Monticello Blog

The group of nine young men, most of them African-American, radiated star-quality as they strutted through Monticello’s David M. Rubinstein Visitor’s Center and headed toward the site’s African-American graveyard.

Williams and Johnson recalled several stories during their recent interview for Getting Word, the oral history project documenting memories of descendants of Monticello’s enslaved community. Just a few weeks earlier, they had learned that they are descendants of Peter Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved cook and brewer, and an older brother of Sally Hemings.

On Saturday, September 17, Monticello, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Virginia, hosted a public race summit for thousands on the West Lawn of Jefferson’s famous home.

African drumming and dancing, Southern cuisine, and a national TV crew are not what Monticello’s visitors typically encounter at Thomas Jefferson’s mountaintop home. But on a recent balmy August evening, the guests were anything but typical. In fact, one might argue that because their ancestors were members of Monticello’s enslaved community, they weren’t guests at all.

Thanks to support from David M. Rubenstein and the Manning Family Foundation, we are now able to reconstruct the North Dependency according to Jefferson’s original plans.

The restoration of the Stone Stable on Mulberry Row has begun. The stable is one of two Jefferson-era buildings on Mulberry Row that will be restored as part of a larger effort to return the mountaintop to its appearance during Jefferson’s lifetime.

An overview of excavations at the Stone Stable on Mulberry Row prior to restoration work.

Water supply to Monticello, the mountaintop home of Thomas Jefferson, has been a perpetual problem since its construction.

One of the emotional insights of the hit musical Hamilton is its portrayal of the passionate friendship between the protagonist and his brilliant, self-assured sister-in-law—Angelica Schuyler Church. What the show doesn't mention is that Church also pursued a long-term friendship with one of Alexander Hamilton's greatest political rivals—Thomas Jefferson.

How do you locate evidence for missing curtain hardware two hundred years after it was removed? Science! The Restoration Department recently used four different techniques to locate evidence for curtain hardware.