Road Trip: Monticello

We spent Tuesday at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Charlottesville, VA.

I've been looking forward to this part of our trip and reading what I could about Thomas Jefferson before we visited. Since I could never tell you about everything we learned in this blog post, I've included a lot of links that you can click on to read more.

Although Jefferson is best known as the author of the Declaration of Independence and the 3rd President of the United States, touring Monticello allowed us to see him as much more - a man of the enlightenment who designed his own home and used it as a laboratory for his interests in botany, horticulture, architecture, astronomy,  art, music, and books.

Monticello is located on "the Mountaintop" outside of Charlottesville, where Jefferson owned 5000acres. It is simply a beautiful place.

Jefferson's gardens are not in bloom yet but the cover crops are already getting green.

Collecting and disseminating seeds of choice plants was an important chapter of Jefferson's horticultural life. Many of them are still available at the Monticello shop.

At noon, we met our guide for a one-hour Slavery Tour of Monticello.

The tour took place on Mulberry Row. 

Mulberry Row was the hub of the plantation. Over time, it included more than 20 workshops, dwellings, and storage buildings where enslaved people at Monticello lived and worked.

This is the Hemings' cabin on Mulberry row. A family of up to 8 people would have lived in a cabin like this, the children sleeping on straw pallets outside or, in the winter, in the loft. The parents would share the bed and the one blanket given to the family every three years.

Nearby is the textile building on Mulberry Row. Enslaved people would work here to spin hemp or, in the winter, wool, for clothing.

Jefferson, as always, kept detailed records of their assignments and production.

At 1:30. we joined eleven other people (from Texas, Delaware, and New York) for the Sally Hemings Tour.

Sally Hemings lived from 1773 - 1835, most of those years as an enslaved woman at Monticello, although she was 3/4 white. She was actually the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha. Both had the same father, John Wayles. Although Martha lived a life of leisure at Monticello, Sally, whose mother was one of John Wayles' slaves at a nearby plantation,  was enslaved.

In 1998, during major renovations at Monticello, the room believed to be that of Sally Hemings was unearthed, under the South wing of the main house adjoining the kitchen, wine cellar, and Jefferson's bedroom. Sally is thought to have borne her six children by Jefferson here. This story of the "rest" of Jefferson's life has only been openly discussed, and now memorialized at Monticello, since the geneological use of DNA in the past 20 years.

Sally Hemings' descendents are now welcomed to share their oral histories for recording as part of  Monticello's oral history project, Getting Word. The now-hundreds of descendents meet at Monticello for a reunion each Juneteenth.

Although the focus of our afternoon tour was Sally Hemings, the tour did include the interior of Jefferson's home, which he designed himself. This is Jefferson's bedroom. He died in this bed on July 4, 1827. Note how he built the bed into the area between his library and chamber.

What I found most interesting was how Jefferson, never one to waste space, built his closet in ABOVE his bed.  You can see part of a small door in the lower right corner of the photo. Behind it were narrow stairs which allowed his enslaved butler to access his clothes for him. And, being the scientist that he was, Jefferson designed the oval openings in the walls of his closet to allow air to circulate, avoiding mildew.
~photos from Monticello website; we were not allowed to take pictures inside the house.

My favorite room at Monticello was the dining room. Attached to the large dining area is the smaller "tea room" with windows on all sides providing views of the Shenandoah Valley and mountains beyond. I loved the bright yellow color and asked our guide if it was authentic. He explained that  recent research indicates that it is: archeologists found evidence of Chromium in the original paint layer.

President John F. Kennedy recognized Jefferson's accomplishments when he told a gathering of American Nobel Prize winners that they were "the greatest assemblage of talent in the White House since Jefferson had dinner there alone".

Built into each side of the fireplace in the dining room was a bottle-sized dumbwaiter so that wines could be sent up to Jefferson directly from the wine cellar as needed - another one of his clever uses of space in the house. (I wouldn't mind having one of those at 22 Applegate Lane!)

I guess I'm not the only one who loved this room; it was featured in Southern Living magazine in 2013.

Another of my favorite rooms was this octagonal bedroom, which was used for guests. James Madison and his wife, Dolley, were said to have often stayed here as their home Montpelier was only 28 miles away. Notice that Jefferson built in a closet above this bed as well.

At the end of the day, we visited the African American graveyard. Although Jefferson had about 400 slaves, only 40 graves have been discovered here. It is not yet known where the rest of his slaves were buried.

This is the view of the back side Monticello that is found on the Jefferson nickel. There is no snow on the ground here now; it's very springlike with crocus in bloom along the walkways.

I loved this visit and the sense of history that pervades Monticello. I wish we had had two days to spend there. In the late Spring and summer, the Garden Tour sounds beautiful. It hadn't started yet in March.

Today we leave Virginia and head toward St. Augustine, Florida.

We're on the road again!

This post is linked to:

Feathered Nest Friday at French Country Cottage
Happiness Is Homemade Link Party 262 at Bluesky at Home
Sundays at Home at Little Farmstead
Over the Moon Link Party at Eclectic Red Barn
Best of the Weekend Party at Calypso In the Country