Jefferson biography
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Due to poor winter weather conditions on the mountaintop, Monticello will be closed to the public on Wednesday, February
The official biography of Thomas Jefferson by experts at his iconic home, Monticello, looks at the 3rd president's consequential life and his complex and enduring legacies.
The words and ideas in the Declaration have impacted human rights around the world.
For Jefferson, whose unorthodox religious views were a matter of heated discussion, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was one of his greatest achievements.
Jefferson conceived, promoted, founded and designed the University of Virginia as "the hobby of my old age."
Learn more about different facets of Thomas Jefferson’s life, achievements, and pursuits.
Learn more about Jefferson's life, career, and legacy in this gallery of recordings.
Jefferson was already planning Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West when France suddenly offered to sell the Louisiana Territory to the U.S.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” and yet enslaved more than six-hundred people over the course of his life.
Experience the range of Jefferson's interests through a typical twenty-four hou
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Governor of Virginia
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Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, in Albemarle County, Virginia to Jane and Peter Jefferson. His father was a Virginia planter, surveyor, and slave owner. At age fourteen, Jefferson’s father died, and Thomas inherited some thirty enslaved individuals. Jefferson fully embraced the lifestyle of an affluent member of the planter class, and over the course of his lifetime he owned over enslaved people—the most of any American president.
In addition to building and managing his Monticello plantation, Jefferson pursued careers in law and public service. After receiving an education at the College of William & Mary, Jefferson studied law in Williamsburg. By , he was serving in the Virginia House of Burgesses and three years later married Martha Wayles Skelton. They would have six children together, though only two survived to adulthood.
As tensions grew between the American colonies and Great Britain, Jefferson was elected to the Continental Congress. In , he completed one of his greatest career achievements—The Declaration of Independence. As the primary author of this founding document, Jefferson drew upon Enlightenment ideals and the writings of John Locke, Montesquieu, and George Mason to formulate its most famous line: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that