Today, we bring you an episode focusing on Thomas Jefferson, the driver. As Emilie Johnson, Associate Curator at Monticello, notes, Jefferson might have been a dangerous driver at that.
Kyle Chattleton: This is Mountaintop History, a podcast from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at historic Monticello. My name is Kyle Chattleton.
Today, we bring you an episode focusing on Thomas Jefferson, the driver. As Emilie Johnson, Associate Curator at Monticello, notes, Jefferson might have been a dangerous driver at that.
Emilie Johnson: Riding and driving seem to be a way for Jefferson to express, in a very physical way, this thrill-seeking, slightly risk-taking aspect of his personality, something that we don't normally think of when we think of the great scholar in his cabinet, surrounded by his books and his scientific instruments.
Isaac Granger Jefferson, in 1847, says something along the lines of, "Jefferson liked to drive himself and he would drive powerfully hard.”
Margaret Bayard Smith was a friend of Jefferson’s. Jefferson offered her a ride around the property and she's in the vehicle with Jefferson and Jefferson's granddaughter, Ellen [Wayles Randolph].
So, there's three of them stuffed like sardines into this little seat and they are driving around, and Margaret Bayard Smith becomes more and more scared. She's looking over the side and she sees the hillside falling away, and they're going over these roads that are narrow and full of holes. And Jefferson assures her, “Oh, I went over these roads yesterday. You're going to be fine.” He's basically telling her: don't worry about it, I got this. And at one point she becomes so afraid that she actually jumps out of the phaeton.
Was Jefferson flying around the mountaintop? We know Jefferson's a fast driver. Is he kind of showing off? It's a side of Jefferson that we don't often see, this kind of playful thrill-seeker.
It's funny because she later wrote, “notwithstanding the terror I suffered I would not have lost this ride” — because of the closeness with Jefferson of getting to go explore the plantation with him.
Kyle Chattleton: This has been another edition of Mountaintop History, a collaboration between WTJU and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. To learn more and to plan your next visit, go to our website, at Monticello.org.
