University of Virginia Library

Bacon's Reminiscences

Jefferson's one-time overseer Edmund Bacon asserted when interviewed in Kentucky in
1862 that the visitors "advertised for proposals for a site" and that three local men, Nicholas
Lewis, John H. Craven, and John M. Perry, offered to sell land to the college (see appendix
W). The "Commissioners," according to Bacon, had a meeting at Monticello (apparently the
Board of Visitors' meeting of 5 May) and then traveled to each of the sites to judge between
them.

After they had made this examination, Mr. Jefferson sent me to each of them, to request
them to send by me their price, which was to be sealed up. . . . Lewis and Craven each asked
$17 per acre, and Perry $12. That was a mighty big price in those days. I went to Craven and
Lewis first. When I went to Perry, he inquired of me if I knew what price the others had
asked. I told him I did, but I did not think it would be right for me to tell him. They had both
talked the matter over with me, and told me what they were a-going to ask. But I told Perry
that if he asked about $10 or $12 per acre, I though he would be mightly apt to succeed.
They took Perry's forty acres, at $12 per acre. It was a poor old turned-out field, though it
was finely situated. Mr. Jefferson wrote the deed himself, and I carried it to Mr. Perry, and
he signed it.[36]

Bacon's role in negotiating the purchase has not been substantiated although Jefferson wrote
that "on examining the sites for our college we found not one comparable to Perry's."[37]
Jefferson's grandson George Wythe Randolph declared in 1856, however, that his
grandfather's favorite choice for a building site was not the one finally settled upon but one
on a high ridge to the northeast of Perry's property. Randolph claimed that Alexander
Garrett had often repeated that the property's owner, John Kelly, a local man who reputedly
hated Jefferson's political principles, stated that he would see Jefferson "at the devil" before
he would sell him the land. Jefferson reportedly considered Kelly a fool for his stance but
said "that if they could not get the best site, they would have to content themselves with the
best site they could get."[38]