Monticello Blog

Exciting news! Monticello recently received a grant from the Americana Foundation to preserve Jefferson’s Great Clock.

Thomas Jefferson returns to the mountaintop.

In recognition of Presidents' Day and Black History Month, CBS This Morning aired a story about the connection between Thomas Jefferson's descendants through his wife, Martha, and his descendants through Sally Hemings.

Almost 400 years after the first enslaved Africans took their first steps in an English colony, a group of Virginians took their own steps to remember the captives and what they endured

Monticello provides an inspiring setting for this song and video, and affirms our commitment to sharing diverse stories in American history.

Why the Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom is the key to political freedom and free thought.

On December 28, 1993, Monticello Getting Word historians Lucia "Cinder" Stanton, Dianne Swann-Wright, and Beverly Gray traveled to Chillicothe, Ohio to interview five members of the Pettiford family—three of whom were descendants of Madison Hemings.

“Rebellion to tyrants is Obedience to God” – We have come to think of this impassioned phrase as distinctly Jefferson, but there’s more to this story.

Accepting that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’s children is not an “attack” on Jefferson. Nor is it giving in to some notion of “political correctness.” Rather, it is an acknowledgment and acceptance of historical evidence. It does not diminish Jefferson’s many accomplishments and achievements which are of world-historical importance.

On June 16, 2018, Monticello unveiled exhibits and newly restored spaces, including the opening of the South Wing and The Life of Sally Hemings exhibit. This landmark conclusion of a major restoration initiative at Monticello also commemorated 25 years of the Getting Word Oral History Project.