POPLAR FOREST
by
Francis H. Straus II
Delivered to The Chicago Literary Club
October 8, 2001
A penny for your thoughts. Well inflation has come, a nickel
for your thoughts. Not a buffalo nickel but a Jefferson nickel.
There were two great intellectuals helping to found our country,
Jefferson and Adams. With the great flurry of interest in Adams this
year because of Manchester's biography, I believe Jefferson's star
needs some emphasis to keep the two in balance. Washington was a
patient man and a great leader but not an intellectual and Franklin
was a fine business man and scientist, but also not an intellectual.
Slightly later proteges of Jefferson were Madison and Monroe and they
were capable thinkers. In this presentation I wish to focus on
Thomas Jefferson, his education, some of the good things he did and
an emphasis on his interests in art, architecture, music and writing.
Thomas Jefferson was a hybrid with a frontier Virginian
father, whose family came from Wales, and a tidewater and culturally
more elite mother whose Randolph family had descended from
English-Scottish ancestors going back to Alfred the Great and
Charlemagne.
Our Thomas Jefferson was the fourth with that name. The
first, his great grandfather, had come to the Virginia colony in
1619. His grandfather Thomas II owned 800 acres in Henrico County
mostly gained from a governors issue as a result of bringing
indentured servants into the colony.
Thomas III was Jefferson's uncle and he died at sea. His
father believed in primogeniture, with the eldest son inheriting
everything, so Peter Jefferson, the second son, had been given little
education but strongly believed in taking up patents on frontier
Virginia land. Because of his elder brother's death Peter did
inherit his father's western lands, but the original plantation was
given up to repay debts.
Peter moved west to the Rivianna River in Goochland County
where he started clearing forest and building a small Virginia wooden
house. There was a front door in the middle and another door on the
back side. When both were opened in the warm summer a soft breeze
helped to cool the house. Peter was self-taught, mastering reading,
writing, accounting, map making and surveying. He surveyed portions
of the northern and southern boundries of the Virginia colony, as
well as helping to produce the best map of Virginia at that time.
One of Peter's few neighbors on the frontier, William Randolph,
introduced him to his cousin Jane. In 1739 Jane and Peter were
married, and they named Peter's homestead Shadwell after the London
Parish where Jane Randolph had been born. Peter acquired 200 acres
of adjacent hilly farm land from William Randolph just across the
Rivianna River from Shadwell for a large bowl of arrack punch and an
additional 200 acres for cash. This purchase would be the future
site of Monticello. Peter and Jane Jefferson first had two daughters
and then, in 1743, a son whom they named Thomas. Goochland County
was then divided into Albemarle and Augusta Counties.
At this time William Randolph died leaving instructions that
his close friend Peter Jefferson was to be the resident executor of
his estate at "Tuckahoe" in tidewater Virginia, near Richmond. So
Peter took his family to Tuckahoe. Thomas was two years old and his
first memory was of being on a pillow, carried by a trusted slave,
riding a horse the many miles east to this new home. William
Randolph had two motherless children when he died and had asked that
they not be sent away for school so Peter hired an Episcopal minister
to teach the children at Tuckahoe. Thomas reported later that he had
spent his early childhood playing games with a mixture of similarly
aged slave children and master's children. Only when he started
school to learn his reading, writing and arithmetic were the slave
children separated and held back not getting any education. The
teacher of this grammar school was a poor teacher and spent much time
and energy on religion so young Thomas followed his self-taught
father's example and started reading his father's library of forty
books which included Shakespeare and the Bible. His father was home
when he was not out surveying, and taught Thomas penmanship and a
love of nature in all its vastness. Thomas learned to swim, ride,
fish and stalk game. He was not well coordinated but he loved to
ride and learned to ride well. Peter taught his son to be strong in
body so as to be strong and free in spirit and to be self reliant.
Besides this closeness to his father Thomas was very attached to his
eldest sister Jane who was three years older than he. She encourage
his reading and they were naturalists together. Jane was learning to
sing and Thomas developed a taste for music from her.
Seven years after coming to Tuckahoe Peter had completed his
task as resident executor and the family returned to Shadwell.
Thomas was nine years old. The house was too small as there were now
six children, so Shadwell was enlarged to a larger rectangular two
story building with a front to back hallway, parlor and master
bedroom on each side and children's beds upstairs with sloping
ceilings and dormer windows. Sheds, kitchen and other out buildings
were in two elongate buildings on either side of the driveway being U
shaped wings at right angles to the ends of the house.
Thomas was now sent away to school where he learned French
and to read Latin and Greek. He would come home weekends often with
a school friend. The school food was bad and the minister teacher
was very uninspiring. One weekend when home at Shadwell Thomas'
father handed him a gun and asked him to bring home a wild turkey for
dinner. After a long unsuccessful search for such a bird he found
one in a pen. He took it out, tied it to a tree, shot it, and carried
it home for dinner. Jefferson only admitted this to his
grandchildren many years later.
At this time in his life Jefferson learned country dances,
reels and minuets. This inspired him to learn to play the violin.
He was mostly self-taught and soon he was competent enough to
accompany his older sister when she sang.
When Thomas Jefferson was fourteen his father died at age
forty nine, leaving a widow and eight children, two of whom were
boys. The father's seven thousand five hundred acres were divided
between them. Thomas was left his father's forty volume library, a
bookcase, surveying tools, mathematical instruments, and his father's
wish that he would continue with the classical education which the
father had been denied.
The awkward shy son was devastated by his father's death. He
had been much closer to his father than to his mother whom he thought
entertained too much and spent too much. Thomas withdrew into his
reading and violin playing. He did have the legal council of his
five executors but Shadwell was run by his mother and Thomas began to
call it his mother's house.
Before his father's death Thomas had been enrolled in a new
school fourteen miles from Shadwell run by Mr. James Maury, a
displaced Huegonot offering a classical education to eight boys
besides his own eight children for 22 pounds sterling each per year
paid in tobacco. He ran his plantation, was minister in his parish,
taught school and named his slaves Cato, Clio, Ajax, Aggy and Memnon.
He was the first good teacher and father figure in Jefferson's life.
Maury taught precise language skills and emphasized not using extra
words. Jefferson was reading extensively out of his teacher's 400
book library, and Jefferson began to express himself in a vigorous
succinct manner, trying to emulate his teacher's fine style. Maury
taught careful analysis of each author noting the literary steps that
the author took to accomplish his aim. He also taught caution,
patience and self discipline. Two years passed for Jefferson caught
between a demanding mother and an excellent surrogate father teacher.
As he progressed through this phase of his education he was reading
14 hours a day.
In the spring of 1760. when Washington was running his
tidewater plantation after the French and Indian war, Franklin was
already retired and Adams was five years beyond his Harvard
graduation, Jefferson crossed one hundred and twenty five miles of
Virginia moving from the frontier with its cruder culture to
tidewater Virginia with its fancier clothes, better language and more
culture. The brick and clapboard buildings of Williamsburg were
impressive to Jefferson. He was on his way to enrollment at William
and Mary for his college education. One non clergy faculty member,
Dr. Small, had come from Scotland to teach physics, metaphysics and
mathematics but in fact he taught everything. Jefferson and Dr.
Small developed a close relationship. Dr. Small brought the
Enlightenment to Jefferson, strengthening his science, mathematics
and moral philosophy. They worked on scientific experiments which
showed how objective observation of facts could lead to new
understanding of natural science. They had long hours of discussion
covering Jefferson's very active reading which included the French
writers Moliere, Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot. He was often
reading 15 hours a day and later said "it is when we are young that
the habit of industry is developed, if not then, then never". He
recommended Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Locke's essays,
Bolingbroke's 5 volume political philosophy, Hume's history of
England and the Bible. He hiked, ran, swam and rode for exercise and
had three classmate friends who had come from Maury's school: John
Page, Dabney Carr and Jack Walker, as well as a roommate John Tyler,
the father of a future president of the United States, who was
jealous of Jefferson's violin playing ability.
Professor Small introduced Jefferson to his Williamsburg
friend George Wythe, the leading and most scholarly lawyer in the
capital. And when Jefferson finished his college education in 1762,
he began his legal education under Wythe's oversight. At this time
one could study a few months, then pass the county bar examination
and practice in the county court system, but Jefferson wished to
practice in the higher General Court in Williamsburg. This
preparation under Wythe's direction meant carefully reading Coke's
Commentaries recording English Common Law from the Magna Carta
onwards. This immense task took most of a year. Wythe brought the
Enlightenment to teaching law, treating legal problems like
scientific problems and using scientific methods to win cases. In
most apprenticeships the practicing lawyer would ask the student to
carry his books, do the investigating work and copy the actions of
the teacher. Wythe felt strongly that the student should read all
about Common Law in a prescribed order, then later when that was
mastered follow the teacher to court and see what happened there.
Wythe was always well dressed and polished, teaching Jefferson
correctness and good conduct as well as industry and loyalty. They
both loved the classics, discussing Elizabethan and Restoration
literature, natural philosophy, laws of nations, and natural rights.
This became another strong relationship and was the fourth major
teacher in Jefferson's development. The first was his father, the
second Maury, the third Small and now the fourth and last was Wythe.
Wythe later taught John Marshall and Henry Clay but when he died he
left his library to Jefferson.
After Coke, Jefferson's reading went on to Francis Bacon and
Blackstone. He would get up at 5 a.m. reading ethics, religion and
natural law until 8 a.m. After breakfast he read philosophy and law,
then after lunch Greek and Roman history, and the history of Great
Britain and Virginia. Finally in the evening he read Euripides,
Sheridan, Homer and Cicero. Some days he would observe court
activity. For five years, 1762 to 1767, Jefferson followed this
prescribed program to learn the law, preferring to emphasize rational
approaches, while rejecting metaphysics, speculation, and theological
control of the law.
In the summer of 1765 his oldest sister and closest sibling,
then 25 years old, died of small pox. As had happened after his
father's death Jefferson was greatly saddened. He retreated into his
books and studies, continuing to study under Mr. Wythe in
Williamsburg for two more years, and became a great believer in small
pox immunization. This can be compared to Patrick Henry who studied
for six months to pass the lower court's bar exam. It is noteworthy
that Wythe, one of Henry's examiners, did not pass him. In 1767
Jefferson passed both the county court's bar exam and the higher
General Court's bar exam with flying colors.
One year after starting his practice he signed an agreement
to level 250 square feet on top of the hill across the Rivianna River
from Shadwell. This was the start of Monticello. He also bought an
Italian violin for five pounds. Remember that in all his education
he had had no formal training in the arts other than writing. Any
knowledge he had of art, architecture, or music came from his own
reading and experience, not from any outside instruction. And as yet
he had seen very little of the fine arts, only what was present in
Williamsburg.
Meanwhile, in this post Seven Years War period impoverished
England began a series of Parliamentary acts to increase tax revenues
from the colonies to help pay the war debt and support the increased
military needed to protect its empire. This started in 1763 with the
Currency Act, then the Stamp Act in 1765. Jefferson heard Patrick
Henry's speech in the Virginia House of Burgesses in which he
resolved that colonists were the only ones who could tax colonists.
In response Governor Fauquier dissolved the House of Burgesses.
A new English governor, Baron de Botetourt, was appointed.
He called for a new election of the House of Burgesses. Jefferson
ran for election and won, gaining what had been his father's seat in
the House. The following spring he took the oath of office and was
asked by the Speaker, his cousin Peyton Randolph, to write the answer
to the Governor's introduction. Jefferson's answer was humble and
succinct, ending with his wish for the Governor's long continuance in
office as a happy ruler of a free and happy people. Jefferson was on
three committees, wrote a lot, spoke very little. He tended to side
with the more liberal element in the House resisting the Quartering
Act which required colonists to house British troops and provide food
and support for them. The House of Burgesses voted not to admit that
Parliament could override them and that they were opposed to laws
which raised revenues by regulating external trade. Up to this time
the Virginians had thought of themselves as colonists and the Indians
as the native Americans, but now with the Massachusetts Bay Colony
and Virginia finding the British taxations and control oppressive,
the colonists were beginning to call themselves "Americans" instead
of colonists.
Nine days after Jefferson became a Virginia lawmaker the
Governor dissolved the House of Burgesses even before a budget had
been voted on, because the House was belittling Parliament and the
King. The now extralegal Assembly, the representatives of the
people, marched down the Williamsburg street to the Apollo room of
the Raleigh Tavern . Here they agreed to bar the importation and
consumption of British goods. Washington led this action. The list
of banned imports was long and life in Virginia was to become more
austere. The twenty-six year old Jefferson was the sixteenth to sign
this resolution. Forever afterwards the British considered him a
dangerous troublemaker.
In February 1770 Shadwell caught fire and burned to the
ground. No one was hurt in the fire, but most of Jefferson's growing
library, correspondence and clothes were lost. Only his violin was
saved. A few books were with him in Williamsburg when it happened,
but he lost all of his law notes, the 40 volumes he had inherited
from his father and the account books he needed to bill his clients
for legal work. We do know that during the seven years of his law
practice Jefferson earned very little because of his poorly paid
billings. In the spring Jefferson's mother and remaining siblings
moved to live with her brother, Sir John Randolph, on his plantation.
Jefferson never rebuilt Shadwell and decided to develop Monticello as
his home.
Before Shadwell burned Jefferson had levelled the hilltop at
Monticello, planted trees on the hill sides, and started making
bricks. Now he speeded up work on the hill top and within the year
started building the one room square south pavillion. Disdaining
rambling English tidewater rural architecture, he envisaged a revival
of classic Roman architecture as had been used in Italy at the time
of the Renaissance, ala Palladio. The south pavillion was finished
at the end of summer 1770 and the main house begun. Jefferson
produced all the plans using his imagination and pattern books for
Palladian style villas, planning a stylish country house for a single
gentleman. It was a 24 by 28 foot central two story block with two
straight seventeen foot wings, the east being a master bedroom and
the west a dining room. In the center of the first floor was an
entrance hall with a parlor behind, and a library and two bedrooms
upstairs. The classical portico would have four columns. Then he
went on to design the outbuildings, the kitchen, privy, laundry,
storehouse and workshops. His architectural drawings were very
precise reflecting his compulsive personality. Jefferson left
Palladio far behind when he planned his outbuildings inset against
the hill, running back at right angles from the ends of the house,
and reached by roofed corridors connected to the main corridor in
the lower level of the big house. It was a very imaginative plan
which worked well and was entirely his own even though he had had no
formal training and was only twenty six years old.
In the fall of 1770 he moved into the one room south
pavillion, being his sitting room, kitchen, bedroom, and study
combined. Problems with England were somewhat quieter but the
Townsend duties, the Declaratory acts and the tea tax still remained.
The boycott of English imports had not really worked.
With a dwelling of his own albeit very small, Jefferson
picked up his social life in Williamsburg and met a beautiful young
widow Martha Wayles Skelton. She was slight with large eyes and
auburn hair and loved to talk, play the harpsichord and ride.
Jefferson was smitten and courted her strenuously, since she was the
daughter of a wealthy planter and had many suitors. This courtship
went on for two years. Martha was won over by Jefferson, and
finally, on New Year's Day 1772, Martha married Thomas. Their first
daughter, Martha, was born the following September. She was always
called Patsy.
Jefferson's law practice was interesting but not
remunerative, while his involvement in the colony and its association
with the other colonies to develop some freedom from the English
Parliament now became the stronger interest. He gave his practice to
a nephew, worked on his new house, and went to Williamsburg or
Richmond for colony assemblies.
At first Jefferson thought Parliament's taxation and other
interference in Virginia internal affairs were the main problems but
by 1775 he realized the King was also a negative factor as far as
freedom for the colony was concerned. At this time Boston was shut
down and New York was having difficulties continuing its trade. Then
Lexington and Concord were attacked. Virginia voted to develop its
own county militia along with light horse companies. Jefferson wrote
a nine paragraph answer to the new Governor Dinsmore's ultimatum to
the Virginians to return stolen guns, adopt Lord North's plan and
reopen the courts. Jefferson's answer said there could no longer be
a distinctive internal and external regulation of the colony by the
mother country, the colonists were entitled to free trade with the
entire world. Parliament had no authority to intermeddle with any
facet of colonial life. Then Jefferson was sent to Philadelphia to
be a Virginia representative at the 2nd Continental Congress. Soon
after he got there the Battle of Bunker Hill took place.
In 1775 Jefferson's second daughter Jane died. Jefferson had
her buried at Monticello next to her aunt Jane, the smallpox victim.
Jefferson went back to Philadelphia and the Congress while Governor
Dinsmore left Williamsburg to live on a British war ship in
Chesapeake Bay. There were several armed skirmishes won by the
Governor but finally the Virginia militia won the biggest skirmish.
The British responded by burning Norfolk.
In May 1776 Jefferson again made the twelve day trip north to
Philadelphia while the old Virginia House of Burgesses met for the
last time in Williamburg and did not adjourn but let the body die.
It was the oldest Royal Government in the New World, 257 years old.
Those who had been the burgesses now met with others outside the
capital and resolved that the union which had hitherto subsisted
between Great Britain and the Virginia colony was hereby totally
dissolved and the Virginians were discharged from any allegiance to
the Crown. It was further urged that this resolution be sent to the
Continental Congress and thus Virginia was the first colony to urge
the Congress to break with Britain.
Actually the break was needed to begin developing foreign
help for the coming struggle and the opening of foreign ports to
American ships. Jefferson worried that a declaration of independence
might cause some of the middle colonies to drop out of the Congress
which would be more off-setting than lack of foreign aid. Still the
proponents for independence were determined and a five member
committee was named to prepare a formal Declaration. According to
Adams, Adams and Jefferson were appointed to write a draft. The two
discussed what to do next. Adams told Jefferson he should write it.
Jefferson asked his reasons and Adams responded "first, a Virginian
should write it, second, I am obnoxious and unpopular and you are
not, third, you can write ten times better than I can." Jefferson,
however, never admitted that this conversation took place and said
that the five person committee asked him to write it. He wrote the
Declaration as a legal document and used phrases from his draft of a
Virginia constitution which denounced the King.
Jefferson used known and evident truths to develop logical
conclusions for the Declaration of Independence requested by the
Continental Congress. This scientific approach he had learned from
Dr. Small in college. Adams and Franklin reviewed the draft and
changed only an occasional word but in the Congress they discussed
every phrase cutting out the whole section defaming the King of
England for protecting and nurturing the slave trade because the
Southern colonies were for slavery. Jefferson was very unhappy about
these changes and wanted to get back to Virginia to be with his
family and work on Virginia's constitution.
Soon after returning to Monticello Jefferson with his wife
and daughter headed to Williamsburg so he could take his seat in the
new Virginia Assembly and rewrite the Virginia constituion. He
worked hard, seeing enacted 126 new laws in three years thereby
generating one of the most far-reaching legislative reforms ever
accomplished by a single person. They included repeal of laws of
entail and primogeniture, pushed free public education, liberalized
the penal code, and streamlined the judicial system. An area Jefferson
struggled with was freedom of religion. Before the Revolution a man
could be jailed for three years if he did not practice the Episcopal
religion. This important freedom took ten years to finally pass the
Virginia Assembly, when Jefferson was already in France and Madison
had to inform him of its final passage.
A committee to develop a new legal system was established
which included Jefferson and Wythe. They recognized it would be very
difficult to change English Common Law, but they could simplify it
and modernize the language to make it plain and understandable.
Jefferson wanted to include an anti-slavery bill but he only managed
to pass a ban on any further importation of slaves. Later he tried
to generate a bill saying all slaves born in Virginia after passage
of the bill would be freed and receive public education, but this
plan never passed.
In May 1777 the Jeffersons had a son who lived for only three
weeks, and the next summer they had a daughter named Maria who did
survive. By early 1779 the British had surrendered at Saratoga and
the French had joined in a treaty with the United States against
Great Britain. So far the war had left Virginia in relative peace,
but then five thousand captured British and Hessian troops from
Saratoga were marched 700 miles from Boston to Charlottesville.
Suddenly Jefferson, the Lieutenant of Albemarle County, had to build
barracks and feed these prisoners of war.
By June 1779 at age thirty six Jefferson was elected Governor
of Virginia. It was a close race and he edged out his college friend
John Page by 67 to 61 votes. At the time eleven Virginia battalions
were fighting with Washington and they had most of the usable
firearms, while in Virginia the British blockade kept the tobacco in
and prevented arms from being landed from outside. Virginia had no
navy to protect its intricate coast line. Paper money was becoming
worthless and tax payments almost non-existent. Jefferson did gather
some funds by selling unclaimed western Virginia land to people
wishing to move west. He also secretly supported the military
efforts of George Rogers Clark in his Midwest offensive during the
Revolution. This action was discussed last year in a paper about
Clark Street.
In Jefferson's second term as Governor things got even worse
when Benedict Arnold as a British general invaded up the James River
to Richmond. They were really after the Virginia legislature and
Jefferson, but the legislature had gotten out of town just in time.
Jefferson tried unsuccessfully to organize some resistance, then
headed west, moving the Virginia government to Charlottesville. It
was a discouraging time for Jefferson as his wife was very depressed
after the death of their four month old daughter Lucy Elizabeth.
In May 1781, Cornwallis invaded Virginia getting to Richmond
and sending his dragoon leader after Jefferson. A Virginia militia
officer heard of this plan while sitting in a tavern and rode all
night to Monticello to warn Jefferson, who with his wife and two
daughters headed south in his fastest carriage. The raiders reached
Monticello when Hemings, the butler, and Caesar, a slave, were hiding
the silver under the front porch planks. Hemings pushed the silver
and Caesar under the floor replacing the planks in time to cover the
hiding place. Caesar stayed with the silver for 18 hours before he
was let out after the British had left. The soldiers did not damage
the house but burnt all the barns with stored production of the years
before. They took most of the farm animals to eat and destroyed all
the plantation fences. The total loss to Jefferson was 3,700 pounds,
about $350,000 at today's prices. Jefferson and his family went
ninety miles south to a plantation he owned called Poplar Forest
staying there for six weeks. Soon Jefferson was criticized for
running away and not getting the militia out in time to withstand the
attack.
Jefferson withdrew from the political scene when his term was
over and went back to Monticello where he compiled a two hundred page
draft of his answers to 23 questions Marbois, a French diplomat, had
asked about Virginia. This turned out to be one of the best
descriptions of American flora, fauna, geology, and natural history
yet written. In the text he specifically challenged de Buffon, a
French naturalist, who proposed that a degenerative process was at
work causing North American animal species to be smaller in size and
less vigorous than those of Europe. Jefferson pointed out that the
elk was bigger than European deer and the American cow was a ton
heavier than its European equivalent. He included Virginia history,
wrote about roads, architecture, Indians, African-Americans, farming,
manufacturing, and government. This ended up being Jefferson's Notes
on the State of Virginia, his first book.
After the Battle of Yorktown the military actions of the
Revolution came to an end. Jefferson went to Richmond to defend his
behavior as Governor and his critics were silent. The proposal of
"unmerited censure" was rescinded and the Assembly praised Jefferson
for his actions.
In May 1782, following the birth of a very large baby girl,
who survived into childhood but died while Jefferson was in France,
Mrs. Jefferson's health suffered a sharp decline. Jefferson's fellow
legislators in Richmond urged him to come and carry out his duties as
a representive from Albemarle County but he stayed at Montocello
nursing his wife as she lost weight and then died. His wife asked
him not to marry again as she did not want her daughters to be raised
by a stepmother as she had been, and he agreed to her request. With
her death the music and joy went out of Jefferson's life.
A year later Madison and Wythe initiated a celebration for
him in Williamsburg when he received a Doctor of Civil Laws honorary
degree from William and Mary. This raised Jefferson's spirits and he
began to think of further revisions and strengthening of Virginia
laws.
By the fall of 1783 Jefferson was reelected to the
Continental Congress and began pushing for a firm and well-conceived
constitution under which the new country could grow. The peace
treaty had doubled the size of colonial America because of George
Rogers Clark's military activity during the Revolution and Jefferson
laid out plans for organizing the newly gained lands between the
coastal States and the Mississippi River. Jefferson also wanted all
new states or territories to be free of slavery or unwanted servitude
but Congress did not approve this idea, it fell one vote short of
passage.
In May of 1784 John Jay resigned as one of two ministers to
France. Congress appointed Jefferson with the added duties of
negotiating treaties of commerce with sixteen European states. He
was happy to go to Paris with his daughter Patsy. A year later
Franklin came home and Adams was sent to London so Jefferson became
the ambassador to France. After living six years in Paris,
travelling to England, Holland, Germany, southern France and Italy,
he came home to be President Washington's Secretary of State. After
returning from France Jefferson revised and enlarged Monticello
adding more rooms in front and on the second floor. This required
much replanning and rebuilding of parts of the house.
Following Washington's terms as President, Jefferson ran for
the office and came in second thus becoming vice president under
President Adams. He believed the Federalists were on the wrong track
so four years later ran for President again, barely beating Aaron
Burr in a House vote following the tied Electoral College vote. As
President in 1800 he had great success fighting the Barbary Coast
pirates, purchasing the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, and
organizing the Lewis and Clark expedition. His second term was less
impressive as the British attacked our ships to punish seamen who had
deserted their service. Thomas Jefferson would be very pleased to
retire from public life in 1808 and worry about his debts, his
plantations and his family.
Jefferson and his wife owned several thousand acres of gently
hilly red clay Piedmont land, partly Thomas' inheritance from his
father Peter and mostly land his wife inherited from her father.
This land was Poplar Forest, ninety miles south and a little west of
Monticello. It was south of the James River after it came through
the Blue Ridge Mountains. It took about three days journey by
horseback, cart or carriage to get from Monticello to Poplar Forest.
Jefferson had first visited Poplar Forest in 1773 after his
father-in-law's death when as executor he was studying the land
holdings. He liked the appearance of these farming lands and
probably decided then to develop them some day.
His second visit was the unanticipated one in 1781 when
Jefferson was escaping from the British invasion of Virginia with
their expressed purpose of capturing him as the Governor. He had
managed to elude them by staying in the Poplar Forest overseer's
house with his wife and two daughters for six weeks. During this
time Jefferson described the Peaks of Otter visible to the southwest
of Poplar Forest as the tallest peaks in the United States at 4000
feet. Later he retracted that when larger mountains were described
and then when he was 73 years old he himself accurately measured the
Peaks of Otter as only 2,947 feet.
Recognizing the potential fertility of the soil, Jefferson
sent more slaves to Poplar Forest to increase its production of cash
crops like tobacco, and he did try to grow other crops like wheat
which was less labor-intensive and less depleting of the soil. In
fact Jefferson did not personally revisit Poplar Forest for almost 20
years, during the time he was in the Continental Congress, rewriting
the Virginia constitution, living in France, and on his return being
Secretary of State and Vice President.
In May 1800 Jefferson finally got back to Poplar Forest but
only for a week. It rained a great deal so he spent the
uninterrupted time trying to figure out how long it would take to
repay the national debt. His conclusion was eighteen years even if
taxes were reduced so this became part of his campaign that fall for
the presidency.
By the time of his second term as President, Jefferson
realized that when he left Washington for Monticello many people knew
where to find him so Monticello did not get him away from a busy life
of visits and requests. He began to realize he needed a more unknown
retreat and decided it should be Poplar Forest. The house should be
small, architecturally pleasing, and built as a villa retreat with
only two bedrooms to minimize guests. The first plan for his Popular
Forest house was four rooms on the main floor, an octagonal entrance
salon with a four-pillared portico in front, behind this a good sized
square parlor and two long rectangular bedrooms on either side of the
central two rooms. Two little circular stairways were to be built
into the triangles where the octagon walls met the rectangular parlor
shape. Laundry and kitchen would be built outside as separate
structures.
Besides needing a retreat to escape to, Jefferson still had
about $10,000 in personal debts and realized that income from Poplar
Forest crops was his best chance of repaying those debts . This
would require close supervision so it was a second reason to build a
house there. Something Jefferson did not seem to appreciate was that
if he sold the Poplar Forest lands and never spent money building a
house, he would have been debt free. Building this house put him
into further debt.
A long time before, sometime in his Williamsburg days,
Jefferson had conceived of a plan for a small chapel either at
William and Mary or on town land. It was a pure octagon with
porticoes on each of four faces and a central altar inside with eight
groups of seat rows. This structure was never built but does show
that Jefferson thought highly of octagons. Now when thinking of a
house design he again thought of a pure octagon.
A German architect, Becker, had designed an octagonal garden
temple and this was published in a book in 1798. We know Jefferson
had a copy of this book. The pure octagon house Jefferson finally
designed had a central square room, which was to be the dining room,
and a simple interior design with 45 degree walls placed directly
from the corners of the central square room out to the middle of four
of the octagon side walls. This left four rooms around the central
square room. Through the middle of the northern of these rooms he
put a hall going from the front door to the central dining room and
from it to the parlor beyond, leaving two smaller rooms on each side
of the front hall. Then he added a four columned veranda outside the
parlor and two little rectangular stairwells to the basement outside
the east and west facing exterior walls. The front door faced north,
the parlor and veranda faced south and the middle light deficient
room was to have a skylight to help illuminate its space. It was odd
that food from the outside kitchen needed to be brought into the
basement level, up the tiny staircase into a bedroom before reaching
the dining room. Remember this was to be a villa retreat, not a
functional house. The owner leaves his practical house and
responsibilities to be at his villa with its imaginative relaxed
atmosphere.
In September 1805 President Jefferson sent Chisolm, who was a
brickmaker, a bricklayer, a carpenter, and man of all trades to
Poplar Forest to start building the house described above. In June
1806 Jefferson was called to Poplar Forest by Chisolm to help lay out
the foundations since each angle required an exact 45 degrees. Most
of the previous nine months had been spent digging out the dirt in
order to start the octagonal foundation wall made of limestone
blocks. Brick making had also already begun. Most were regular
rectangular bricks. Some were squint bricks. These are five-sided
with a small 45 degree angle face cut from one of the front corners
of a rectangular brick. Then a 90 degree angle was cut from the end
of the 45 degree face to the back removing a larger triangle from the
back brick corner. These bricks would be used at all eight corners
of the outside walls.
In 1806 President Jefferson was welcoming Merryweather Lewis,
his friend and previous private secretary, back from the Lewis and
Clark Expedition. At the same time he was ordering wooden window
frames from James Dinsmore, a craftsman at Monticello, for Poplar
Forest. The house walls were still being built and the south veranda
was well started.
By the end of Jefferson's presidency the house walls were
finished, the roof had been framed and covered with boards but not
shingled. The two brick octagon privies had been built on each side
of the house. A specially hired slave Phil had singlehandedly
excavated the south lawn area so that the house appeared two storied
from the south side and the parlor had a superb view out towards the
Peaks of Otter. This descending lawn was 100 by 400 feet and
represented Phil's thousands of wheelbarrow loads brought to the east
and west sides of the house where the extra dirt formed high mounds
screening the privies from the house. Inside the house the floors
were not finished, and lathing and plastering hardly started. Window
frames were mostly in but no windows yet. It is interesting that
Johnny Hemings, a slave doing carpentry and joiner work, was paid
fifteen dollars a month while Chisolm and his brother, Virginia
citizens, earned twenty dollars a month making and laying brick.
In retirement Jefferson planned about four trips a year to
Poplar Forest, each lasting from a fortnight to a month. He oversaw
finishing the house and began to plant trees and flowers for the
landscaping. Writing Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia in 1811 he
said that he "had some books at Poplar Forest and had the solitude of
a hermit and am quite at leisure to do what I want. It is clear
Poplar Forest was his retreat, not a summer house, which he visited
in all seasons of the year.
Plastering was held up by the war of 1812 when plaster was
very scarce but Jefferson went on with planting berry bushes,
willows, several different kinds of poplars, aspens, mulberries,
locusts, redbuds, and dogwoods. A double row of mulberries was to be
planted between the lateral stair wells and the dirt mounds but
Jefferson found that Phil had put the west mound ten feet further out
than the east mound which was also a little south of the lateral line
originally intended. Paid slave labor did an immense amount of work
but it was hard to get the mounds in the exact right place.
A local workman continued working on the house's interior and
exterior, billing Jefferson for framing, skirting, shingling,
flooring the loft , making and hanging five double doors, and
building trap doors and window sills. Now that the house was finally
getting finished, almost ten years after it was started, Jefferson
wanted a four room wing built out from the east side of the house
with the north side of the wing buried in ground, and the south side
having doors, windows and a covered corridor as were the work rooms
at Monticello. These rooms would be for a kitchen, a storeroom
dairy, a cook's living space and furthest out, a smokehouse room.
Above these rooms was to be a flat terrace roof lined by a white rail
fence. Hugh Chisolm was brought back to build this whole wing as
well as plaster the inside of the main house.
Furnishings of Poplar Forest were in general simple Windsor
chairs, a few mahogany tables and bookcases. In this home Jefferson
collected his hundred book petit-format library being the smallest
printed size of books in English, Italian, French, Greek and Latin,
all to be used as a quick reference library. The Poplar Forest
dumbwaiters unlike Monticello were simply multishelved tables carried
by the servants and set in the dining room minimizing traffic in the
room during meals. Poplar Forest also was home for several Campeachy
chairs. These were lounging or siesta chairs, the design of which
came from Mexico and were copied at Monticello. Jefferson used them
in both of his houses.
Now with the house finished Jefferson traveled back and forth
three to four times per year enjoying the quiet he found at Poplar
Forest. He often was accompanied by two of his eldest daughter's
teenage children, Ellen and Cornelia Randolph. Jefferson enjoyed
their company at meals and for walks or rides. Much of the day was
devoted to individual projects of study. The big meal would be in
the afternoon followed by a rest, then walking on the terrace before
an evening snack and bed time. There was some visiting a few
neighbors but social interaction was minimal. The granddaughters
loved the chance to visit with their famous grandfather. When they
were all at Monticello, Jefferson was busy with all his guests and
did not have enough time for them. Interestingly his surviving
daughter and his two grandsons were rare visitors to Poplar Forest
even though Jefferson intended eventually to give the property to
Francis Eppes, his grandson and the only child of Maria, his younger
daughter.
In 1817 the retired president started upon his last major
intellectual and architectural project, that of founding and
designing the University of Virginia. The pillared porticoes of the
student and faculty houses facing the lawn are larger derivatives of
the porticoes of Poplar Forest and many of the workmen who built
Poplar Forest later worked to build the University of Virginia.
In 1819 a summer hail storm broke all the glass on the north
side and roof of the Poplar Forest house. Jefferson used rebuilding
of the dining room skylight as a chance to rebuild its surrounding
roof with a complex ridge and gutter design he said which "if treated
with pitch should last longer than sheet iron". Jefferson liked the
plan and urged that the dormitories at the University be built
similarly. Unfortunately Poplar Forest always leaked to a lesser or
greater degree, similar to Le Corbusier's and Frank Lloyd Wright's
houses many years later.
Hemings was put to work replacing the balustrade around the
roof and making shutters for all but the portico and veranda windows
to protect them from future hail storms. It was never said who was
to go out in golf ball-sized hail stones to shut these shutters. The
house continued to be used as a retreat. Jefferson did contract
with the sculptor William Coffee to produce, near the ceiling,
entablatures for the the dining room and parlor. These were made of
plaster and put up just before Jefferson gave the use of Poplar
Forest to Francis Eppes after his marriage to Elizabeth Randolph in
1823. Jefferson could not give him ownership of Poplar Forest
because the property had been mortgaged to help cover Jefferson's
personal debts. Jefferson was to live for only a few more years and
did not again visit Poplar Forest. He did continue to send Hemings
to fix leaks in the roof.
Thomas Jefferson died in considerable debt on July 4th, 1826,
the same day and at almost the same hour as John Adams in
Massachusetts. Most of his property including Monticello had to be
sold to repay those debts but Poplar Forest was inherited by the
grandson. Eppes did not have the ability to make the plantation pay
so by December 1828 he had sold Poplar Forest to William Cobbs and
his wife Marian. Their only daughter married Edward Hutter, a Navy
officer from Pennsylvania in 1849, who, when he retired from the
Navy, became the farmer of Poplar Forest.
In 1848 sparks from a chimney caught the roof on fire and the
house burnt down with the brick walls, chimneys and columns being the
only remaining elements. The Cobbs and Hutters immediately started
rebuilding. In this process they changed several of the features of
this house. They bricked up several of the side windows but the
greatest change was to rebuild the roof at a lower level and as an
ordinary faceted solid roof with four dormers, and no balustrades or
skylight. They added a right angle staircase in the corner of the
dining room opposite the fireplace. Bricks from the already torn
down storeroom and kitchen to the east of the house were used to
brick up the closed windows. The Hutter family lived in and later
used Poplar Forest as a summer house for 115 years until 1943 when
they sold it to James and Sarah Watts.
The Watts made considerable changes to the house adding
interior bathrooms and enlarging basement rooms to make a kitchen and
a dining room. They left the roof unchanged and turned the
smokehouse and cook's room into a guest house. Both the Hutters and
the Wattses were willing to show Poplar Forest to interested visitors.
In 1973 a North Carolina physician and Jefferson admirer
bought Poplar Forest and 50 acres for six hundred thousand dollars
and then sold it to the nonprofit Corporation for Jefferson's Poplar
Forest in 1983. Since then 364 more acres have been purchased to
increase the immediate property to about 400 acres, approximately one
tenth of what Jefferson owned but Lynchberg suburbs were fast
approaching and occupying the original acreage. Now the house is
being restored to what it was in Jefferson's time and it is open to
the public for viewing between April and November, if you are in
Virginia looking for something special to see.
We remember Thomas Jefferson as a thinking man with high
goals of how a government should work, and at the same time we
realize how much he visualized with his well-educated mind. It is
wonderful to see how having a villa retreat with a satisfying design
that fits into its environment helps a thoughtful man find relaxation
and a haven. As much as we like to credit others as well as
Jefferson for how our country was formed, one has to admit that he
was alone among the Founding Fathers in having broader interests and
capabilities with his architectural design skills. Many people
admire those skills at Monticello and now we can do so at the
restored Poplar Forest.
Return to PAPERS
Return to Main Menu