Monticello Home of Thomas Jefferson

 

Monticello (Harper's New Monthly Magazine. July 1853)

Thomas Jefferson spent most of his adult life building Monticello, and for much of that time the place was a construction site.

The first Monticello wasn’t the one on the nickel. It was smaller, taller, and fairly plain. Jefferson moved in, married Martha Wayles Skelton, started a family, and kept building.

Then life changed.

Martha died in 1782. Jefferson went to France, where he spent five years surrounded by buildings that made his Virginia house look old-fashioned. He wandered through Paris, traveled around Europe, studied architecture, filled notebooks, and came home wanting to start over.

Monticello was pulled apart and rebuilt around him. Rooms disappeared. Others grew. The house stretched sideways. Terraces reached across the mountain. The second floor was tucked away behind windows that made the building look smaller than it was.

Then came the dome. It was one of the first domes on an American house, and it turned Monticello into something people remembered.

Jefferson kept at it.

He built his bed into a wall between his bedroom and study, and installed dumbwaiters for wine. The clock in the entrance hall had weights that dropped through holes in the floor because the wall wasn’t tall enough for them.

And Jefferson collected almost everything.

Books crowded the shelves. Maps covered walls. There were paintings, fossils, bones, scientific instruments, and objects brought back from the Lewis and Clark expedition. Visitors arriving at Monticello knew immediately whose house they’d entered.

But there was another Monticello just outside the windows.

Mulberry Row stretched along the mountain near the mansion. That’s where much of the real work happened. Blacksmithing. Carpentry. Nail making. Textile work. Cooking. Farming.

Jefferson's Mill at Shadwell (Harper's New Monthly Magazine. July 1853)

Much of it was done by enslaved people.

They built Jefferson’s house, fed the people inside it, worked his land, and kept Monticello running while Jefferson changed the place above them.

By the time Jefferson left the presidency in 1809, Monticello was mostly finished.

Jefferson wasn’t.

He spent his final years there surrounded by family, visitors, books, and growing debts. He died in the house on July 4, 1826, at 83.

Then the bills came due.

Furniture was auctioned. Land was sold. Enslaved families were broken apart and sold. Eventually the house itself left the Jefferson family.