University of Virginia Library

Jefferson as Collector of Virginiana
by
Richard Beale Davis

On March 29, 1764 the clerk in the bookshop connected with the Virginia Gazette office in Williamsburg recorded the purchase by Thomas Jefferson, for ten shillings, of a copy of "Stith's History of Virginia."[1] This is the earliest surviving record of the acquisition of an item of Virginiana by the young man who was later to gather in his library the most significant material pertaining to his native state ever assembled by an individual. "When young, I was passionately fond of reading books of history,"[2] he commented in 1787. In 1789 he added that "[I am] sensible that I labour grievously under the malady of Biblomanie."[3] Still later he agreed with a fellow Virginian "that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country." That "our country" here is his native state is proved by his next sentence, for William Waller Hening's Statutes at Large pertains only to Virginia: "That I have not been remiss in this while I had youth, health, and opportunity, is proved otherwise, as well by the materials I furnished toward Mr. Hening's invaluable collection of the laws of our country."[4]

These statements afford a glimpse of the complex motivations behind this particular activity of Jefferson. He said several times that he was assembling a library which would be useful to him as a lawyer and as an American statesman. Since he was a Virginia lawyer and eventually a Virginian in national office, much of the material gathered to assist him in his profession was Virginian. And many items of Virginiana

came to him incidentally or accidentally through his personal and public reputation as a scholar and author of Notes on the State of Virginia and through his positions in the national as well as state government. Americans and Europeans who had anything to say about Virginia frequently sent him copies of their books, with autograph inscriptions. Many actually dedicated the books to him.

But Jefferson the collector of Virginiana was first of all an eighteenth-century colonial gentleman building a library which would answer all his needs. Like his distinguished predecessor William Byrd, he planned and gathered a general collection representing all fields of knowledge. Like his kinsmen Sir John and Peyton Randolph, he brought together the law books, some of them two centuries old, which might be practically useful.

During his long life Jefferson gathered three libraries for himself and another for the University of Virginia. In his youth he inherited forty-odd books, useful ones, from his father Peter. He had added to these judiciously[5] until by 1770 his library was valued at £200. On February 21 of that year he lamented to his friend John Page the loss of his mother's house by fire, and his own loss, "of every pa[per I] had in the world, and almost every book" (Papers, I, 34). Thus ended his first gathering.

From this moment he began the steady accumulation of his greatest library in quality and quantity, that which he was to sell to Congress in 1814 to replace the national library destroyed by the British. The trouble, expense, and care which went into this collection is reflected in the wistfully proud letter of 1814 to Samuel H. Smith, who was negotiating the sale to Congress:

The last sentence was intended, of course, to emphasize the appropriateness of the library for the Congress of the United States. The penultimate sentence summarizes very modestly the enormous labor and care of his collecting between 1789 and 1814. Miss E. Millicent Sowerby's recent invaluable Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson (5 vols., Washington, D.C., 1952-1959) supplies detailed and interesting information from his correspondence and book orders covering these years.[6] Booksellers all over America and western Europe supplied his demands. Professional dealers and publishers like John Stockdale and James Lackington in London, Armand Koenig of 'Strassburg,' Dufour of Amsterdam, Mathew Carey of Philadelphia, and Samuel Pleasants of Richmond, among several dozen, sought books for him. But he also called upon friends, men like Joseph Hopkinson in Philadelphia, to secure copies of significant items.

According to the Catalogue published in 1815 after this collection became the Library of Congress, it contained approximately 3,200 items in about 6,500 volumes. Miss Sowerby, using both the 1815 Catalogue and an earlier manuscript rough-draft catalogue and counting in a somewhat different way, actually numbers 4,931 items, books and pamphlets, in her published list of those received by Congress.[7] Because so many of the items have disappeared, she was unable to check effectively the earlier count of number of volumes.

Even before the wagon loads of this library began their slow journey towards Washington, Jefferson had begun collecting his third library, intended "to amuse" him in his old age. Again he resorted to professional agents like Carey and Dufief in Philadelphia, and he accepted the offers of friends abroad like David B. Warden, Richard Rush, and George Ticknor to procure for him convenient editions of the classics. A favorite agent, George Milligan of Georgetown, D.C.,

continued to bind and to procure books.[8] Individual admirers continued to contribute copies of their own writings. A sales catalogue of this collection, published in 1829, indicates that there were in this library by 1826 between 900 and 1,000 items.[9] It is understood that Miss Sowerby is now preparing a descriptive catalogue based on this list. Meanwhile the short-titles of the printed sales list may be fairly easily, though sometimes tentatively, identified.

The last Jefferson library, that assembled for the University of Virginia, contained over 3,000 items in more than 7,000 volumes. Jefferson drew up its catalogue, persuaded friends like Madison and Ticknor to assist him, and in 1824 sent abroad an agent, Francis Gilmer, who was to procure both professors and books.[10] Particularly rich in science, it is the least rich in Virginiana, though there are some twenty-eight items in seventy-odd volumes, principally history and law, almost all of which duplicate items in one of Jefferson's personal libraries, which might be designated Virginiana.

As some of the quotations from his letters given above indicate, Jefferson was at the same time an incidental and deliberate collector of Virginiana. Some items were thrust upon him. Others were simply constituent elements of his Americana assemblages. But he went to the trouble himself to secure many things about his "country" primarily for the sake of preserving them, as good collectors have often done.

Almost two dozen of the printed Virginiana were authors' presentation copies, ranging from medical treatises to law reports. In various ways scattered items came into his possession from fellow Virginians such as his brother-in-law Dabney Carr, the Tory William and Mary Professor Samuel Henley, several members of the Corbin family, his physician George Gilmer, Lunsford Lomax, Philip Ludwell, his friend John Page, his kinsmen Beverley and Edmund Randolph and John Randolph of Roanoke, his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph, and Robert Beverley. Probably through his wife came seventeen books from the library of her father John Wayles and twenty-one from her first husband's brother Bathurst Skelton.[11] At various times and in various ways Jefferson obtained some ten volumes from the famous

collection of William Byrd of Westover,[12] and sixteen bearing the autograph of his second son-in-law John Wayles Eppes. George Wythe bequeathed his library to his former student. Though only about thirty-one volumes from it now survive, in the Library of Congress,[13] some of the extant legal items are quite valuable. From the administrators of the estate of Richard Bland (1710-1776) Jefferson purchased whole segments of a library. Among the priceless items were a number of seventeenth and eighteenth-century manuscript records, to be discussed below. Perhaps the most valuable purchase, from any point of view, was of Jefferson's kinsman Peyton Randolph's library, "bookcases and all as they stood."[14] Much of this collection had come to Peyton from his father, the distinguished Sir John. More than fifty items survive from it today, including several priceless and unique volumes of early Virginia laws and records in manuscript. To add to these Bland and Randolph manuscripts, Jefferson's friend Page gave him a volume of unpublished laws once belonging to his grandfather Mathew Page. But more of all this later.

Jefferson's famous cataloguing system, based upon the divisions of learning made by Francis Bacon, did not allow him to place all his Virginia materials together, though within subclasses they often do appear side by side. Jefferson sent his manuscript catalogue, with its three major divisions of History, Philosophy, and Fine Arts, to the Librarian of Congress, George Watterston, who used it with perhaps slight modification when he published the 1815 Catalogue of the Library of the United States (Washington, D.C.), a list of the books as they were received from Jefferson. Miss Sowerby in her five-volume Catalogue has followed the same system, listing in Volume One all of the History, in Volumes Two, Three, and part of Four the Philosophy, and in the remainder of Four and Five the Fine Arts and "[Polygraphical] Authors who have written on various branches."

In order to indicate clearly the nature, quality, range, and significance of the Virginiana items it is necessary to depart somewhat from this awkward system of classification and group the material primarily according to format, allowing it to fall into natural subdivisions. Therefore printed books and pamphlets with Virginia as subject, or with

Virginians as authors, or with Virginia imprints will be first considered. These will be followed by an account of his Virginia newspapers. Then his remarkable collection of Virginia manuscripts will be surveyed, and their use and means of preservation discussed. Unless otherwise indicated, references will be to his 1815 library, his greatest collection, for in it were most of his significant acquisitions. Within the format classifications suggested above, individual items will usually be discussed in the order in which they appear in the 1815 and 1952 (Sowerby) catalogue.[15]

I. Printed Books and Pamphlets

A. With Virginia as Subject and/or Virginians as Authors:

In his Notes on the State of Virginia Jefferson emphasizes the importance of the study of the past:

In many other places he emphasizes History's significance.[16] It is one of the major classifications for his library, as noted above. Under it he had subdivisions of Civil and Natural; under Civil, Civil Proper and Ecclesiastical; under Civil Proper, Ancient and Modern; under Modern, Foreign, British, and American. Under American History, Sowerby gives ninety-two items (not counting newspapers, which have an informal subclass of their own). Of these only fifteen, including a dozen books, two pamphlets, and a manuscript volume are strictly Virginiana. But this is more by far than he has on any other state, and among the books are John Smith's Generall Historie (1632), Keith's History of the British Plantations in America. . . Part I Containing the History of Virginia (1738), William Stith's The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia [1747], John Daly Burk's History of Virginia (1804, 1805), William Robertson's History of America, Books IX and X (1799), and Robert Beverley's Histoire de la Virginie (1707, the French edition), all today, with the exception of Robertson, valuable items. Along with them are several George Washington items, including the Journal (1754), Official Letters to the American Congress (1795), Marshall's Life (1804, 1805, 1807; Jefferson was an original subscriber), Weems' Life (1808), and Ramsay's Life (1807). In addition there are Henry Lee's Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department (1812) and interesting pamphlets by Edmund Jennings and Lewis Littlepage.

Before he died in 1826 Jefferson was able to replace some of these items which had gone to Congress. Again he had Keith's History (the same 1738 edition), Marshall's Washington, and several other Washington items including the Letters. He added the new Girardin supplement to John Daly Burk's History. William Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry (1817) and Lee's Memoirs of R. H. Lee (1825), along with a number of historical pamphlets incompletely identified in the 1829 sales list.

Under the second division of History, Natural, Jefferson included Physics, Natural History Proper, and Occupations of Men. Under Physics were Natural Philosophy, Agriculture, Chemistry, Surgery, and Medicine. Under the last five subheadings Jefferson seems not to have done much deliberate collecting, although his letters show considerable interest in most of the topics discussed. Most of the items which might be designated as Virginiana are so because their authors were Virginians. Medical theses and essays from Edinburgh to Philadelphia by James McClurg, Theodorick Bland, William Tazewell, William Stokes, and Thomas and James Ewell discuss a variety of topics from yellow fever to the human bile and "asphyxia." Then here is John Rouelle's Complete Treatise on the Mineral Waters of Virginia (1792). Other books and pamphlets on agriculture (in this case both subject and author were frequently Virginian) were probably closer to Jefferson's personal interests. Here one finds John A. Binns' Treatise on Practical Farming (1803), Jacquelin Ambler's Treatise on the Culture of Lucerne (1800?), G. W. P. Custis' Address . . . on the Importance of Encouraging Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures (1808), John Randolph's Treatise on Gardening (1793), and John Taylor's famous Arator (1813).

Under Natural History Proper appear other Virginians' books or pamphlets on surgery, the laws and property of matter, and The Noble and Useful Animal the Horse (Petersburg, 1811). Quite valuable among the botanical books is the Gronovius-Clayton Flora Virginica (1762), though it is not a first edition. And under the Technical Arts (i.e., "The Occupations of Men") there is Quesnay de Beaurepaire's interesting Memoire (1788) concerning the proposed Academy of the

Sciences and Fine Arts for Richmond. James Rumsey "of Berkeley County, Virginia's" Explanation of the Steam Engine (1788) and William Tatham's prospectus for a Dismal Swamp Canal (1808) indicate that all of Jefferson's contemporary fellow-citizens were not farmers, politicians, lawyers, or physicians.

In the years after 1814 Jefferson continued to receive medical treatises from the Ewells and replaced his editions of Binns, Randolph, Taylor, and Gronovius-Clayton. James Madison sent him his own Address on agriculture (probably that before the Agricultural Society of Albemarle). The letters show that in these last years Jefferson was more than ever the farmer.

Under his second major division of Philosophy Jefferson had the headings Moral and Mathematical. Under Moral were Ethics and Jurisprudence; under Jurisprudence, Religious, Municipal, and Œconomical. Under Municipal were Domestic and Foreign; under Domestic were Equity, Common Law, Law Merchant, and Law Ecclesiastical. Under Œconomical were Politics and Commerce. Virginians contributed something in each of these classes. Joshua Peel, from Bedford County, dedicated to Jefferson his Truth and Reason: or, A Fair Investigation of many of those things which keep them in the shade delivered in a course of Theological Lectures (1805). Quaker and Virginia-born Warner Mifflin contributed to the Ethics of Nature and Nations A Serious Expostulation with Members of the House of Representatives of the United States [1793]. Mason Locke Weems, David Rice, Barnaby Nixon, Richard Watson, and an anonymous Anglican clergyman sent him sermons, letters, and addresses dated from 1797 through 1806, all placed in the Religious classification.

Under the various Law classifications Jefferson listed a large number of Virginia items. What are perhaps the most valuable of them, the manuscript volumes, will be discussed later. But Jefferson was equally proud of his printed laws. In 1803 he wrote John Daly Burk that

Jefferson owned John Purvis' A Complete Collection of all the Laws of Virginia now in Force (c. 1684), A Collection of the Acts of

Assembly (1733), the Revisal of 1661/2-1748, the Acts of Assembly (1661/2-1678), the Chancellor's Collection of Acts and Ordinances (1783); an eight-volume "collection of all the printed laws of Virginia" which included Purvis, the Revisals of 1733, 1748, and 1768, the "Fugitive Sheets of printed laws" of 1734-1772, and 1775-1783, and the Revisals of 1783 and 1794. He possessed William Waller Hening's Statutes at Large (1809, 1810, 1812). Among other items are his copy as committeeman of the Report of the Committee of Revisors appointed by the General Assembly of Virginia . . . in [1776] (1784); Draughts of Such Bills, as Have Been Prepared by the Committee Appointed under the Act, Intituled. . . . (1792); Edmund Randolph's Abridgement of the Public Permanent Laws of Virginia (1796); A Collection of all Such Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia, of a Public and Permanent Nature, as are now in force (1803); William Beverley's Abridgement (1728), John Mercer's Exact Abridgement (1737) and another edition of the same (1759); two accounts of the Burr trial (1807, 1808); George Webb's The Office and Authority of a Justice of the Peace (1736); Hening's The New Virginia Justice (1795); George Hay's Essay on the Liberty of the Press (1803), Bushrod Washington's Reports (1798-1799); Daniel Call's Reports (1801); William Tatham's Report of a Case (1794), and Hening and Munford's Reports (1808, 1809). The Common Law section of Virginiana is rounded off with a copy of The Charter, Transfer, and Statutes, of the College of William and Mary (1758). And the whole Law section concludes with a James Madison pamphlet on neutral trade (1805), Jefferson's own Report of the Secretary of State, on the Privileges and Restrictions on the Commerce of the United States in Foreign Countries . . . 1793 (1806), and An Abridgement of the Laws in Force and Use in His Majesty's Plantations; (viz.) of Virginia. . . . (1704). To these may be added some of the things received from George Wythe, including Wythe's Decisions of Cases in Virginia, by the High Court of Chancery. . . . (1795) and a set of six pamphlet Reports (c. 1796?) of cases with annotations in Wythe's hand.

A number of these, notably Wythe's Chancery Decisions, Hening's New Virginia Justice, Washington's Reports, Mercer's Abridgement (1758), and a number of Acts of Assembly, Jefferson managed to duplicate after 1814. And according to the 1829 catalogue (see items 562-583) he added Revised Codes and Reports of the Session Acts of the 1814-1825 period, as well as Munford's General Index to the Virginia Law Authorities (1819).

Under the subdivision of Politics Jefferson sent to Congress his

largest number of printed items pertaining to Virginia. Of a little over thirteen hundred items from all nations, about one hundred are by Virginians, frequently on Virginia topics. In these books and pamphlets one may trace among other things the history of Democratic-Republican and Jeffersonian politics over a quarter of a century, from Jefferson's years in Paris to those of his retirement from public life. In this group are his own Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (an English-French edition of about 1786), A Summary View of the Rights of British America (a unique copy with manuscript notes by the author, c. 1774), An Appendix to the Notes on Virginia Relative to the Murder of Logan's Family [1800], the Speech of . . . delivered at his Instalment, March 4, 1801 [First Inaugural Address] (1801), A Test of the Religious Principles of Mr. Jefferson; Extracted (Verbatim) from His Writings (1800), Discorsi del Signore Tommaso Jefferson delli Stati Uniti di America fatti tradurre e pubblicare dall' Illustrissimo Signore Leandro Cathcart (Livorno, 1804), The Proceedings of the Government of the United States, in maintaining the Public Right to the Beach of the Missisipi, and adjacent to New-Orleans. . . . (1812, two copies), and Message from the President of the United States, Communicating Discoveries Made in Exploring the Missouri . . . by Captains Lewis and Clark . . . . (1806). And there is an interesting edition of Destutt de Tracy's Commentary and Review of Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws (Philadelphia, 1811) for which Jefferson wrote the Preface.

The first President is also well represented in George Washington to the People of the United States, Announcing his Retirement from Public Life (1800), A Message of the President of the United States to Congress relative to France and Great-Britain [1793], and Letters from George Washington to Several of His Friends . . . 1776 (c. 1795; Washington declared the 1778 edition of this spurious). And it is not remarkable that Jefferson's close friend James Madison is even better represented by The Federalist (1788; on the flyleaf Jefferson has identified the numbers by Madison); Letters of Helvidius: Written in Reply to Pacificus, on the President's Proclamation of Neutrality [1796], Political Observations (1795; Jefferson identifies this as Madison's), A Memoir, Containing an Examination of the British Doctrine, Which Subjects to Capture a Neutral Trade, Not Open in Time of Peace (1806), All Impressments Unlawful and Inadmissible (1806), Letters from the Secretary of State to Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney (1808), and Extract from a Letter from the Secretary of State to Mr. Monroe, Relative to the Impressments (1806). James Monroe naturally too is present: Some Observations on the Constitution &c. (1788;

Jefferson attributed this to Monroe), The Governor's Letter, of the 6th of December, 1802, to the Speaker of the House of Delegates of Virginia (1802), A View of the Conduct of the Executive in the Foreign Affairs of the United States, as Connected with the Mission to the French Republic during the Years 1794, 5, and 6 (1798), and Correspondence in Relation to the British Treaty of Peace (1808).

Many Virginia followers of Jefferson's party from its beginnings to the War of 1812, and a few anti-Jeffersonians, are represented among the political books and pamphlets. St. George Tucker's Dissertation on Slavery: with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It, in the State of Virginia (1796) and his Reflections on the Policy and Necessity of Encouraging the Commerce of the Citizens of the United States of America (1785) are significant essays by the William and Mary professor. Jefferson's Albemarle neighbor the Italian Philip Mazzei is represented by two essays, one in French and one in Italian (1788 and 1803); English James Currie, physician, and Scottish Patrick Colquhoun, economist, both of whom lived in Virginia for some years, by one treatise each (1793 and 1788 respectively). Included here are essays by prominent citizens such as Fulwar Skipwith (1806), Richard Henry Lee (1787), Arthur Lee (1774), Robert Carter Nicholas (1774), Carter Braxton (1776), William Tatham (1791), John Taylor (1794), Edmund Randolph (1795, 1796), John Page (1796), W.C. Nicholas (1799?), Benjamin Watkins Leigh (two in 1811), Richard Evers Lee (1800), John Daly Burk (1803), Philip Grymes (1803), William Branch Giles (1808), and John Thomson (1804). Other native Virginians whose reputations were acquired outside the state, men such as William Henry Harrison (1807) and Henry Clay (1813), are also represented.

There are two essays by Jefferson's eccentric neighbor the orator and schoolmaster James Ogilvie (1798, 1802), several pseudonymous essayists under names like Virginius and Oliver Fairplay who wrote for or against Jefferson, and several contributions to the Logan controversy. There are Virginia essays on systems of banking (1811), militia (1813), the Navy (1808), and the Burr Trial (1807). Here may be found the notorious James Thomson Callender's The Prospect before Us (1800).[17] Here is the only known copy of a 1769 edition of John Dickinson and Arthur Lee's The Farmer's and Monitor's Letters, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies. Altogether these items form

an amusing and entertaining as well as significant representation of early American politics.

Naturally it was difficult if not usually impossible to replace these so frequently topical books and pamphlets after 1814. But Jefferson did secure a new copy of Hay's essay on the liberty of the press and a new 1818 edition of The Federalist as well as an additional older one. Old friends sent him their current political writings, and this section of the 1829 catalogue lists a now valuable collection of essays and books by people such as John Taylor of Caroline, who sent Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated (1820) and New Views of the Constitution of the United States (1823); Francis Gilmer, who contributed his Vindication of the Laws . . . against Usury from the Objections of Jeremy Bentham and the Edinburgh Reviewers (1820), and David B. Warden, whose book On the Origin, Nature, Progress and Influence of Consular Establishments (1813) must have interested the old statesman at Monticello a great deal. And he received in this period printed copies of series of State Papers covering the 1793-1820 period. Almost all these seem to have been gifts. There is little or no evidence of conscious collecting of this kind of Virginiana during these last dozen years.

The second principal subdivision of the classification Philosophy was Mathematical, and under Mathematical were included the various types of Mathematics, Physico-Mathematics, Astronomy, and Geography. Under Pure Mathematics and Astronomy one finds no Virginiana in the collection completed in 1814, and under Physico-Mathematics only Jefferson's own Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit, and of Coinage for the United States [c. 1785] and Report of the Secretary of State, on the Subject of Establishing a Uniformity in the Weights, Measures and Coins of the United States (1790). It is not until we come to Geography that there is Virginiana again. Here are a group of sixteenth and seventeenth-century books that might perhaps have been included with History earlier. A magnificent set of DeBry's The Great or American Voyages, Parts I to XI, in Latin (1590-1619); Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1589, the Richard Bland library copy); Edward Williams' Virginia: More especially the South part thereof, Richly and truly valued (1650); Robert Johnson's Nova Britannia (1609); and William Bullock's Virginia Impartially Examined (1649) are in themselves realizations of a book collector's dream. Here under Geography he also includes a rare tract by his friend William Tatham, Address to the Shareholders and Others Interested in the Canals of Virginia (1794), and the two-volume 1814 edition

of Lewis and Clark's History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark. Also he lists here a first edition of his Notes on the State of Virginia (Paris, 1785), Appendix to the Notes on Virginia (1800; there was another copy earlier in the Catalogue), and Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting a Roll of the Persons Having Office or Employment under the United States (1802).

Jefferson had a good collection under the third and final major classification, Fine Arts, but it is hardly strange that very little of it is Virginian in subject or author. What little there is hardly indicative of his aesthetic tastes, for most of the items were presentation copies from authors. Such is Thomas Northmore's Washington, or Liberty Restored: a Poem in Ten Books (1809). Dedicated to him was Judith Lomax's The Notes of an American Lyre (1813). Jefferson subscribed for twelve copies of this latter work, presumably out of friendship for the author's father Thomas Lomax. More interesting among the volumes of verse is St. George Tucker's (identified as author by Jefferson himself) The Probationary Odes of Jonathan Pindar, Esq. (1796). After 1814 he received one more volume of native poetry, Mrs. Alfred W. Elwes'[?] Potomac Muse (1825).

Under Logic in the Fine Arts division were Rhetoric and Oratory. Here one finds Jean François Coste's oration given at Williamsburg in 1782 in Latin (1783) and James Lyons' medical dissertation, in Latin, on the cholera (1785). Here also are a volume of eulogiums on Washington (probably 1802), an oration (1808) by Ferdinando Fairfax, Thomas E. Birch's anthology (containing an ode to Jefferson), The Virginian Orator: being a Variety of Original and Selected Poems, Orations and Dramatic Scenes; to improve the American Youth in the Ornamental and Useful Art of Eloquence and Gesture (1808), a copy of William Wirt's [and others'] volume of essays, The Rainbow, First Series (1804), and (all that was ever published of) James Lyon's National Magazine: or, A Political, Historical, Biographical, and Literary Repository, for June 1, 1799 (1799). Only one such item of Fine Arts-Virginiana does the 1814-1826 library contain, a copy of George Tucker's Essays on Various Subjects of Taste, Morals, and National Policy (1822), probably presented by the author in 1825 when he came to Charlottesville as first chairman of the faculty of the University of Virginia.

B. Virginia Imprints

The bibliographer may be even more interested in Jefferson's Virginia imprints than in his Virginia subjects and authors. These imprints can be determined accurately only for his greatest library, that already catalogued by Miss Sowerby. But these alone reveal a great deal about printers and publishers in early Virginia. The many Richmond, Williamsburg, and Petersburg impressions indicate more or less sustained publishing activity in those places, and the smaller numbers for Abingdon, Alexandria, Charlottesville, Fincastle, Fredericksburg, Martinsburg (now West Virginia), Norfolk, Shepherd's-Town (now West Virginia), and Staunton are significant in various ways.[18]

Joshua Peel's Truth and Reason [1805], though written by a resident of Bedford County, was taken over to a printer named David Amen, of Fincastle, in neighboring Botetourt, for publication. Why Richard Watson, Bishop of Landaff's, Christian Panoply, a series of letters addressed to Thomas Paine, was published by P. Rootes & C. Blagrove of Shepherd's-Town for the Presbyterian Synod of Virginia in 1797 might not be too hard to guess or even to determine exactly. William Thomson, an Abingdon lawyer, got the Holston Intelligencer in his place of residence to print his Compendious View of the Trial of Aaron Burr . . . Together with Biographical Sketches of Several Eminent Characters (1807), a volume Jefferson professed to have read with great satisfaction. Martinsburg is represented by a Protestant Episcopal sermon, published by John Alberts. James Lyon, and later John McArthur, published the Political Mirror under a Staunton imprint. John Dunlap and James Hayes in Charlottesville published two official volumes of state Acts and Journals for 1781. Fredericksburg appears on the dateline of two newspapers, The Genius of Liberty, G. Carter and others 1798-1800, and The Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg & Falmouth Advertiser, Timothy Green 1795-1796. In Norfolk, besides newspapers like The American Gazette, William Davis 1795-1796, there had been printed William Tatham's View of the Proposed Grand Junction Canal (1808), presumably by the author; Daniel Bedinger's Letter . . . to Robert Smith (1808), A. C. Gordon & Co.; and Arrowsmith and Lewis' New and Elegant Atlas (1804), Bonsal, Conrad, and Co. (this last also published at a number of other places). Sir Robert Wilson's History of the British Expedition to Egypt (1803)

and Benjamin Rush's An Inquiry into the various Sources of the usual Forms of Summer & Autumnal Fever in the United States. . . . (1805) likewise have Norfolk imprints along with those of other cities. Alexandria, though a part of the District of Columbia rather than of Virginia during much of this period, may also be considered. This city's printing activity is evident in a number of pamphlets such as James Ogilvie's Cursory Reflexions on Government, Philosophy and Education (1802), J. & J. De Westcott; James Workman's Political Essays, Relative to the War of the French Revolution (1801), Cottom and Stewart; Richard Dinmore's A Long Talk, Delivered before the Tammany Society of Alexandria (1804), the Expositor Office; August B. Woodward's Consideration on the Government of the Territory of Columbia (1802), S. Snowden & Co., and G. W. P. Custis' Address to the People of the United States (1808), also Snowden.

Jefferson's thirty-five Williamsburg imprints, in several instances multi-volumed with different printers within the series, range in time from 1733 to 1781 and include a number of the official records of the colony and state. The first printer, William Parks, is represented in eleven items such as Journals of the House of Burgesses (1740-1748), A Collection of All the Acts of Assembly, Now in Force (1733, the first collection of Virginia laws published in Virginia), Biscoe's The Merchant's Magazine (1743), Stith's History (1747), Treaty Held with the Indians of the Six Nations at Lancaster (1744), Mercer's Abridgement (1737), Webb's Justice of the Peace (1736), The Virginia Gazette (1741-1750), and interesting English books on fencing and the small-sword (1734), a sermon on death (1744), and a treatise on the Lord's Supper (1740). William Hunter's press is represented in four imprints, including some of the official papers and The Virginia Gazette, 1751-1778. John Dixon and Alexander Purdie appear in combination twice, Dixon and Thomas Nicolson together four times, Purdie alone about ten times. William Rind's name on his Virginia Gazette and official papers appears alone at least three times, with Purdie and Dixon once. Rind also printed the rare edition of The Farmer's and Monitor's Letters (1769, referred to above). His widow, Clementina Rind, published Jefferson's Summary View in 1774; and John Pinkney, "for Clementina Rind's Children," printed Francis Hopkinson's A Pretty Story the same year.

Petersburg is represented by eight imprints, three of which, the Sir Thomas Wilson, Benjamin Rush, and Arrowsmith and Lewis (map) items referred to above, are also Norfolk imprints. But John Daly Burk, a resident of the little city, published there in 1804 and 1805

the three volumes of his History of Virginia, printed for the author by Dickson & Pescud, and in 1803 An Oration, T. Field. Here appeared Richard Mason's The Gentleman's Pocket Companion (1811), John Jackson; [James Monroe's] Some Observations on the Constitution (1788), Hunter and Prentis; and Debates and Other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia [1788, 1789], Hunter and Prentis, and Prentis.

Richmond is represented in more than sixty items, ranging in time from 1780/1, when the official printers Dixon and Nicolson moved to the new capital from Williamsburg, to items published in 1813. Again the largest single group is the official state publications, more than two dozen, works such as Acts Passed. . ., A Collection of Such Acts. . ., Debates and Journals of the Senate and House of Delegates, and Reports of the Supreme Court of Appeals. The official printers include Nicolson alone, Dixon and Nicolson, Dixon and Holt, Nicolson and Prentis, J. Dunlap and James Hayes, Augustine Davis, Pleasants and Pace, Pleasants alone, Meriwether Jones, and various combinations of these men. The same firms also printed semi-official and private books and newspapers. Pleasants published several newspapers, including The Virginia Gazette (1795), The Virginia Argus (1797) and its successors (Jefferson's copies 1797-1803, 1804-1808, 1809-1813, etc.), and The Richmond and Manchester Advertiser (1795-1796). He also printed the volumes of Hening's Statutes at Large (1809, 1810, 1812) and belletristic items such as Birch's The Virginian Orator (1808) and Lomax's The Notes of an American Lyre (1813). Thomas Ritchie printed the famous Richmond Enquirer and items like Sidney Smith's Letters on the Subject of the Catholics (1809), "from the Office of the Enquirer;" and his firm of Ritchie and Worsley published Wirt's Rainbow essays (1804). Thomas Nicolson printed a number of things other than the official records, agricultural pamphlets such as Ambler's Treatise on the Culture of Lucerne (1800?) and John Randolph's Treatise on Gardening (1793), and semi-official books like Hening's The New Virginia Justice (1795). Seaton Grantland's imprint appears on Sketches of the History of France . . . By an American (1806) and Barnaby Nixon's A Serious Address to the Rulers of America in General, and the State of Virginia in Particular. . . . (1806). John Dixon supplemented his official printing with two newspapers, The Virginia Gazette and Richmond Chronicle (1795) and Richmond Chronicle (1795-1796), apparently neither very successful. Jones and Dixon as a firm published another James Ogilvie essay, A Speech . . . in Essex County (1798) and Jones alone Richard Evers Lee's Letters (1800)

and James Monroe's Governor's Letter (1802, perhaps semi-official). Dixon and Holt printed St. George Tucker's Reflections on commerce (1795). Augustine Davis supplemented his official publishing with such works as Decius' Letters on the Opposition to the New Constitution in Virginia (1789). The National Magazine (1799-1800) was printed "by and for the Editor," James Lyon, who also lived and worked elsewhere. Other Richmond imprints bear the names of printer-publishers Manson and John O'Lynch. Jefferson's library alone would indicate that for the little more than a quarter of a century between the Revolution and the War of 1812 the new little village-town-capital of Richmond was a fairly busy publishing center.

C. Rare Books and Pamphlets

The fact that only a fraction of the library which went to Congress in 1814 survives makes it impossible to assess at all precisely the rare-book value of Jefferson's greatest library. But the items which do remain, added to others which may be identified, indicate that the Americana or Virginiana collector today would place a high valuation upon it. First perhaps one should take a glance at association and dedication copies.

There were hundreds of presentation copies in the library without Virginia or even American relationship. Miss Sowerby's Index lists all of the presentation copies together (V, 385-391). Among those of Virginia origin in some sense are Mason L. Weems' Washington (1808) and The True Patriot (1802), medical essays by Edmund Jennings, William Stokes, William Tazewell, and the two Ewells (see below), Thomas Northmore's Washington (1809), Colvin's Historical Letters (1812) and his Letter to the Honorable John Randolph (n.d.), and Birch's The Virginian Orator. Miss Sowerby also lists all the dedication copies (V, 329). Dedicated to Jefferson, though of course his copy does not always survive, are, among others, Burk's History of Virginia, James Ewell's Medical Companion (1807), Thomas Ewell's Plain Discourses (1806), Lomax's Notes of an American Lyre, Joshua Peel's Truth and Reason, and Stokes' De Asphyxia (1793). The list of books in which Jefferson is mentioned (Sowerby, V, 329-331) runs into the hundreds.

Already pointed out in connection with their listing under author, subject, or imprint above were a number of interesting association copies. Other association copies, with manuscript additions of value, are Sir John Randolph's common-place book bound with A Brief Method of Law (1680), Jefferson's own Summary View (1774) with

several notes by the author, and the two volumes of the 1788 Federalist with Madison's contributions noted in Jefferson's handwriting. This last book is of interest also as the copy belonging to Mrs. Alexander Hamilton received by Jefferson through his good friend her sister Mrs. Angelica Church.

Other items now or once present are scarce editions or apparently unique copies (as far as present location is concerned). No copy is known to exist of the 1793 edition of John Randolph's Treatise on Gardening which Jefferson once owned, and the only copy Miss Sowerby was able to locate of the Dickinson-Lee The Farmer's and Monitor's Letters is Jefferson's. Rare Virginia pamphlets, many of them unincluded in most Virginia bibliographies, are Peel's Truth and Reason (1805) and Sherlock's A Practical Discourse Concerning Death (1744). Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1589), Johnson's Nova Britannia (1609), and Bullock's Virginia Impartially Examined are first editions of considerable value. Williams' Virginia (1650) and DeBry's Voyages (1590-1619), the latter not quite complete, are also rare. The first editions Jefferson owned of the histories of Virginia by Smith (1632, first issue), Keith (1738), Stith (1747), and Burk (1804, 1805) bring high prices today. And the first editions of Marshall's Washington (1804, 1805, 1807), Jefferson's own Notes on the State of Virginia (Paris, 1785), and Lewis and Clark's History of the Expedition. . . . (1814) are prized items. There are scores of others.

As noted above, Jefferson was well aware that his most valuable printed items were his copies of the Virginia laws and legislative journals. He knew that he had the most nearly complete collection of them in existence. They were equally useful to lawyer, historian, and statesman.

II. Newspapers

Though the irresponsible attacks made on him, especially during the election campaigns of 1800 and 1804, soured Jefferson as to the usefulness or veracity of newspapers, he did preserve a considerable number of them in bound files. They are included in the 1815 Catalogue under American History (items 535-602), each item representing one or more volumes. Among them were journals published in fifteen American cities outside Virginia and in one foreign capital. But by far the largest number, approximately eighteen items,[19] are from Virginia.

Originally he owned many more. In a letter to John D. Burk of June 1, 1803, he mentions his collection of newspapers which Burk had asked to borrow. They dated

It is well that Burk used them profitably, for Jefferson never recovered his newspapers, and they have disappeared from view. A later letter (October 29, 1810) from Thomas to his kinsman George Jefferson mentions that the collection included "3 volumes of Virginia Gazette from 1741 to 1760." The writer adds the interesting information that he purchased these volumes from "Parson Wiley's executors before the revolution, and paid their original cost for them which I think was £30. for the whole collection down to his death" (Sowerby, I, 213).

The Library of Congress does not possess a single bound volume of newspapers from the 1815 library, at least in recognizable form. But the manuscript and printed catalogues indicate that he had twelve volumes folio and one volume quarto of "Virginia gazettes." These included in whole or part Parks' Virginia Gazette, 1741-1750; Hunter et al, Virginia Gazette, 1751-1778; Rind's Virginia Gazette, 1766-1776; Purdie et al, Virginia Gazette, 1775-1780; all Williamsburg; and Dixon and Nicolson's Virginia Gazette, 1779-1781, Williamsburg and Richmond. Another manuscript catalogue entry, "Gazettes. 1795-7, d° 1797" [or in the 1815 printed Catalogue: "Miscellaneous Gazettes, 1795-1800, 4 vols."] seems hopelessly obscure until one looks with Miss Sowerby at the 1831 Library of Congress catalogue, which breaks this down and lists in two places a number of out-of-state items but also the Political Mirror, 1800-1802, Staunton; the Genius of Liberty, 1798-1800, Fredericksburg; The Enquirer, 1809-1814, the Virginia Argus, 1797, the Virginia Argus and Virginia Enquirer, 1804-1808, 5 vols., the Virginia Argus and Virginia Examiner, 1797-1803, 1809-1813, 7 vols., the Virginia Gazette, June 1795, the Virginia Gazette and Richmond Chronicle, 1795, the Richmond Chronicle, 1795-1796, The Richmond and Manchester Advertiser, 1795-1796, all Richmond; the American Gazette, 1795-1796, Norfolk; and the Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg and Falmouth Advertiser, 1795-1796, Fredericksburg,[20] Not long

before he died Jefferson named one of these Virginia journals as his favorite in a letter to his old friend William Short

Although Jefferson may have overestimated the uniqueness of his collection of Virginia newspapers, much would be given today for his eighteenth and early nineteenth-century files. The Cappon and Duff microfilmed edition of the Virginia Gazette of Williamsburg, for example, might be far more complete than it is. In most cases today files of the other newspapers are incomplete or fragmentary.[21] Jefferson never made any claim for inclusiveness or completeness for his own collection, but quite obviously it was at least on a par with his printed laws in value as history.

III. Manuscripts

Jefferson's collection of manuscript materials relating to the history of the colony and state grew as steadily and intelligently as his printed collections. From his young manhood he was on the alert for unpublished materials. So well was he known by 1816 as an authority on Virginia manuscripts that it was to him that the American Philosophical Society appealed for information when it wanted to identify the author of an unpublished "History of the Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina" it had recently discovered among its papers. And Jefferson did not fail the Society. He reported promptly that it was probably "Dr. Byrd's" and suggested members of the Westover family who should be consulted. In doing so he gave evidence that he knew of a considerable number of Virginia private papers still at large.[22]

Jefferson's own Virginia manuscripts came to him in a variety of ways, but all these ways are indicative of his awareness of the need of

preserving records of the state's history. They consist of twenty-one items, some comprised of several bound volumes each, seventeen or eighteen of which went to the Library of Congress in 1815 and the remainder in 1829. Of the total number, only three are not legal or legislative or judicial or miscellaneous records of the colony. That he considered these official relics of time worth considerable care is indicated in a letter to his old law teacher, George Wythe, who wished to borrow the manuscript as well as the printed laws in Jefferson's library. Jefferson declined to send the manuscripts on the excuse that they were not pertinent to the study Wythe was making and that they were too fragile anyway. Some, said Jefferson, fall to powder at the touch:

His answer is that everything should be printed and distributed. "How many of the precious works of antiquity were lost while they were preserved only in manuscript!"

He demonstrated his belief in publication in what he did with the most valuable of the non-official manuscripts which came into his hands. In 1803 Rufus King sent for his perusal an account of Bacon's Rebellion which he had picked up abroad and which differed from the published accounts.[23] In 1804 Jefferson wrote a letter to King returning the manuscript and saying that he had taken the liberty of making a copy of it. The copy was being placed in the hands of a person who was

writing a history of Virginia. He promised King that he would try to trace the author, who in 1705 had signed only the initials "T. M.", "among the antient MSS. I possess at Monticello." The copy seems to have gone to George Wythe, who turned it over to the editor of the Richmond Enquirer for publication. It was printed in that paper on September 1, 5, 8, 1804. The Enquirer states that the printed account is an exact copy of the original sent by the President of the United States for the express purpose of publication.

The copy now in the Jefferson papers in the Library of Congress seems to be that returned by Jefferson to King. It is clearly of c. 1705, but if it is the original it has lost its covers and other marks of identification. It appears in the 1815 printed Catalogue but not in Jefferson's rough-copy manuscript catalogue. How and why it stayed in or came back to the Jefferson library is puzzling. This work, T[homas] M[athew]'s "The Beginning Progress and Conclusion of Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia in the years 1675 & 1676," is of course one of the major documents of this era in colonial history.

The other non-official papers are not nearly so valuable. One, Sir John Randolph's manuscript commonplace-[legal]book bound with A Brief Method of the Law (1680) and written partly by Benjamin Harrison and partly by Randolph, has been noted above. Another commonplace-book of legal materials precedes it (Sowerby, II, 225). The other non-official manuscript is bound with the non-Virginia manuscript of Paul Alliot's Reflections historiques et politiques sur la Louysiane (c. 1803) and is called "Extracts from a letter written by a Gentleman who had explored Kentucky to his Friend in the lower part of Virginia relative to that country—Bedford in Virginia." Covering only two leaves, it was labelled laconically by Jefferson "Western country."

Of the official or semi-official items, the six containing records from 1606 to the dissolution of the Virginia Company are described in detail in Susan Myra Kingsbury, Records of the Virginia Company of London (4 vols., Washington, D.C., 1906, 1933, 1935; I, 41-52). She points out that they came to the Library of Congress in two different groups, in 1815 (with the library) and in 1829 (when they were bought at the auction). Those which came in 1815 are themselves in four groups: 1) "Laws and Orders concluded on by the General Assembly March the 5th. 1623";[24] 2) "Journal of the Council and Assembly 1616-

1634";[25] 3) "Miscellaneous Records, 1606-1692"; 4) "Miscellaneous Papers, 1606-1683, Instructions . . . [etc.]."[26] The 1829 acquisitions were: 1) the "Records of the Virginia Company" in two volumes folio, and 2) the "Old Records of Virginia," in four volumes folio (1829 catalogue item 122).

All of those acquired in 1829 are unique copies or contemporary transcripts of incalculable value. The "Miscellaneous Papers, 1606-1683" is a seventeenth-century transcript. The "Laws" of 1623 and the "Miscellaneous Records, 1606-1683" are transcripts of the earlier eighteenth century attested by R. Hickman, Clerk of the General Court in 1722. Jefferson himself gives the best account of the provenance of the 1829 volumes in a letter to Hugh P. Taylor, October 4, 1823, in which he states that the first two volumes are accounted for in the preface to Stith's History of Virginia, that they are the records of the Company copied under the eye of the Earl of Southampton, bought at the sale of the Earl's library by William Byrd, who lent them to Richard Bland, in whose library they reposed when Jefferson bought it.[27] The other four volumes, Jefferson goes on to say, he supposes were original office records borrowed by Sir John Randolph for a projected history of Virginia and never returned. They remained in the library Jefferson bought from Peyton Randolph's executors. Though Kingsbury and Sowerby do not agree with this in certain details, they do in general.

Of the items from the 1815 Catalogue listed in Kingsbury, the three volumes containing transcripts of the Virginia records are unique. The "Laws and Orders" of 1623 bears an endorsement in Jefferson's hand to the effect that it was found among the manuscript papers of Sir John Randolph and given by his son Peyton to Jefferson. It is an early eighteenth-century transcript attested by Hickman. The "Miscellaneous Records, 1606-1692" is a seventeenth-century copy bought from the Bland library. The "Miscellaneous Papers" is another eighteenth-century copy attested by Hickman and once belonging to Bland (Sowerby, II, 244). As noted above, the "Journal of the Council and Assembly, 1616-1634" as listed by Kingsbury (I, 42n) is probably the

rediscovered "Commissions and Proclamations, 1616-1634."[28] If so, it came from the library of Peyton Randolph.

Most of the other official manuscript gatherings, ignored by Kingsbury because they did not affect the story of the Virginia Company of London, came to Jefferson, as those already discussed did, from various other libraries. A manuscript copy of John Mercer's "Abridgement of the Public Acts" and "An Abridgement of the Common Law" have no known provenance beyond Jefferson's library. The first is an eighteenth-century, the second a seventeenth-century manuscript. Sir John Randolph's "Opinions of Learned Counsel" (the second half in his autograph) is in seventeenth and eighteenth-century hands. It bears Sir John's and Peyton Randolph's names on the flyleaf and certainly came from the two Randolphs' library (Sowerby, II, 224). The "Journal of Council and Assembly, 1642-1662," the "Edmund Randolph copy," was on loan from Jefferson to Edmund for many years, lost, recovered, and finally sent by Hening to the Library of Congress (Sowerby, II, 240). It also had once belonged to Sir John and Peyton Randolph. "Legislative Records, 1652-1660," in Jefferson's own autograph, was copied from the Mercer manuscript used by Hening (Sowerby, II, 242). The "Laws, 1662-1702" Jefferson stated he found ready to be used for waste paper in Lorton's tavern in Charles City county. The Clerk of the Court, Debnam, gave it and "Laws. 1705" to Jefferson without hesitation (Sowerby, II, 242-243). "Laws. 1662-1697" came from the Randolphs' library (Sowerby, II, 242). The "Acts of Assembly. 1705-1711" was given to Jefferson by his old friend John Page. It had belonged to the latter's grandfather, Matthew Page, who had in 1705 been one of the commissioners for a revisal of the laws. An edition of Purvis' A Complete Collection of All the Laws (c. 1684) contains a manuscript continuation of some interest. Jefferson says the volume was given to his father-in-law, Mr. Wayles, by the late Colonel William Byrd [III] (Sowerby, II, 245). "The Virginia Court Book, 1622-1629" has been taken apart and rebound so that its provenance is difficult to determine (Sowerby, II, 352). In the 1828 sales list (no. 565) appears one more manuscript, a copy of the "Revised Code, 1779."

That Jefferson acquired any of the manuscripts listed in 1829 after 1814 is improbable. Though it seems unlikely that he consciously held back anything when he sent his library to Washington (he complained in 1815 to Hening that he had never intended selling his Virginia law items to Congress but had been obliged under the terms to do so),

we do know that he did not include a very few things and that some things "missing" or on loan but represented in the Catalogue never got to Washington. Whatever the cause, the Library of Congress did add in 1829 these companion volumes to its collection.

IV. The "Usefulness" of Jefferson's Collection

From the quotations given above it is clear that Jefferson had posterity more in mind when he acquired Virginiana than he did when gathering his more general materials. These manuscripts, newspapers, pamphlets, and books would probably not, he felt, be preserved at all, and certainly not together so that they might be used, unless he undertook the task. He was almost surely right. There had been in past generations men like William Byrd II and Sir John Randolph who might be numbered among the careful or the curious, but even they seem to have been haphazard collectors as far as matter pertaining to the Old Dominion was concerned.

Jefferson had no illusions about the immortality of libraries in private hands. He knew too much of the fine old collections of his Virginia predecessors for that. And he sent documents of national significance, when they came to him, as did certain Lewis and Clark materials, to the American Philosophical Society library as a way of ensuring their survival. Perhaps he took some satisfaction in the anticipation that his things going to the Library of Congress would be carefully preserved.

But the Virginia manuscript and printed laws and other records, as he says in his correspondence several times, he never intended to go to Washington. Though in 1814 the University of Virginia was not so near physical realization as in 1823-24, it is probable that even in 1814 he had it in mind as a repository for his Virginia materials. Certainly it was the destination he planned for the volumes of the proceedings of the Virginia Company of London and the other miscellaneous early records, for he informed Hugh Taylor in 1823 that he "would deposit them in the library of the University" (October 4, L&B, XV, 472). His testamentary gift of the whole of his last library to the University was never realized because of the financial conditions of his estate when he died. It had to be sold at auction.

Even during his lifetime Jefferson put his Virginiana to good use. Young neighbors or relatives like Francis Gilmer and Peter and Dabney Carr came to browse or study in his library. One of the tasks he urged upon them was the acquisition of an extensive knowledge of their own "country." Their letters give evidence that they acquired something.

Dabney Carr became a judge and authority on Virginia law. Gilmer not only was elected first professor of law in the infant University of Virginia but was behind the first American printing of one of the books he probably first saw in Jefferson's library, Captain John Smith's Historie.[29] Gilmer's letters harp on the theme that Virginia must fulfill the promise of her past. What remains one of the most significant items of pure Virginiana, Jefferson's own Notes on the State of Virginia, was composed in part while he was surrounded by his beloved books at Monticello.[30] The famous bibliography of Virginia history at the end of Query XXIII could hardly have been compiled without his own volumes.

Still essential for any student of Virginia is John Daly Burk's three-volume History of Virginia (1804, 1805). As already noted, Jefferson lent Burk while the composition of the work was going on an invaluable file of Virginia newspapers which the owner never recovered but which the author used most effectively. Burk, in dedicating the comprehensive study to the man who had supplied so much of its primary material, said that "The History of Virginia, by a sort of national right, claims you as its guardian and patron."[31]

Without the manuscript and printed laws described above William Waller Hening could not have compiled his monumental The Statutes at Large; being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the year 1619 (1809, 1810, 1812). In the preface Hening traces the history of Jefferson's connection with the publication, which began in 1795 when George Wythe approached his former student as to the use of his materials for such a work. After much correspondence Jefferson in June 1808 sent Hening eight units of "Manuscripts of the laws," which the owner systematically listed.[32] These items included the Peyton Randolph, the Bland, the John Page, and Charles City — derived manuscripts described above. Later Jefferson lent him other laws, manuscript and printed, which Hening collated with other surviving copies when possible but often had to use as his only source.

In the twentieth century most of Jefferson's Virginia manuscripts,

especially, have been reproduced with scholarly introductions or used as bases for critical and historical studies of the periods they represent. H. R. McIlwaine printed "The Virginia Court Book, 1622-1629" (Sowerby, II, 352-353) in his edition of Minutes of the Council and General Court of Virginia, 1616-1676 (Richmond, 1924). Susan Myra Kingsbury, in the four volumes of The Virginia Company of London (Washington, D.C., 1906, 1933, 1935) describes the Jefferson manuscripts and reproduces all the old records pertaining to the years she covers (1606-1624) in a work used by students of the period everywhere in the English-speaking world. Historians like Charles M. Andrews and Wesley F. Craven, among others, have studied Jefferson's Virginiana, in the original and/or in later printed form, in preparing their own distinguished interpretations of colonial history. The scholars who have concentrated especially on Virginia history (to whom manuscripts such as Mathew's "Bacon's Rebellion" are of particular interest) and have employed Jefferson's materials, from Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker to the most modest of genealogists or local historians, run at least into the scores.

Thomas Jefferson, one recalls, measured almost everything by the degree of its usefulness to mankind. His definition of usefulness was an inclusive one, embracing the production of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure as well as of material comfort. If he could come back and observe the ways in which his collections of materials relating to Virginia have been put to use, there is every evidence that he would be well satisfied.

Notes