University of Virginia Library

JEFFERSON.

Peter Jefferson, the father of the President, was a native
of Chesterfield, and removed to the present limits of Albemarle
in 1737. He entered the wilderness literally, as when
he first came there were but three or four persons living in
the neighborhood. His first entry was that of a thousand

acres on the south side of the Rivanna, between Monticello
Mountain and the Henderson land above Milton. Wishing
a more eligible site for his house, he bought from his friend
William Randolph, of Tuckahoe, the Shadwell tract of four
hundred acres, where his distinguished son was born. He
had been a magistrate and Sheriff in Goochland, and when
Albemarle was formed, was one of its original magistrates, and
its Lieutenant Colonel. He also represented the county in the
House of Burgesses. He was employed with Colonel Joshua
Fry to run the boundary line between Virginia and North
Carolina, and to make the first map of Virginia ever drafted.
When William Randolph died in 1747, leaving a son of tender
age, he committed him to Mr. Jefferson's care, and more
efficiently to discharge this trust Mr. Jefferson removed to
Tuckahoe, where he resided seven years. This circumstance
explains the difficulty in Mr. Waddell's mind, when in his
Annals of Augusta County, he wondered how Thomas Lewis
and his friends, who had gone to Mr. Jefferson's to make a
map of the survey of the Northern Neck line, could ride from
his house to Richmond to hear preaching on Sunday. He
returned to Albemarle in 1755, and died in 1757. His wife
was Jane, daughter of Isham Randolph, of Dungeness, and
his children Jane, who died unmarried, Thomas, Randolph,
Mary, the wife of Thomas Bolling, Martha, the wife of Dabney
Carr, Lucy, the wife of Charles Lilburn Lewis, and Ann,
the wife of Hastings Marks.

Thomas was born in 1743, married in 1771 Martha, daughter
of John Wayles, of Charles City, and widow of Bathurst
Skelton, and died July 4, 1826. He had two daughters,
Martha, the wife of Governor Thomas Mann Randolph, and
Mary, the wife of John W. Eppes. He was one of the largest
landholders in the county, being assessed in 1820 with four
thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine acres. Soon after
attaining his majority, he was appointed a magistrate of the
county, and at the first session of the County Court after
his decease, the following memorial was entered upon its
records:

"As a testimonial of respect for the memory of Thomas
Jefferson, who devoted a long life to the service of his country,

the principles of liberty, and the happiness of mankind;
who aided conspicuously in the cause of the American Revolution;
who drafted the Declaration of the principles, on which
the Independence of these States was declared; who uniformly
exerted his great talents to aid both the civil and
religious liberties of his countrymen, and by whose practical
administration of the principles he had promulgated in many
stations, legislative, diplomatic and executive, in which he
had acted as a public functionary, the equal rights of his
countrymen were promoted, and secured at home and abroad;
who, uniting to a native benevolence a cultivated philanthropy,
was peculiarly endeared to his countrymen and
neighbors, who were witnesses of his virtue:

Resolved therefore that this testimonial be recorded as a
perpetual memorial of respect and affection of his countrymen,
and of the Court of Albemarle, of which he was once a
member; and

Resolved that this Court and its officers, as a testimony of
public respect, will wear crape on the left arm for thirty days,
and will now adjourn."

Randolph Jefferson in 1781 married Ann, daughter of
Charles Lewis Jr., of Buck Island. He had his residence in
Fluvanna County. He had two sons, Thomas and Isham
R. Thomas was twice married, first to his cousin Mary R.,
daughter of Charles Lilburn Lewis, and secondly in 1858 to
Mrs. Elizabeth Barker, daughter of Henry Siegfried. His
children were Peter Field and Robert L. Peter Field lived
in Scottsville, and by his shrewdness and frugality amassed
a large fortune. He died in 1861, leaving a son bearing his
own name, and a daughter, the wife of Peter Foland. Peter
Field Jr., died in 1867. Robert L. married Elizabeth, daughter
of Robert Moorman, lived near Porter's Precinct, and
died in 1858. His children were Eldridge, who lived in the
same section of the county till after the war, and Mary, the
wife of Albert W. Gantt.

A story is told of Randolph, that one day he came to his
brother to unburden his mind of a weighty idea that had
struck him, and announced himself thus: "Tom, I'll tell you

how to keep the squirrels from pillaging the corn. You see
they always get on the outside row. Well then, don't plant
any outside row"—which, if true, well illustrates a reflection
of Miss Sarah Randolph, "It is curious to remark the unequal
distribution of talent in this family, each gifted member seeming
to have been made so at the expense of one of the others."

A Thomas Jefferson, who in the first days of the county
was one of its deputy Surveyors, was no doubt a brother of
Peter, the President's father.