Monticello Blog

A patron asked us about a very unusual quotation the other day: apparently someone, sometime said that Thomas Jefferson was "...a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father..."; this was supposedly a comment made by Jefferson's political opponents in the election of 1800.

Picking up a recent Economist magazine, an article discusses how desalination of the oceans for usable water is becoming less expensive these days. What does this have to do with Jefferson?

One of our informants encountered a story, related by one Thomas Bloomer Balch, a Presbyterian minister recalling that in his childhood in the D.C. area during Mr. Jefferson's presidency, a little boy wandered onto the grounds of the President's House and was killed by TJ's "ill-tempered goat."

Apparently scientists have found that Thomas Jefferson's DNA belongs to a Y-chromosome haplogroup (K2) commonly found in the Middle East and North Africa.

Sometimes we get inexplicable rashes of questions.

Jefferson was an accomplished amateur violinist and an avid concertgoer who once declared music is "the passion of my soul." This time we present a selection of music related to Jefferson and Monticello, ranging from popular tunes to classical pieces.