-- Moticello --
There are several tour options at Monticello. I considered the highlights tour and the behind the scenes tour. The 45 minute highlights tour ($42) covers the first floor rooms and the outdoor spaces. The 90 minute behind the scenes tour ($99) also includes the second and third floors and dome of the house and the grounds. There is also an option to visit only the grounds without going inside the house ($22). All three options allow you to take a 45 minute Slavery at Monticello tour and a 45 minute Garden Tour. Because this is probably the only time I will visit Monticello, I decided to splurge and take the behind the scenes tour. I didn't consider taking the 2.5 hour small group slavery tour -- a much more in-depth and expensive tour than the regular slavery tour.
I enjoyed the behind the scenes tour, but if I had it to do again, I would skip the upper floors and simply take the highlights tour. I enjoyed the Slavery and Garden tours more than seeing the upper floors, but I understand why I chose what I did.
A small bus shuttles betwen the visitor center and the house / grounds, which are at the top of the hill. You can take the bus or hike, but in either case, you need a tour ticket go up the hill. For anyone short on time or money, the visitor center doesn't cost anything, and has a lot of information, artifacts, and a couple of audio visual presentations. One of tha artifacts is a perfect copy of the Declaration of Independence that was made from an engraving commissioned by John Quincy Adams in 1820. It is one of 50 surviving copies made from the engraving.
It was interesting to visit the house and grounds and learn more about Thomas Jefferson and the workings of Monticello. It also reminded me of some of the history of our country, such as the Louisiana Purchase, that was made during Jefferson's time and greatly expanded our borders.
The house tour started in the entrance hall, where a unique clock hangs high on the wall over the entrance. The clock is wound once per week by climbing a ladder and ratcheting the cables. Six cannonballs hang from cables on each side of the clock, and their weight makes the clock tick and the hands move. The cannon balls get lower and lower as the week progresses. The days of the week are labeled on dark strips of wood on the wall. I visited on Tuesday afternoon, and the top cannonball was hanging midway between the strips marked Tuesday and Wednesday, which made sense for a Tuesday afternoon.
The funny thing is that the clock was actually designed for a taller room in another building. When Jefferson had the clock moved to Monticello, he discovered the cannonball mechanism was too long. He had to have holes drilled into the floor so the cannonballs could descend low enough for Saturday. The strip of wood labeled "Saturday" is actually on the basement wall instead of on the main floor.
Meriwether Lewis was a friend of President Jefferson's. President Jefferson had Lewis and Clark trained and sent on an expedition to discover what the western lands were like that were acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. Some of the artifacts hanging on the wall in the entrance hall represent things learned from that expedition, such as replicas of Native American items.
The entrance hall had lots of other things, such as a buffalo skin with drawings on it, dinosaur bones, a map of the United States with the Louisians purchase, paintings, and busts of famous people. Jefferson was curious about the world and always learning. Below is his study, and one of several bookcases full of books.
He thought stairs and beds were wasted space. As a reault, the stairways in the house are narrow, and the beds are usually in alcoves between the walls.
The photos below show Jefferson's bed on the main floor, which was situated in the wall between two rooms. Although Jefferson was tall for the time (6' 2"), his bed and the other beds in the house were short. He believed it was more healthy to sleep sitting down than lying down.
Good friends, such as James Madison and his wife, slept on the main floor when they visited. The Madisons were frequent guests and had their own room. More distant friends and family slept on the upper floors.
Jefferson was constantly learning and making changes to the house. Our tour guide told us that after one trip to Europe, Jefferson decided he liked the look of single story buildings better than multiple storied ones. He had the second floor windows lowered, so when viewed from the outside, the windows looked like they belonged to the first floor.
Jefferson collected plants such as flowers, trees and grape vines from distant parts of the world and tried growing them on the grounds. President Jefferson kept detailed records, and the Jefferson foundation has tried to recreate what the grounds looked like in Jefferson's time.
Many of the plants are labeled with small sticks. The initials "TJ "on a stick indicate the plant appears in Thomas Jefferson's records. A couple examples of such plants are the tri-colored "Joseph's Coat" flowers and the "love-lies-bleeding" flowers shown below.
Plants that were brought back from the Lewis and Clark expedition, such as the "Snow-on-the-Mountain" that they brought back from Montana, are labeled with "L&C"on their stick.
The quaking aspen trees didn't grow so well. Neither did some of the grapes Jefferson had shipped from Europe, which were susceptible to something in the soil here. Many other trees did well. The grounds and surrounding area were originally full of American Chestnut trees before the blight introduced from foreign chestnuts decemated the American Chestnut.
Jefferson's father died when Thomas was 14 years old, and as the oldest son, Thomas inherited all of his father's property. He took possession of it when he reached 21 years of age. He inherited 52 slaves from his father, and inherited 135 slaves from his father-in-law. He owned about 600 slaves over his lifetime, but personally purchased fewer than 20. Some of the purchases were to acknowledge marriages. He sold more than 110 slaves over his lifetime -- mostly for financial reasons.
Monticello had a big garden, but it did not supply enough food for everyone who lived there. The garden area was actually dug out from the hillside by slave labor to create a flat area suitable for growing crops. One positive side effect is that the flat area has taken on a warmer growing zone than the surrounding area because bad weather often passes over the top.
There were typically about 130 enslaved men, women and children at Monticello at any given time. Jefferson also frequently entertained guests. Some of the slaves were allowed to grow their own gardens on other plots of ground. Jefferson purchased some of the food they grew to suppy his needs, and bought more from elsewhere.
Jefferson originally wrote into the Declaration of Independence that the United States would be a free land with no slaves, but he was pressured to take that out of the document in order to get consensus and have the declaration adopted.
His beliefs and actions regarding slavery were complicated and somewhat contradictory. For example, he experimented with growing Sugar Maple trees, and encouraged others to grow them, in order to not support slave labor in the Caribbean sugar plantations. That was ironic, given that he used slaves at Monticello to plant the sugar maple trees and harvest the sugary sap.
My afternoon at Monticello was cut short by a thunderstorm, so I didn't get to visit the family graveyard. Thomas Jefferson specified that he wanted only the following words on the obelisk marking his grave:
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson
Author of the Delaration of American Independence
of the Statute of Virginia for religous freedom
& Father of the University of Virginia
He considered those to be "testimonials that he lived". They were the things for which he wanted most to be remembered.
Before today, I was unaware that Thomas Jefferson was heavily in debt when he died. He started out growing tobacco, but that market did not do well. Tobacco required a lot of land because it pulled so many nutrients from the soil that the ground had to be be left idle for years in order to recover. Thomas was curious about the world. He traveled and imported plants and other goods from his travels, which could be expensive. In addition, he had the expense of having to support a large household of workers and slaves. Because of his fame, lenders were willing to lend him a lot of money, but after his death much of his property, including many slaves, had to be sold to satisfy his debtors.
-- Visiting Carolyn --
My niece Carolyn, her husband Nathan, and their three children live in a nice house in an unincorporated area near Charlottesville. They have a beautiful house in a quiet area. Nathan was still at work when I got to their house. My niece Carolyn and her children were home. She fixed a delicious dinner that we ate after Nathan got home. We had with roasted sweet potato and black beans with rice, with raw spinach and berres. I really liked it.
Before dark, I showed everyone my car setup -- my bed, blackout curtains, and mosquito nets. Carolyn's husband Nathan mentioned that he had thought about living in a car, van, or truck and traveling. Now that he has a family with children, it's not the right time.
The three children are all a delight! I originally planned on spending only one night and leaving in the morning, but Carolyn and Nathan told me I was welcome to stay longer and encouraged me to stick around. I enjoyed talking with Carolyn and Nathan after the kids went to bed, and told them I would sleep on it and let them know in the morning.
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