Peter Jefferson

He died at the age of fifty-seven, in November, 1742 — three years after the marriage of his daughter to Peter Jefferson, and only a few months before the birth of their first son.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 17 (Easton Press, 1993)

[Peter Jefferson]'s wife had been promsed a dowry of two hundred pounds sterling, but Isham had not paid it by the time he made his will. Jane Randolph probably took a body servant or so with her but she seems to have brought her husband no land.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 17 (Easton Press, 1993)

The Colonel [Peter Jefferson] was never much of a talker, however; he was a man of action.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 23 (Easton Press, 1993)

The name of Joshua Fry is linked with that of Peter Jefferson in the most important of the latter's activities as a surveyor. In effect if not in fact the two men constituted a partnership. Somewhat more than three years after they helped set up the Fairfax Stone, they surveyed the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina for ninety miles beyond the point where William Byrd and his fellow commissioners had left it a score of years before.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 24 (Easton Press, 1993)

Some months later the Acting Governor, following a directive from the Lords of Trade, selected [Peter Jefferson and Joshua Fry] as the best qualified persons to draw a map of the inhabited part of Virginia.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 25 (Easton Press, 1993)

[Peter Jefferson] drew no more major boundary lines, but he was county surveyor in Goochland that year; he was again a magistrate of Albemarle by the following spring, and a couple of years after that he became county surveyor there in succession to Joshua Fry, who had just died at Fort Cumberland while commanding the Virginia forces on the frontier. George Washington was his lieutenant. Fry has been credited with being the chief constructive influence in the life of Peter Jefferson, and not improperly. His good will continued to manifest itself after he was dead. He named his associate an executor of his will, left him the surveying instruments which they had used together, and in effect bequeathed him his major public offices.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 26 (Easton Press, 1993)

The ridge of the Southwest Mountains, which is broken at this gap, enters the present Country in the extreme northeast and there it reaches its greatest height, fifteen hundred feet, in a knob which came to be called Peter's Mountain for Colonel Jefferson.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 27 (Easton Press, 1993)

Peter build up for his sons two estates of practically the same size, one centering at Shadwell and the other on the South Fork of the James, sometimes called the Fluvanna.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 28 (Easton Press, 1993)

When Peter Jefferson knew the region and his son was a boy, [Ablemarle County] was a silent country of far-flung patriarchal seats, though these were without architectural pretension. Afterwards, plain farmhouses on smaller clearings increased in number.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 29 (Easton Press, 1993)

Residents of Albemarle remembered that Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson had penetrated uncharted territory, and men associated with the County followed their example. Thomas Walker of Castle Hill carried on the dividing line from the point where they had left it; and George Rogers Clark, who was born across the Southwest Mountains from Shadwell just about the time that Peter returned, conquered the Northwest during the Revolution. His younger and equally redheaded brother, William Clark, was born in another county after his family had left this one, but Meriwether Lewis, whose name is linked with his in the history of exploration, was a native. Under the direction of President Jefferson they crossed a continent. The tradition of the wilderness persisted in Ablemarle.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 30 (Easton Press, 1993)

[Peter Jefferson] died when he was still less than fifty. His elder son, [was] then... fourteen.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 31 (Easton Press, 1993)

He had become a man of substantial property, though it would be an exaggeration to call him a land baron. The Rivanna and Fluvanna tracts together comprised not far from five thousand acres and he had at least half that many more, chiefly in [Ablemarle] County as then constituted.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 31 (Easton Press, 1993)

The list of his slaves is impressive; he had more than sixty of them, along with twenty-five horses, seventy head of cattle, and two hundred hogs.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 31 (Easton Press, 1993)

...to each of his daughters [Peter Jefferson left] a carefully safeguarded portion of two hundred pounds to be paid within a year of her marriage or twenty-first birthday. He fully maintained the standard of Isham Randolph and he was determined that future husbands should not be kept waiting.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 31 (Easton Press, 1993)

When he became twenty-one Thomas was to have either the lands on the Rivanna or the Fluvanna as he should choose, along with a proper share of the lifestock, half of the slaves not otherwise disposed of, and the residue of the estate. The lands that he did not choose were to go ultimately to his brother Randolph, along with a similar portion of the slaves and stock. As the residuary legatee he got the larger share, but the distribution of property between him and his young brother was certainly far more equitable than the distribution of talents. Thomas also got his father's books, mathematical instruments, cherry-tree desk and bookcase; and his designated servant, the "mulatto fellow Sawney," was the most valuable slave.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 32 (Easton Press, 1993)

One reason for leaving him the bookcase was that he had gone to it very frequently already. The forty volumes he is known to have inherited constituted an insignificant library in the light of his mature standards, but they formed the nucleus of his first collection.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 32 (Easton Press, 1993)

Thomas Jefferson's statement in old age about his father's neglected education must be coupled with the further comment that he had strong native intelligence and improved himself.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 33 (Easton Press, 1993)

For all his lack of book learning he deeply appreciated it, and it was he more than anyone else who caused his son to be well schooled. The tradition is that his dying instruction was that the boy should receive a thorough classical education, and Thomas himself said that he was more grateful for this than for all the other privileges which his father's care had placed within his reach. If he had to choose between his estate and a liberal education he would have taken the latter, but no choice was necessary, for he was given both

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 33 (Easton Press, 1993)

In 1752, when he was nine, his father placed him in the Latin school of the Reverend William Douglas, minister of St. James Parish, Northam. He boarded at the clergyman's house during the school term and remained under his instruction until the year that Colonel Jefferson died.

• Jefferson the Virginian
  • p. 39 (Easton Press, 1993)