His son recalled that the father once single handedly pulled down a wooden shed that had stood impervious to the exertions of three slaves who had been ordered to destroy the building. There were plenty of ambitious men about-men with the boldness and the drive to create farms, build houses, and accumulate fortunes in land and slaves in the wilderness of the mid-Atlantic.Īs a surveyor and a planter, Peter Jefferson thrived there, and his eldest son, Thomas, born on April 13, 1743, understood his father was a man other men admired.Ĭelebrated for his courage, Peter Jefferson excelled at riding and hunting. Money was to be made, property to be claimed, tobacco to be planted and sold. The first half of the eighteenth century was a thrilling time to be young, white, male, wealthy, and Virginian. There, along the Rivanna, he built Shadwell, named after the London parish where his wife, Jane, had been baptized. An imposing, prosperous, well-liked farmer known for his feats of strength and his capacity for endurance in the wilderness, Peter Jefferson had amassed large tracts of land and scores of slaves in and around what became Albemarle County, Virginia. Peter Jefferson, the father of Thomas Jefferson It is the strong in body who are both the strong and free in mind.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |