Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

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Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Monticello blacksmith shop accounts, ca. 1793, Accession #10899, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This manuscript was purchased by the Library from Joseph Rubinfine of West Palm Beach, Florida, on January 24, 1990.

Scope and Content Information

This Thomas Jefferson manuscript is a two page accounting chart of small balances due to the Monticello blacksmith shop. The chart consists of a list of eighty names followed by nine columns for each of the years from 1785-1793. Each year is totalled by Jefferson at the bottom of the second page. There are a number of names and totals crossed out on the chart which might indicate collection of the debt. Other types of notations on the document include such things as "wrote Apr. 18," "settled and note given" and the initials S. and G. beside some of the names. George was the slave in charge of the blacksmith shop and the G. may indicate that he was given the task of collecting some of these debts.

Thomas Jefferson was in France for the first five years covered by this account so the amount of activity in his blacksmith shop is noticeably increased in the last four years. The names identified on the account are predominantly people in the immediate vicinity of Monticello, the most prominent being James Monroe, Thomas Mann Randolph, Edward Carter, John Harvie, Bennett Henderson, and Nicholas Lewis. Also included is William Bacon, son of later Monticello overseer Edmund Bacon, and some of the Italian artisans Jefferson brought over to work at Monticello, other overseers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and workmen.