifference on such a union of mental and physical power. But so massively moulded, he had a gentler, softer side. He was a tender husband, a devoted father. His tastes approached to the elegant, in his own household. After the wearisome and often stirring events of a day of border life were passed, he spent the evening in reading historians, essayists, and even poets. Addison, Swift, and Pope were prime favorites with him-but Shakspeare was his great favorite! His wellworn and fine old edition of the work is yet extant.' This speaks volumes concerning the tastes of the man. Colonel Jefferson was a staunch Whig, and he adhered to certain democratic (using the word in its broad, popular sense) notions and maxims, which descended to his son. His leanings 1 Also his copy of the Spectator, some of Swift's Works, etc. CHAP. I.] INFLUENCE ON SON'S CHARACTER. 15 as a magistrate were to the popular side. He was unpretending in his equipage and address. A cardinal maxim with him was, "Never ask another to do for you what you can do for yourself." He held that it is the strong in body who are both the strong and free in mind-a text his son often afterwards preached from. His attempts to form the character of his son corresponded with his theories. He died when the latter was fourteen years old, but he had already taught him to sit his horse, fire his gun, boldly stem the Rivanna when the swollen river was "Rolling red from brae to brae," and press his way with unflagging foot through the rocky summits of the contiguous hills in pursuit of deer and wild turkeys. But his attention was not limited to physical training. Though his son was kept constantly at school, in the evenings he put good books into his hands for reading, taught him to keep accounts, instructed him in his own beautiful penmanship,' and impressed upon his mind lessons of system, punctuality, energy, and perseverance. Thomas Jefferson always possessed a particular veneration for the memory of his father. Young as he was when the latter died, we think his mind had been obviously impressed with his instructions and example; for we trace a manifest analogy-a family likeness, modified only by circumstances and more in degree than kind-between their political, social, and domestic ideas. There was some physical resemblance between them. According to tradition, the calm, thoughtful, firm eye of the son, and the outlines of his face, were those of his father; his physical strength, too, was beyond that of ordinary men; but his slim form and delicate fibres were those of his mother's family. His mind, too, gave evidence of both parental stocks-of the auspicious combination of new strength with old courtly culture, of the solid with the showy, of robust sense with the glitter of talent! It would seem singular that Mr. Jefferson spoke no more fully of his father and mother in his biographical Memoir. To the intellectual powers and judgment of the former, he pays a brief passing tribute; and of the latter, he but records the dates of her birth, marriage, and death. He mentions none of the There is a marked resemblance in the handwriting of father and son. |