In April, 1764, Jefferson came of age, and his first public act was a characteristic one. For the benefit of the neighborhood, he procured the passage of a statute to authorize the dredging of the Rivanna River upon which his own estate bordered in part. He then by private subscriptions raised a sum sufficient for carrying out this purpose; and in a short time the stream, upon which before a bark canoe would hardly have floated, was made available for the transportation of farm produce to the James River, and thence to the sea.

In 1766, he made a journey to Philadelphia, in order to be inoculated for smallpox, traveling in a light gig drawn by a high-spirited horse, and narrowly escaping death by drowning in one of the numerous rivers which had to be forded between Charlottes[pg 29]ville and Philadelphia. In the following year, about the time of his twenty-fourth birthday, he was admitted to the bar, and entered almost immediately upon a large and lucrative practice. He remained at the bar only seven years, but during most of this time his professional income averaged more than £2500 a year; and he increased his paternal estate from 1900 acres to 5000 acres. He argued with force and fluency, but his voice was not suitable for public speaking, and soon became husky. Moreover, Jefferson had an intense repugnance to the arena. He shrank with a kind of nervous horror from a personal contest, and hated to be drawn into a discussion. The turmoil and confusion of a public body were hideous to him;—it was as a writer, not as a speaker, that he won fame, first in the Virginia Assembly, and afterward in the Continental Congress.

In October, 1768, Jefferson was chosen to represent Albemarle County in the House of Burgesses of Virginia; and thus began his long political career of forty years. A [pg 30]resolution which he formed at the outset is stated in the following letter written in 1792 to a friend who had offered him a share in an undertaking which promised to be profitable:—

“When I first entered on the stage of public life (now twenty-four years ago) I came to a resolution never to engage, while in public office, in any kind of enterprise for the improvement of my fortune, nor to wear any other character than that of a farmer. I have never departed from it in a single instance; and I have in multiplied instances found myself happy in being able to decide and to act as a public servant, clear of all interest, in the multiform questions that have arisen, wherein I have seen others embarrassed and biased by having got themselves in a more interested situation.”

During the next few years there was a lull in political affairs,—a sullen calm before the storm of the Revolution; but they were important years in Mr. Jefferson’s life. In February, 1770, the house at Shadwell, where he lived with his mother and sisters, [pg 31]was burned to the ground, while the family were away. “Were none of my books saved?” Jefferson asked of the negro who came to him, breathless, with news of the disaster. “No, master,” was the reply, “but we saved the fiddle.”

In giving his friend Page an account of the fire, Jefferson wrote: “On a reasonable estimate, I calculate the cost of the books burned to have been £200. Would to God it had been the money,—then had it never cost me a sigh!” Beside the books, Jefferson lost most of his notes and papers; but no mishap, not caused by his own fault, ever troubled his peace of mind.

After the fire, his mother and the children took temporary refuge in the home of an overseer, and Jefferson repaired to Monticello,—as he had named the elevated spot on the paternal estate where he had already begun to build the house which was his home for the remainder of his life.

Monticello is a small outlying peak, upon the outskirts of the mountainous part of Virginia, west of the tide-water region, and [pg 32]rising 580 feet above the plain at its foot. Upon its summit there is a space of about six acres, leveled partly by nature and partly by art; and here, one hundred feet back from the brow of the hill, Jefferson built his house. It is a long, low building,—still standing,—with a Grecian portico in front, surmounted by a cupola. The road by which it is approached winds round and round, so as to make the ascent less difficult. In front of the house three long terraces, terminating in small pavilions, were constructed; and upon the northern terrace, or in its pavilion, Jefferson and his friends used to sit on summer nights gazing off toward the Blue Ridge, some eighty miles distant, or upon the nearer peaks of the Ragged Mountains. The altitude is such that neither dew nor mosquitoes can reach it.

To this beautiful but as yet uncompleted mountain home, Jefferson, in January, 1772, brought his bride. She was Martha Skelton, who had been left a widow at nineteen, and was now twenty-two, a daughter of John Wayles, a leading and opulent lawyer. [pg 33]Martha Skelton was a tall, beautiful, highly educated young woman, of graceful carriage, with hazel eyes, literary in her tastes, a skillful performer upon the spinnet, and a notable housewife whose neatly kept account books are still preserved. They were married at “The Forest,” her father’s estate in Charles City County, and immediately set out for Monticello.

Two years later, in 1774, died Dabney Carr, a brilliant and patriotic young lawyer, Jefferson’s most intimate friend, and the husband of his sister Martha. Dabney Carr left six small children, whom, with their mother, Jefferson took under his wing, and they were brought up at Monticello as if they had been his own children. Jefferson loved children, and he had, in common with that very different character, Aaron Burr, an instinct for teaching. While still a young man himself, he was often called upon to direct the studies of other young men,—Madison and Monroe were in this sense his pupils; and the founding of the University of Virginia was an achievement [pg 34]long anticipated by him and enthusiastically performed.

Jefferson was somewhat unfortunate in his own children, for, of the six that were born to him, only two, Martha and Maria, lived to grow up. Maria married but died young, leaving one child. Martha, the first-born, was a brilliant, cheerful, wholesome woman. She married Thomas Mann Randolph, afterward governor of Virginia. “She was just like her father, in this respect,” says Mr. Bacon, the superintendent,—“she was always busy. If she wasn’t reading or writing, she was always doing something. She used to sit in Mr. Jefferson’s room a great deal, and sew, or read, or talk, as he would be busy about something else.” John Randolph of Roanoke once toasted her—and it was after his quarrel with her father—as the sweetest woman in Virginia. She left ten children, and many of her descendants are still living.

To her, and to his other daughter, Maria, who is described as being more beautiful and no less amiable than her sister, but not [pg 35]so intellectual, Jefferson owed the chief happiness of his life. Like many another man who has won fame and a high position in the world, he counted these things but as dust and ashes in comparison with family affection.