Monticello Blog

Music was an important part of life for enslaved people at Monticello, and particular individuals, like Eston Hemings, within this society were noted for their artistic talents. For many enslaved people at plantations throughout the United States, music making was a way to strengthen family and community ties, resist oppression, entertain one another, and express thoughts and emotions about the past, present, and future.

Read about Monticello descendant William Monroe Trotter's quixotic journey to Paris in 1919 to participate in post-World-War-I peace negotiations at Versailles.

In Thomas Jefferson’s lifetime, the holidays at Monticello were a time for family gatherings, visiting friends, settling accounts and planning for the new year. For Monticello’s enslaved community, the holiday season was a time for reunion and a possible respite from labor on the plantation.

Writing to fellow architect Benjamin Labtrobe seven months after retiring from the presidency, Jefferson described Monticello as his "essay in architecture." Always balancing practicality with beauty, Jefferson noted his essay "has been so much subordinated to the law of convenience, & affected also by the circumstance of change in the original design, that it is liable to some unfavorable & just criticisms."

This fall, Monticello’s Restoration Department reconstructed a second section of Jefferson’s original ten-foot tall paling fence along Mulberry Row. The first section was reconstructed in 2018 between the Stone Stable and Hemmings Cabin. During Thomas Jefferson’s lifetime, enslaved carpenters constructed two generations of fences along Mulberry Row. It was this second fence, which was started in 1808 and finished by 1809, that we have partially reconstructed.

Most exterior shutters today are eye-pleasing accents, decorative but not functional. But for Thomas Jefferson, shutters provided shade from what he described as "the constant, beaming, almost vertical sun of Virginia" while permitting airflow from summer breezes. They also protected the expensive window glass from storms and swung open, Jefferson’s words, "on hinges as in the winter we want both the light & the warmth of the sun."

Adding a dome to one’s house was unheard-of in America during Jefferson’s time. Domes are complicated to engineer and construct, and when Jefferson brought the idea back from his stint in Europe in the 1780s, it may have seemed an impossible folly.

When we think of Thomas Jefferson, it is unlikely that the first thing that comes to our minds is “parliamentary law.” Most of us probably don’t think of parliamentary law ever. But parliamentary law is the basis for the rules of legislatures, which in the American context means, first and foremost the U.S. Congress.

Jefferson’s more scientific side is on full display at Monticello in a treasure-trove of timekeeping devices ranging from sundials to gongs, to various types of clocks.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr greatly influenced the outcome of the election of 1800 that sent Thomas Jefferson to the White House in 1801.