60 Fun Facts About Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was which number US president?

Jefferson was the third president, serving from 1801 to 1809 after John Adams, whom he had beaten in 1800 and served under as vice president.

In which city did Jefferson write most of the Declaration of Independence in June 1776?

He wrote it in Philadelphia, in rented second-floor rooms of bricklayer Jacob Graff's house at 700 Market Street, largely alone, between June 11 and 28, 1776.

Jefferson's home Monticello takes its name from Italian words meaning what?

Monticello means 'little mountain' in Italian; Jefferson began levelling the hilltop in 1768 on land inherited from his father and kept altering the house until his death.

At which family plantation was Jefferson born in 1743?

He was the third of ten children of a planter and surveyor; the Shadwell house later burned with his first library.

Jefferson's face appears on which US coin?

Jefferson has appeared on the nickel, the five-cent coin, since 1938, with his home Monticello on the reverse for nearly all of that time.

In what year was the Louisiana Purchase completed?

The treaty was signed in Paris on April 30, 1803 and the territory formally transferred that December; Napoleon sold after his army failed to hold Saint-Domingue and war with Britain loomed.

Which famous expedition did Jefferson send west to explore the newly bought territory to the Pacific?

Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, which left the St. Louis area in May 1804 and reached the Pacific in November 1805; he coached Meriwether Lewis and sent him to Philadelphia scientists for training.

Jefferson is one of the four presidents carved into which national memorial?

Mount Rushmore in South Dakota's Black Hills, carved from 1927 to 1941, shows Jefferson beside Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln, chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum.

On what date did Jefferson die in 1826?

Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration's adoption; his last clear words the night before were reportedly 'Is it the Fourth?'

Which other Founding Father and ex-president died on the very same day as Jefferson?

Adams's last words were 'Thomas Jefferson survives', not knowing his old rival had died a few hours earlier.

Which institution did Jefferson found in 1819 and design himself?

The University of Virginia, chartered in 1819 and opened in Charlottesville in 1825, was laid out by Jefferson as an 'Academical Village' with a library, not a chapel, at its centre.

Under which president did Jefferson serve as the first US Secretary of State?

George Washington named Jefferson the first Secretary of State; he took up the post in March 1790, soon after returning from five years as minister to France.

Who served as Jefferson's vice president during his second term?

George Clinton, the long-serving governor of New York, was Jefferson's vice president for his second term, 1805–09, and stayed on under Madison until his death in 1812.

Roughly what fraction of Jefferson's draft Declaration did Congress cut before adopting it?

Congress cut about a fourth of Jefferson's text, including his attack on the slave trade; he resented the edits and kept copies of his original draft to show friends.

Which college did Jefferson enter at 16 in 1760?

He entered William & Mary in Williamsburg in 1760 and studied under William Small; after a first year of parties and dancing he reportedly buckled down to fifteen hours of study a day.

Jefferson married a young widow on New Year's Day 1772. What was her name?

She was a skilled pianist; he accompanied her on violin or cello, and he never remarried after her death in 1782.

What memento did Jefferson's family find in a secret drawer of his cabinet after his death?

A lock of his wife's hair, kept with lines from Tristram Shandy the dying Martha had copied out in 1782, lay in a secret drawer of his cabinet; he had promised her never to remarry.

Jefferson succeeded which man as America's minister in Paris in 1785?

Told 'You replace Monsieur Franklin', he answered: 'I succeed. No man can replace him.'

Which momentous event was Jefferson present in Paris for on July 14, 1789?

The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 happened while Jefferson was serving as US minister in Paris; he later hosted Lafayette's meetings with fellow deputies and advised him on the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Annoyed that postmasters kept opening his mail in Europe, Jefferson invented what?

Jefferson devised the wheel cipher around 1795: a stack of lettered wooden disks on a spindle that scrambled messages; the US Army independently reinvented the idea in 1922 as the M-94.

Jefferson and Madison founded which political organisation in 1792 to oppose the Federalists?

Jefferson and Madison organised the Democratic-Republicans (then simply 'Republicans') around 1792 against Hamilton's Federalists; the party dominated national politics for a generation after Jefferson's 1800 win.

The 1800 election ended in an Electoral College tie between Jefferson and which running mate?

Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes because electors could not distinguish president from vice president; the mess produced the Twelfth Amendment in 1804.

How many House ballots did it take to elect Jefferson president in February 1801?

The House took 36 ballots over six days in February 1801; Hamilton lobbied Federalists to back Jefferson as the lesser evil, feeding his fatal feud with Burr.

Jefferson's 1801 swearing-in was the first presidential inauguration held where?

Jefferson's was the first inauguration held in Washington, D.C.; he walked to the unfinished Capitol from Conrad and McMunn's boarding house, or so the tradition goes.

How much did the United States pay France for the Louisiana territory?

The price was $15 million ($11.25 million in bonds plus $3.75 million in assumed claims against France), under three cents an acre for about 828,000 square miles.

Which two American envoys signed the Louisiana Purchase treaty in Paris?

Robert Livingston and James Monroe, the US minister in Paris and a special envoy, signed with Barbé-Marbois on April 30, 1803; Livingston called it 'the noblest work of our whole lives'.

Doubting the Constitution allowed the Louisiana Purchase, what did Jefferson consider doing?

Jefferson considered proposing a constitutional amendment to authorise the purchase but, fearing Napoleon would back out, let it drop; the Senate ratified the treaty on October 20, 1803.

What is Jefferson's 1801–05 war against the North African pirate states called?

The First Barbary War (1801–05) began when Tripoli declared war over unpaid tribute; Jefferson, who had opposed paying tribute since 1785, sent a naval squadron to the Mediterranean.

Which US warship was captured by the Pasha of Tripoli during Jefferson's war in the Mediterranean?

USS Philadelphia ran aground off Tripoli in October 1803 and was captured with her crew; Stephen Decatur's raid burned her in February 1804, and William Eaton's land expedition took Derna in 1805.

What was Jefferson's 1807 halt to all American overseas trade called?

The Embargo Act of December 1807 barred American ships from foreign trade; it wrecked the economy and Jefferson signed its repeal on March 1, 1809, three days before leaving office.

After two terms, Jefferson had cut the $83 million national debt he inherited to roughly what?

The debt fell from $83 million to about $57 million by 1809 under Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin's plan of scrapping the whiskey excise, trimming the army and navy, and paying down principal.

Who served as Jefferson's Secretary of State for both terms before succeeding him as president?

James Madison, his closest political partner, ran the State Department for all eight years and won the presidency in 1808 as Jefferson's chosen successor.

Jefferson's refusal of a subpoena at his former vice president's 1807 treason trial asserted what doctrine?

Jefferson claimed executive privilege, arguing a president could not be compelled to produce papers; Chief Justice John Marshall, his distant cousin and political foe, presided, and Burr was acquitted.

Which president revived the in-person State of the Union, ending Jefferson's custom?

Woodrow Wilson delivered his message in person in 1913, ending the practice Jefferson began in 1801 of sending a written message for a clerk to read; Jefferson disliked public speaking and thought the speech too monarchical.

What was Jefferson's only full-length book, written to answer a French diplomat's questions?

Notes on the State of Virginia answered queries from the French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois; Jefferson printed it privately in Paris in 1785 and a London edition followed in 1787.

What is Jefferson's cut-and-paste compilation of Jesus's teachings popularly called?

The Jefferson Bible is the popular name for The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, which he assembled around 1820 by cutting passages from printed gospels and leaving out the miracles.

Which piece of furniture is Jefferson credited with creating, and using while writing the Declaration?

Jefferson is credited with the swivel chair, a Windsor chair he had fitted with a rotating seat; he also designed a moldboard plow of least resistance, which he refused to patent, and suggested improvements to the polygraph copying machine.

Jefferson's 'Great Clock' at Monticello was powered by the gravitational pull of what?

The Great Clock in Monticello's entrance hall is driven by weights of cannonballs descending along the wall past markers for the days of the week; he also built a revolving book-stand for reading several volumes at once.

Which instrument did Jefferson play well enough to perform in weekly concerts at the Governor's Palace?

Jefferson played the violin, joining Governor Francis Fauquier's weekly amateur concerts in Williamsburg as a student; he called music 'the favorite passion of my soul'.

After the British burned the Capitol in 1814, Jefferson sold his books to restart what institution?

Congress bought Jefferson's 6,487 volumes for $23,950 in 1815 to replace the Library of Congress burned by the British; he promptly began collecting again.

What did Jefferson name the extinct giant ground sloth he described in 1797?

Jefferson named it Megalonyx, 'great claw', in a paper read in Philadelphia in 1797, believing it a giant lion-like cat; the sloth was later named Megalonyx jeffersonii in his honour.

Which learned body did Jefferson head for eighteen years, including while US president?

Jefferson was president of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia from 1797 to 1814, overlapping both White House terms; he sent Meriwether Lewis to its scientists for training before the western expedition.

What became of the Native American vocabularies Jefferson spent thirty years collecting?

A thief dumped it in the James River: in 1809 he stole the trunk in transit from Washington, expecting valuables, and threw the papers overboard; only a few muddy fragments were recovered.

What happened to the two vineyards Jefferson planted at Monticello to make wine?

The European grape crop failed: the vinifera vines he planted in two vineyards at Monticello succumbed repeatedly to disease and frost, and he never produced a vintage; the vineyards were replanted in the 1980s.

Jefferson died roughly how deep in debt, forcing the sale of his estate and enslaved people?

He had even won permission for a public lottery in his final months to try to raise money.

Jefferson wrote his own epitaph listing three achievements. Which of these did he leave OFF it?

None of his political offices made the cut, including two terms in the White House.

Over his adult life, roughly how many people did Jefferson hold in slavery?

Over his lifetime Jefferson held more than 600 people in slavery, about 130 at Monticello at any one time; he freed only two in his lifetime and five more in his will.

A 1998 study in Nature linked Jefferson's male line to descendants of which enslaved woman at Monticello?

The 1998 study matched the Jefferson male-line Y chromosome to a descendant of Sally Hemings's son Eston; her brother James Hemings trained as a chef in Paris while Jefferson was minister there.

Which law did Jefferson sign in March 1807 that took effect on January 1, 1808?

The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, signed March 2, 1807, made bringing enslaved people into the United States from abroad a federal crime from January 1, 1808, the earliest date the Constitution allowed; domestic slavery and the internal trade continued.

Jefferson modelled the Rotunda at the centre of his university on which ancient building?

The Rotunda is a half-scale version of the Pantheon in Rome, which Jefferson knew from Palladio's Four Books of Architecture; he taught himself architecture from such books and helped popularise Palladian style in America.

In which year did Jefferson's Academical Village and Monticello become a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Monticello and the University of Virginia were inscribed together in 1987, making UVA the first university campus in the United States on the World Heritage list.

Which other president was a founder of a university, the University at Buffalo?

Millard Fillmore co-founded the University at Buffalo in 1846, four years before becoming president, and served as its first chancellor until his death in 1874.

How many letters did Jefferson and John Adams exchange after Benjamin Rush reunited them in 1812?

They exchanged 158 letters between 1812 and 1826, 109 from Adams and 49 from Jefferson; historian David McCullough called it 'one of the most extraordinary correspondences in American history'.

Which 1798 documents by Jefferson and Madison argued states could resist unconstitutional federal laws?

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, drafted by Jefferson and Madison respectively, answered the Alien and Sedition Acts; Washington warned they could 'dissolve the union', and Jefferson stayed away from Washington's funeral the next year.

As a young lawyer, Jefferson represented several clients seeking what?

They were enslaved people suing for their freedom; in Howell v. Netherland (1770) Jefferson argued that 'everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person', and the judge cut him off and ruled against him.

Which old friend rushed into Jefferson's arms at Monticello in November 1824?

The Marquis de Lafayette, touring America, arrived at Monticello on November 4, 1824 and the two old men embraced in tears; they had not met since 1789, and the banquet for him at the university was Jefferson's last public appearance.

Building the Jefferson Memorial meant moving which famous trees, prompting 1938 protests?

Work on the memorial meant moving some of the Tidal Basin's Japanese cherry trees; in November 1938 women chained themselves to the trees in the 'Cherry Tree Rebellion', and replacements were planted nearby.

As a student Jefferson joined the Flat Hat Club, described as the nation's oldest what?

The F.H.C. Society, nicknamed the Flat Hat Club, was founded at William & Mary in 1750 and is called the first collegiate secret society in America; Jefferson later admitted it had 'no useful object'.

Jefferson acquired Virginia's Natural Bridge in 1774 by a grant from whom?

Jefferson obtained a 157-acre patent including the Natural Bridge from King George III in 1774 for 20 shillings; he called it 'the most sublime of Nature's works' in Notes on the State of Virginia.

Which US Navy officer bought a decaying Monticello in 1834 and saved it from ruin?

Uriah P. Levy, a career naval officer who admired Jefferson's stand on religious freedom, bought the decaying house in 1834 and repaired it; it stayed in his family until the Thomas Jefferson Foundation bought it in 1923.