110 Fun Facts About Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was which number US president?

Jefferson was the third president, serving from 1801 to 1809 after John Adams, whom he had beaten in 1800 and served under as vice president.

In which city did Jefferson write most of the Declaration of Independence in June 1776?

He wrote it in Philadelphia, in rented second-floor rooms of bricklayer Jacob Graff's house at 700 Market Street, largely alone, between June 11 and 28, 1776.

Jefferson's home Monticello takes its name from Italian words meaning what?

Monticello means 'little mountain' in Italian; Jefferson began levelling the hilltop in 1768 on land inherited from his father and kept altering the house until his death.

At which family plantation was Jefferson born in 1743?

He was the third of ten children of a planter and surveyor; the Shadwell house later burned with his first library.

Jefferson's face appears on which US coin?

Jefferson has appeared on the nickel, the five-cent coin, since 1938, with his home Monticello on the reverse for nearly all of that time.

In what year was the Louisiana Purchase completed?

The treaty was signed in Paris on April 30, 1803 and the territory formally transferred that December; Napoleon sold after his army failed to hold Saint-Domingue and war with Britain loomed.

Which famous expedition did Jefferson send west to explore the newly bought territory to the Pacific?

Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, which left the St. Louis area in May 1804 and reached the Pacific in November 1805; he coached Meriwether Lewis and sent him to Philadelphia scientists for training.

Jefferson is one of the four presidents carved into which national memorial?

Mount Rushmore in South Dakota's Black Hills, carved from 1927 to 1941, shows Jefferson beside Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln, chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum.

On what date did Jefferson die in 1826?

Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration's adoption; his last clear words the night before were reportedly 'Is it the Fourth?'

Which other Founding Father and ex-president died on the very same day as Jefferson?

Adams's last words were 'Thomas Jefferson survives', not knowing his old rival had died a few hours earlier.

Which institution did Jefferson found in 1819 and design himself?

The University of Virginia, chartered in 1819 and opened in Charlottesville in 1825, was laid out by Jefferson as an 'Academical Village' with a library, not a chapel, at its centre.

Under which president did Jefferson serve as the first US Secretary of State?

George Washington named Jefferson the first Secretary of State; he took up the post in March 1790, soon after returning from five years as minister to France.

Who served as Jefferson's vice president during his second term?

George Clinton, the long-serving governor of New York, was Jefferson's vice president for his second term, 1805–09, and stayed on under Madison until his death in 1812.

Roughly what fraction of Jefferson's draft Declaration did Congress cut before adopting it?

Congress cut about a fourth of Jefferson's text, including his attack on the slave trade; he resented the edits and kept copies of his original draft to show friends.

Which college did Jefferson enter at 16 in 1760?

He entered William & Mary in Williamsburg in 1760 and studied under William Small; after a first year of parties and dancing he reportedly buckled down to fifteen hours of study a day.

Jefferson married a young widow on New Year's Day 1772. What was her name?

She was a skilled pianist; he accompanied her on violin or cello, and he never remarried after her death in 1782.

What memento did Jefferson's family find in a secret drawer of his cabinet after his death?

A lock of his wife's hair, kept with lines from Tristram Shandy the dying Martha had copied out in 1782, lay in a secret drawer of his cabinet; he had promised her never to remarry.

Jefferson succeeded which man as America's minister in Paris in 1785?

Told 'You replace Monsieur Franklin', he answered: 'I succeed. No man can replace him.'

Which momentous event was Jefferson present in Paris for on July 14, 1789?

The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 happened while Jefferson was serving as US minister in Paris; he later hosted Lafayette's meetings with fellow deputies and advised him on the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Annoyed that postmasters kept opening his mail in Europe, Jefferson invented what?

Jefferson devised the wheel cipher around 1795: a stack of lettered wooden disks on a spindle that scrambled messages; the US Army independently reinvented the idea in 1922 as the M-94.

Jefferson and Madison founded which political organisation in 1792 to oppose the Federalists?

Jefferson and Madison organised the Democratic-Republicans (then simply 'Republicans') around 1792 against Hamilton's Federalists; the party dominated national politics for a generation after Jefferson's 1800 win.

The 1800 election ended in an Electoral College tie between Jefferson and which running mate?

Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr each received 73 electoral votes because electors could not distinguish president from vice president; the mess produced the Twelfth Amendment in 1804.

How many House ballots did it take to elect Jefferson president in February 1801?

The House took 36 ballots over six days in February 1801; Hamilton lobbied Federalists to back Jefferson as the lesser evil, feeding his fatal feud with Burr.

Jefferson's 1801 swearing-in was the first presidential inauguration held where?

Jefferson's was the first inauguration held in Washington, D.C.; he walked to the unfinished Capitol from Conrad and McMunn's boarding house, or so the tradition goes.

How much did the United States pay France for the Louisiana territory?

The price was $15 million ($11.25 million in bonds plus $3.75 million in assumed claims against France), under three cents an acre for about 828,000 square miles.

Which two American envoys signed the Louisiana Purchase treaty in Paris?

Robert Livingston and James Monroe, the US minister in Paris and a special envoy, signed with Barbé-Marbois on April 30, 1803; Livingston called it 'the noblest work of our whole lives'.

Doubting the Constitution allowed the Louisiana Purchase, what did Jefferson consider doing?

Jefferson considered proposing a constitutional amendment to authorise the purchase but, fearing Napoleon would back out, let it drop; the Senate ratified the treaty on October 20, 1803.

What is Jefferson's 1801–05 war against the North African pirate states called?

The First Barbary War (1801–05) began when Tripoli declared war over unpaid tribute; Jefferson, who had opposed paying tribute since 1785, sent a naval squadron to the Mediterranean.

Which US warship was captured by the Pasha of Tripoli during Jefferson's war in the Mediterranean?

USS Philadelphia ran aground off Tripoli in October 1803 and was captured with her crew; Stephen Decatur's raid burned her in February 1804, and William Eaton's land expedition took Derna in 1805.

What was Jefferson's 1807 halt to all American overseas trade called?

The Embargo Act of December 1807 barred American ships from foreign trade; it wrecked the economy and Jefferson signed its repeal on March 1, 1809, three days before leaving office.

After two terms, Jefferson had cut the $83 million national debt he inherited to roughly what?

The debt fell from $83 million to about $57 million by 1809 under Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin's plan of scrapping the whiskey excise, trimming the army and navy, and paying down principal.

Who served as Jefferson's Secretary of State for both terms before succeeding him as president?

James Madison, his closest political partner, ran the State Department for all eight years and won the presidency in 1808 as Jefferson's chosen successor.

Jefferson's refusal of a subpoena at his former vice president's 1807 treason trial asserted what doctrine?

Jefferson claimed executive privilege, arguing a president could not be compelled to produce papers; Chief Justice John Marshall, his distant cousin and political foe, presided, and Burr was acquitted.

Which president revived the in-person State of the Union, ending Jefferson's custom?

Woodrow Wilson delivered his message in person in 1913, ending the practice Jefferson began in 1801 of sending a written message for a clerk to read; Jefferson disliked public speaking and thought the speech too monarchical.

What was Jefferson's only full-length book, written to answer a French diplomat's questions?

Notes on the State of Virginia answered queries from the French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois; Jefferson printed it privately in Paris in 1785 and a London edition followed in 1787.

What is Jefferson's cut-and-paste compilation of Jesus's teachings popularly called?

The Jefferson Bible is the popular name for The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, which he assembled around 1820 by cutting passages from printed gospels and leaving out the miracles.

Which piece of furniture is Jefferson credited with creating, and using while writing the Declaration?

Jefferson is credited with the swivel chair, a Windsor chair he had fitted with a rotating seat; he also designed a moldboard plow of least resistance, which he refused to patent, and suggested improvements to the polygraph copying machine.

Jefferson's 'Great Clock' at Monticello was powered by the gravitational pull of what?

The Great Clock in Monticello's entrance hall is driven by weights of cannonballs descending along the wall past markers for the days of the week; he also built a revolving book-stand for reading several volumes at once.

Which instrument did Jefferson play well enough to perform in weekly concerts at the Governor's Palace?

Jefferson played the violin, joining Governor Francis Fauquier's weekly amateur concerts in Williamsburg as a student; he called music 'the favorite passion of my soul'.

After the British burned the Capitol in 1814, Jefferson sold his books to restart what institution?

Congress bought Jefferson's 6,487 volumes for $23,950 in 1815 to replace the Library of Congress burned by the British; he promptly began collecting again.

What did Jefferson name the extinct giant ground sloth he described in 1797?

Jefferson named it Megalonyx, 'great claw', in a paper read in Philadelphia in 1797, believing it a giant lion-like cat; the sloth was later named Megalonyx jeffersonii in his honour.

Which learned body did Jefferson head for eighteen years, including while US president?

Jefferson was president of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia from 1797 to 1814, overlapping both White House terms; he sent Meriwether Lewis to its scientists for training before the western expedition.

What became of the Native American vocabularies Jefferson spent thirty years collecting?

A thief dumped it in the James River: in 1809 he stole the trunk in transit from Washington, expecting valuables, and threw the papers overboard; only a few muddy fragments were recovered.

What happened to the two vineyards Jefferson planted at Monticello to make wine?

The European grape crop failed: the vinifera vines he planted in two vineyards at Monticello succumbed repeatedly to disease and frost, and he never produced a vintage; the vineyards were replanted in the 1980s.

Jefferson died roughly how deep in debt, forcing the sale of his estate and enslaved people?

He had even won permission for a public lottery in his final months to try to raise money.

Jefferson wrote his own epitaph listing three achievements. Which of these did he leave OFF it?

None of his political offices made the cut, including two terms in the White House.

Over his adult life, roughly how many people did Jefferson hold in slavery?

Over his lifetime Jefferson held more than 600 people in slavery, about 130 at Monticello at any one time; he freed only two in his lifetime and five more in his will.

A 1998 study in Nature linked Jefferson's male line to descendants of which enslaved woman at Monticello?

The 1998 study matched the Jefferson male-line Y chromosome to a descendant of Sally Hemings's son Eston; her brother James Hemings trained as a chef in Paris while Jefferson was minister there.

Which law did Jefferson sign in March 1807 that took effect on January 1, 1808?

The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, signed March 2, 1807, made bringing enslaved people into the United States from abroad a federal crime from January 1, 1808, the earliest date the Constitution allowed; domestic slavery and the internal trade continued.

Jefferson modelled the Rotunda at the centre of his university on which ancient building?

The Rotunda is a half-scale version of the Pantheon in Rome, which Jefferson knew from Palladio's Four Books of Architecture; he taught himself architecture from such books and helped popularise Palladian style in America.

In which year did Jefferson's Academical Village and Monticello become a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Monticello and the University of Virginia were inscribed together in 1987, making UVA the first university campus in the United States on the World Heritage list.

Which other president was a founder of a university, the University at Buffalo?

Millard Fillmore co-founded the University at Buffalo in 1846, four years before becoming president, and served as its first chancellor until his death in 1874.

How many letters did Jefferson and John Adams exchange after Benjamin Rush reunited them in 1812?

They exchanged 158 letters between 1812 and 1826, 109 from Adams and 49 from Jefferson; historian David McCullough called it 'one of the most extraordinary correspondences in American history'.

Which 1798 documents by Jefferson and Madison argued states could resist unconstitutional federal laws?

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, drafted by Jefferson and Madison respectively, answered the Alien and Sedition Acts; Washington warned they could 'dissolve the union', and Jefferson stayed away from Washington's funeral the next year.

As a young lawyer, Jefferson represented several clients seeking what?

They were enslaved people suing for their freedom; in Howell v. Netherland (1770) Jefferson argued that 'everyone comes into the world with a right to his own person', and the judge cut him off and ruled against him.

Which old friend rushed into Jefferson's arms at Monticello in November 1824?

The Marquis de Lafayette, touring America, arrived at Monticello on November 4, 1824 and the two old men embraced in tears; they had not met since 1789, and the banquet for him at the university was Jefferson's last public appearance.

Building the Jefferson Memorial meant moving which famous trees, prompting 1938 protests?

Work on the memorial meant moving some of the Tidal Basin's Japanese cherry trees; in November 1938 women chained themselves to the trees in the 'Cherry Tree Rebellion', and replacements were planted nearby.

As a student Jefferson joined the Flat Hat Club, described as the nation's oldest what?

The F.H.C. Society, nicknamed the Flat Hat Club, was founded at William & Mary in 1750 and is called the first collegiate secret society in America; Jefferson later admitted it had 'no useful object'.

Jefferson acquired Virginia's Natural Bridge in 1774 by a grant from whom?

Jefferson obtained a 157-acre patent including the Natural Bridge from King George III in 1774 for 20 shillings; he called it 'the most sublime of Nature's works' in Notes on the State of Virginia.

Which US Navy officer bought a decaying Monticello in 1834 and saved it from ruin?

Uriah P. Levy, a career naval officer who admired Jefferson's stand on religious freedom, bought the decaying house in 1834 and repaired it; it stayed in his family until the Thomas Jefferson Foundation bought it in 1923.

What kind of bird was Dick, the favourite pet that President Thomas Jefferson kept at the White House?

A mockingbird named Dick was the favourite of at least four that Jefferson kept during his time in office.

Jefferson's portrait is on which US banknote, whose back shows the Declaration of Independence being presented?

The $2 bill has carried Jefferson's portrait since 1869, yet it circulates so rarely that many people do not realise it is still printed.

Thomas Jefferson had which large American animal sent to Paris to prove a French naturalist wrong?

A moose was Jefferson's proof for the Comte de Buffon, who held that New World animals were smaller and weaker. Twenty soldiers went into the New Hampshire woods to find one.

Which president quipped that a room of Nobel laureates was the White House's finest talent since Jefferson dined alone?

John F. Kennedy made the quip in April 1962 at a White House dinner whose guests included 49 Nobel laureates.

Which everyday verb did Thomas Jefferson probably coin in the 1780s, to the scorn of a London magazine?

Belittle first appears in Jefferson's writing in 1781, describing a French claim that American species were smaller than Europe's. A London review jeered at the new word in 1787.

Thomas Jefferson's original tombstone, an obelisk given away by his heirs, now stands on which campus?

University of Missouri was given the obelisk by Jefferson's heirs in 1883, as the first university founded in the lands of the Louisiana Purchase.

Jefferson's cabinet feud with which Treasury Secretary helped give rise to America's first political parties?

Alexander Hamilton wanted the federal government to take over the states' debts, and Jefferson's efforts to undermine him nearly cost Jefferson his own cabinet seat.

Under the election rules of 1796, which office did Jefferson win by finishing second in the presidential race?

Vice President was then the runner-up's prize, so Jefferson spent four years as deputy to the rival who had just beaten him.

Which president dedicated the Jefferson Memorial on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth?

Franklin Roosevelt opened the memorial on 13 April 1943, but wartime shortages meant a plaster statue stood in for the bronze one for four years.

Which English philosopher's writings on natural rights shaped Jefferson's language in the Declaration of Independence?

John Locke wrote that everyone has a natural right to life, health, liberty and possessions, and most scholars trace the Declaration's best-known phrase to his theory.

Which Virginia office did Jefferson hold in 1781 when he escaped Richmond just ahead of invading British troops?

Governor was a post Jefferson won for two one-year terms, and Benedict Arnold's invaders razed the capital soon after he got out.

Which Virginia judge, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, trained the young Thomas Jefferson in law?

George Wythe stayed so close to his former pupil that he left Jefferson his substantial book collection in his will.

Which New England delegate sat with Jefferson on the five-man committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence?

Roger Sherman went on to become the only person to sign all four great American state papers, from the Continental Association to the Constitution.

Which artist painted the Capitol Rotunda scene of Jefferson presenting the draft Declaration of Independence?

John Trumbull's huge canvas is sometimes wrongly described as the signing, but it shows the five-man drafting committee handing its work to Congress weeks earlier.

Jefferson's phrase about a wall of separation between church and state comes from his 1802 letter to whom?

Baptists in Connecticut, a minority uneasy about the dominant Congregational church, had written to the new president as the Danbury Baptist Association.

Which copying machine, worked with pens and ink, did Jefferson call the finest invention of the present age?

The polygraph wrote out a copy at the same moment as the original, and the duplicates Jefferson kept from 1804 onward have given historians a deep record of his views.

Which farm implement did Thomas Jefferson improve with a new moldboard design that he never patented?

The plow was one of several everyday devices Jefferson reworked, and he gave the idea to posterity instead of profiting from it.

What unusual shape is the house at Poplar Forest, the retreat Jefferson designed for himself in Virginia?

Octagonal in plan, Poplar Forest may have been the first house of its kind in the United States, and Jefferson began designing it in 1806 while still president.

What did the small factory on Jefferson's Monticello plantation, worked by enslaved boys, produce for sale?

Nails were made on Mulberry Row by boys aged 10 to 16, and Jefferson had a dozen of them at work in the nailery by 1794.

Thomas Jefferson carried out a careful excavation in Virginia by cutting a trench through what kind of site?

A burial mound of the Monacan people was Jefferson's site, and the trench let him see its layers of human remains and artefacts in order.

Thomas Jefferson wrote his Manual of Parliamentary Practice, later adopted by the House, for which body?

The US Senate received the first American book on parliamentary procedure, which Jefferson arranged under fifty-three headings, ending with impeachment.

Thomas Jefferson based his design for which American building on the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple in France?

Virginia State Capitol plans were drawn up in France with the architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau, after Jefferson had urged moving the seat of government to Richmond.

Whom did Thomas Jefferson call the chosen people of God, seeing them as the backbone of the republic?

Farmers who worked the land made the best citizens in Jefferson's eyes, which is one reason his followers welcomed cheap new farmland in the West.

Abroad during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Thomas Jefferson backed its work but wanted what added?

A bill of rights was what Jefferson most wanted added to the new charter, and he argued for it from Paris, where he was serving as a diplomat.

Thomas Jefferson entered politics in 1769 representing Albemarle County in which colonial Virginia assembly?

House of Burgesses members sat in Williamsburg, and Jefferson used his first year there to back a bill letting owners free the people they enslaved.

Jefferson's currency plan, adopted by Congress in the 1780s, proposed dividing the American dollar in which way?

Into tenths and hundredths was Jefferson's answer, a clean decimal break at a time when Americans were used to counting Spanish coins in eighths.

What did Virginia's legislature let the indebted Thomas Jefferson organise in 1826 to try to save his estate?

A public lottery was approved that February as a fundraiser, but Jefferson died less than five months later with his debts unpaid.

Which holy book once owned by Thomas Jefferson was used at a congressman's swearing-in ceremony in 2007?

The Quran, in George Sale's English translation, was the choice of Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress.

Which landmark is the centrepiece of the park first created as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial?

The Gateway Arch rose in St. Louis because planners wanted Jefferson honoured at a place symbolic of one of his greatest triumphs, the purchase of the Louisiana territory.

By Thomas Jefferson's own account, a deal struck at his dinner table in 1790 put the national capital on which river?

The Potomac site was the South's prize in the bargain, and in return the national government was allowed to take over the states' debts.

Thomas Jefferson's line about refreshing the tree of liberty was written in response to which uprising?

Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts alarmed many American leaders, but Jefferson, far away as envoy to France, refused to be worried by it.

Jefferson suggested in the 1780s that which giants, known from fossil bones, still lived in North America?

Mammoths, as Jefferson called the animals now known as mastodons, were part of his case that American wildlife was no smaller than Europe's.

What kind of living thing is Jeffersonia, named in Thomas Jefferson's honour by a fellow naturalist?

A wildflower of rich eastern forests, Jeffersonia is also called twinleaf, and the botanist Benjamin Smith Barton named it for his contemporary.

As Secretary of State in 1791, Jefferson argued that Congress had no authority to create which institution?

A national bank struck Jefferson as a deadly threat to republican government, and he told the president that Congress had no power to charter one.

Which actor played Thomas Jefferson in the 1995 James Ivory film about his years as a diplomat in France?

Nick Nolte starred in Jefferson in Paris, first titled Head and Heart, with Gwyneth Paltrow as his daughter Patsy.

Jefferson Rock, named for a view Jefferson called worth a voyage across the Atlantic, overlooks which town?

Harpers Ferry, now in West Virginia, is where Jefferson stood on the rock on 25 October 1783 before praising the scene in print.

Which Italian-English artist did Jefferson fall for in Paris, sending her a dialogue between his Head and Heart?

Maria Cosway received the 4,000-word love letter in October 1786, and the two kept writing to each other until Jefferson's death forty years later.

Thomas Jefferson's rented Paris home as American minister, the Hôtel de Langeac, stood on which famous street?

The Champs-Élysées address, at the corner of the rue de Berri, came with a garden where Jefferson grew Indian corn.

Which unalienable right did Jefferson list in the Declaration of Independence alongside life and liberty?

The pursuit of happiness stands where readers of the day might have expected property, a choice of words that historians still argue over.

Who won a Tony Award playing Jefferson in the original cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical about the founders?

Daveed Diggs won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, having originated the part off Broadway the year before.

How did Thomas Jefferson get to his first inauguration in 1801, becoming the first president to do so?

On foot and dressed as a plain citizen without any badge of office, Jefferson set off around noon with a small escort of congressmen and officers.

Which Federalist Chief Justice, a distant cousin of Thomas Jefferson, administered his presidential oath in 1801?

John Marshall had joined the Supreme Court earlier that year, and Jefferson later hoped in vain that his own appointees would weaken the Chief Justice's hold on it.

Jefferson's envoys went to Paris hoping mainly to buy which port city, not the vast territory they came home with?

New Orleans controlled the Mississippi trade of the western settlers, and the envoys quickly agreed when France offered the whole territory instead.

Which military academy, on a fort site above the Hudson River, was founded by an act Jefferson signed in 1802?

West Point had been an army post since the Revolutionary War, and Jefferson ordered plans for a school there within months of taking office.

Which hated federal tax, the spark for a 1794 uprising in Pennsylvania, did Jefferson's administration abolish?

The tax on whiskey went along with the other internal taxes, a cut Jefferson's team paid for by closing offices it considered unnecessary.

Jefferson pardoned those convicted under which 1798 law that made criticising the government a crime?

The Sedition Act expired the day before Jefferson was sworn in, and he pardoned those still serving sentences under it.

A British warship's 1807 attack on which American frigate nearly drove Thomas Jefferson into war with Britain?

USS Chesapeake was boarded off Norfolk by the crew of HMS Leopard, who took away four sailors as deserters from the Royal Navy and later hanged one.

Which Supreme Court justice did Jefferson's allies in Congress impeach in 1804, only for him to keep his seat?

Samuel Chase was accused of letting party loyalty sway his rulings, but he was acquitted on every count and stayed on the bench until his death in 1811.

Which state, once part of the Northwest Territory, was the only one to join the Union under President Jefferson?

Ohio became the 17th state in 1803 and the first carved out of the Northwest Territory, where slavery had been banned since 1787.

Which animals, a gift from the explorer Zebulon Pike, did President Jefferson briefly keep at the White House?

Grizzly bear cubs, a male and a female, struck Jefferson as too dangerous and troublesome to keep, so he passed the pair on to a museum.