Freemasons Relay Request
Also on the last day of August 1817, Jefferson replied to another request he received while
at Poplar Forest, communicated to him by his granddaughter, Ellen Wayles Randolph, from
the masonic societies of Charlottesville. A representative of the freemasons, probably the
college's treasurer, Alexander Garrett, had relayed a request to Jefferson's daughter and
son-in-law, Martha Jefferson and Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., to be allowed to lay the first
brick of the Central College. Jefferson answered that "I do not know that I have authority to
say either yea or nay to this proposition; but as far as I may be authorised, I consent to it
freely. The inhabitants of Charlottesville deserve too well of that institution to meet with any
difficulty in that request, and I see no possible objection on the part of the other visitors
which exposes me to risk in consenting it."[72] Thus the Widow's Son Masonic Lodge No.
60 and Charlottesville Lodge No. 90. conducted the cornerstone laying ceremony for the
first pavilion, the present-day Colonnade Club, on 6 October 1817.[73]
[72]
72. TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, 31 August 1817, quoted in Betts and Bear, Family
Letters of Thomas Jefferson, 418-19. Alexander Garrett married Evelina Bolling, the
granddaughter of TJ's sister Mary Jefferson Bolling, in 1808.
[73]
73. See Bruce, University of Virginia, 1:183-90.
