Faithful to my promise, dearest —, I shall spend an hour every Sunday in writing all my childish recollections of my dear grandfather, which are sufficiently distinct to relate to you. My memory seems crowded with them, and they have the vividness of realities; but all are trifles in themselves,...
No. 3. I have found it impossible to resume my pen until now when I have an hour or so of leisure before turning my attention to the daily cares & duties which admit of no postponement. The decay of my grandfather’s fortune was owing, as you know, to various causes, but to none more than the...
… The house at Poplar Forest was very pretty and pleasant. It was of brick, one story in front, and, owing to the falling of the ground, two in the rear. It was an exact octagon, with a centre-hall twenty feet square, lighted from above. This was a beautiful room, and served as a dining-room....
No. 4.Life at Poplar Forest. Randall’s Life of Jefferson. vol. 3d P. 342. “Mr Jefferson had once owned I believe something like ten thousand acres of fertile land, (to which the name of Poplar Forest was given,) in the county of Bedford near Lynchburg in Campbell Co. I do not know when he began...
Sent to Mr Randall with alterations or additions which I no longer remember, but the whole letter omitted in Mr Randall’s book No. 5. This letter is a continuation of the one of the 18h and I begin by correcting several small, unimportant inaccuracies. My grandfather’s visits to Bedford were...
I have been prevented from writing, my dear Mr Randall, by the illness of one of my sons, and the absence of a confidential domestic who has for years been a sort of right hand on all household matters. I resume my pen uncertain how soon I may be compelled to lay it down. You ask for the...
I know not where to begin in reply to your enquiries, my dear Mr Randall, for many subjects press upon me at once. I will therefore take up the one to which I have already alluded. You say in one of your letters “From some remark that dropped from Wormeley, a former slave in your family, as in...
Enclosed you have part of a letter, which I began a week ago. Sudden and severe cold which confined me some days to my bed, prevented me from going on with it: I send it in it’s unfinished state. Yours of the 22nd with it’s enclosures, reached me yesterday. I am not strong enough to write much to...
The House at Monticello, and the Garden. Mr Jefferson made great changes in the house at Monticello after his return from Europe in 1789. He got new ideas of architecture during his residence abroad, and the buildings at Monticello were completely re-modelled under their influence. The house...
I am just from church, a church originally planned by Grandpapa, where I heard a good sermon from an Episcopalian Clergyman, a young man, the Revd Mr. Butler. I have been talking freely with my brother Jefferson on the subject of the ‘yellow children’ and will give you the substance of our...
My cousin Mrs Harrison, begs me to add some of my “memories” of
what I have heard, from my mother & aunts on the subject of their child life
at “Monticello”
“As Jefferson’s daughters were both married before his 1st Presidential term, it is his grandchildren who appear on the roll of the “Children of the White House”; and in the roll of “children of his old age” we find the children of “Dear Patsey” Mrs T. M. Randolph and her chivalerous lover like...