Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, planter, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Following the American Revolutionary War and before becoming president in 1801, Jefferson was the nation's first U.S. secretary of state under George Washington and then the nation's second vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism, and natural rights, and he produced formative documents and decisions at the state, national, and international levels.
Monticello was the primary plantation of Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third president of the United States. Jefferson began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at the age of 14. Located just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, in the Piedmont region, the plantation was originally 5,000 acres (20 km2), with Jefferson using the forced labor of black slaves for extensive cultivation of tobacco and mixed crops, later shifting from tobacco cultivation to wheat in response to changing markets. Due to its architectural and historic significance, the property has been designated a National Historic Landmark. In 1987, Monticello and the nearby University of Virginia, also designed by Jefferson, were together designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The United States nickel has featured a depiction of Monticello on its reverse since 1938.
Albemarle County is a United States county located in the Piedmont region of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Its county seat is Charlottesville, which is an independent city entirely surrounded by the county. Albemarle County is part of the Charlottesville Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 census, the population was 112,395.
Elijah Craig was an American Baptist preacher, who became an educator and capitalist entrepreneur in the area of Virginia that later became the state of Kentucky. He has sometimes, although rather dubiously, been credited with the invention of bourbon whiskey.
John Taylor (1752–1833) was a pioneer Baptist preacher, religious writer, frontier historian and planter in north and central Kentucky. His two histories of early Baptist churches in Kentucky provide insight into the frontier society of the early decades of the 19th century. His 1820 pamphlet entitled "Thoughts on Missions" put him at the center of the controversy within frontier Baptist congregations about supporting mission societies. In buying and selling land on the frontier, Taylor acquired 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) and 20 African-American slaves by the end of the first decade of the 19th century, thus entering the planter class.
Martha "Patsy" Randolph was the eldest daughter of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, and his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. She was born at Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia.
Peter Jefferson was a planter, cartographer and politician in colonial Virginia best known for being the father of the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. The "Fry-Jefferson Map", created by Peter in collaboration with Joshua Fry in 1757, accurately charted the Allegheny Mountains for the first time and showed the route of "The Great Road from the Yadkin River through Virginia to Philadelphia distant 455 Miles"—what would later come to be known as the Great Wagon Road. Likewise, it indicates the route of the Trading Path from Petersburg to Old Hawfields, North Carolina and beyond.
Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. was an American planter, soldier, and politician from Virginia. He served as a member of both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, a representative in the United States Congress, and as the 21st governor of Virginia, from 1819 to 1822. He married Martha Jefferson, the oldest daughter of Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. They had eleven children who survived childhood. As an adult, Randolph developed alcoholism, and he and his wife separated for some time before his death.
Boone Station State Historic Site was a 46-acre (190,000 m2) Kentucky State Historic Site on Boone's Creek near Athens in Fayette County, Kentucky, USA.
Thomas Chilton was a U.S. Representative from Kentucky, a prominent Baptist clergyman, and the ghost writer of David Crockett's autobiography.
Mary Jefferson Eppes, known as Polly in childhood and Maria as an adult, was the younger of Thomas Jefferson's two daughters with his wife who survived beyond the age of 3. She married a first cousin, John Wayles Eppes, and had three children with him. Only their son Francis W. Eppes survived childhood. Maria died months after childbirth.
Colonel James John Floyd was an American military officer. An early settler of St. Matthews, Kentucky, he helped lay out Louisville. In Kentucky, he served as a Colonel of the Kentucky Militia in which he participated in raids with George Rogers Clark and later became one of the first judges of Kentucky.
St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church is a Catholic parish on North Fifth Street in Burbank, California. It includes a Catholic church, elementary school, and high school. Founded in 1907, it was one of the first Catholic churches in the San Fernando Valley. Known as Holy Trinity Parish until 1939, it was renamed in honor of St. Robert Bellarmine. The church and school buildings on the St. Robert Bellarmine campus are modeled after colonial American buildings, including Monticello, Independence Hall, Mount Vernon and the library at the University of Virginia.
Tuckahoe, also known as Tuckahoe Plantation, or Historic Tuckahoe is located in Tuckahoe, Virginia on Route 650 near Manakin Sabot, Virginia, overlapping both Goochland and Henrico counties, six miles from the town of the same name. Built in the first half of the 18th century, it is a well-preserved example of a colonial plantation house and is particularly distinctive as a colonial prodigy house. Thomas Jefferson is also recorded as having spent some of his childhood here. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1969.
The religious views of Thomas Jefferson diverged widely from the traditional Christianity of his era. Throughout his life, Jefferson was intensely interested in theology, religious studies, and morality. Jefferson was most comfortable with Deism, rational religion, theistic rationalism, and Unitarianism. He was sympathetic to and in general agreement with the moral precepts of Christianity. He considered the teachings of Jesus as having "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man," yet he held that the pure teachings of Jesus appeared to have been appropriated by some of Jesus' early followers, resulting in a Bible that contained both "diamonds" of wisdom and the "dung" of ancient political agendas.
This article includes information on the African heritage of presidents of the United States, together with information on unsubstantiated claims that certain presidents of the United States had African ancestry.
Viney Fork Baptist Church is a historic Baptist church near Speedwell in Madison County, Kentucky, at the intersection of Kentucky Route 374 and Kentucky Route 499. It was built in 1802 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
The Travelling Church was a large group of pioneering settlers in the late 1700s that emigrated from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, to the Kentucky District of Virginia. It was the largest group that migrated to the area in a single movement. The group was led by the Reverend Lewis Craig, one of three pastor sons of Toliver Craig Sr., and its core was his Baptist congregation. The group of about 600 people arrived at Gilbert's Creek, Kentucky, in December 1781. Other preachers in the Travelling Church were Lewis Craig's younger brother Rev. Joseph Craig and his beloved slave Peter Durrett, who later became a pioneering black minister in Lexington, Kentucky. Lewis Craig's other brother who was a minister, Rev. Elijah Craig, did not come with the rest of the Church, as he remained for a while in Virginia to help James Madison establish constitutional religious liberty assurances before joining the group later. The group's pioneering members were to found many churches, settlements, and other institutions that continue to this day.
Thomas Mann Randolph Sr. served in the Virginia House of Burgesses, the Revolutionary conventions of 1775 and 1776, and the Virginia state legislature. Married twice, he fathered 15 children. One marriage was to a cousin, Anne Cary, with whom they had 13 children. His second marriage, which resulted in two children, caused a dissention among family members. The youngest son, with the same name as his half-brother, Thomas Mann Randolph, inherited the family plantation, Tuckahoe plantation. Randolph expanded upon the house that began to be built during his parents' short marriage. Orphaned as a young boy, Randolph continued work on Tuckahoe when he came of age. He also purchased Salisbury house, which was used during his lifetime as a hunting lodge.
Eleonora Wayles "Ellen" Randolph Coolidge was the granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson and daughter of Martha Jefferson Randolph and Thomas Mann Randolph. Coolidge had a close relationship with Jefferson, serving as an assistant until her marriage.
