Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 on his family’s plantation, Shadwell, in central Virginia. Virginia was one of thirteen colonies belonging to Great Britain. By the calendar used then, his birth date was April 2. By today’s calendar his birth date was April 13.
Tom came third in a family of ten children. Two of the children didn’t survive infancy. So Tom grew up with two older sisters, four younger sisters, and a younger brother. The babies of the family, Anna and Randolph, were twins.
Little is known about Tom’s mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson. Far more is known about his father. Peter Jefferson was a prosperous farmer who owned dozens of slaves. He was also a surveyor, a person who measures land boundaries. In addition, he served in Virginia’s legislature. Young Tom thought his father was the smartest and the strongest man on earth. It was said that Peter Jefferson once raised two barrels of tobacco that had been lying on their sides to an upright position. Each barrel was said to weigh nearly 1,000 pounds. He also loved books and read Shakespeare and other authors in his spare time.
Tom had cousins named Randolph, who lived in eastern Virginia. Mr. and Mrs. Randolph died within a few years of each other. After that, Tom’s parents helped raise the three Randolph children. Tom’s first memory was of moving to his cousins’ home, about fifty miles away, when he was two. For much of his childhood, Tom went back and forth between the two places. Sometimes he was home at Shadwell. Other times he and his family were at Tuckahoe, the Randolph estate.
In a way, Tom had the best of two worlds. At Shadwell, which stood at the edge of the wilderness, his father taught him to ride, swim, fish, and hunt. In eastern Virginia, Tom went to dances and learned to dress and behave like an English gentleman. But he apparently didn’t get along with his Randolph cousins. The boy cousin, also named Tom, was two years older and seems to have bullied him.
When Tom Jefferson was nine, someone else took charge of his cousins. Most of the Jefferson family returned to Shadwell. But to his disappointment, when his family went home in 1752, Tom was sent to study with Reverend William Douglas, near Tuckahoe.
Reverend Douglas taught Tom Latin, Greek, and French. Tom studied and lived with Reverend Douglas for five years. The only time he returned to Shadwell was for vacations. Although his schoolwork often bored him, Tom liked to read on his own. He became so wrapped up in books that he sometimes read for fifteen hours straight. Young Tom also loved music. He practiced his violin three hours a day.
By age thirteen, Tom was a tall, thin, redheaded boy with freckles. He was well on his way to his full height of six feet two inches. In an age when the average man stood five feet six inches tall, Tom was almost a giant. His nickname was “Tall Tom.”
Tom was home for the summer of 1757 when his father became ill. Peter Jefferson died that August. Fourteen-year-old Tom was crushed to lose his father and hero. As the oldest son, Tom inherited much of his father’s estate, including about 2,500 acres of land and about thirty slaves. But he wasn’t to receive the bulk of his inheritance until he turned twenty-one.
Peter Jefferson had wanted Tom to go to college. To prepare for it, Tom lived and studied with another minister for two more years. He didn’t much like this teacher, either. But at least he was now close enough to Shadwell to spend weekends at home. By 1760, “Tall Tom” was sixteen years old and eager to begin college. |