This charming town is well worth a visit any time, but especially this 250th anniversary year of the birth of Thomas Jefferson.
Charlottesville, the scene of the third president’s boyhood and mature years, is the center for celebrations.
The biggest came on April 13, commemorating the day in 1743 when the writer of the Declaration of Independence was born at nearby Shadwell plantation.
At this central Virginia city in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, you will find more than just Monticello, the home and grounds in whose planning and construction Jefferson exhibited his architectural, technological and horticultural abilities.
Charlottesville also is the site of the University of Virginia, which Jefferson late in life founded, planned and nurtured, once again demonstrating his genius in the architecture and layout of the Rotunda and the justly famed Lawn-a term including not only a terraced grassy sward but the abutting buildings.
In the Charlottesville area are reminders of some of the most amazing people ever to come out of so small a geographical area.
There is Ash Lawn-Highland, home of the fifth president, James Monroe. Albemarle County also was the birthplace of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, leaders of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804-06 to explore the Louisiana Territory, newly acquired from France by President Jefferson.
Also, 20 miles away, in nearby Orange County, is Montpelier, home of James Madison, fourth president and, like Monroe, a close friend and follower of the great Jefferson.
Indeed, except for the state capitol in Richmond, which Jefferson designed, all the major physical reminders of Jefferson’s life lie in this small region of central Virginia. (The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., is another, although not Jefferson’s creation.)
To experience what is called Jefferson Country, start first at the Thomas Jefferson Visitors Center (open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.). It lies southeast of Charlottesville on Highway 20 South, just off Interstate Highway 64.
Admission is free for this first stop for maps, brochures and local reservation services, and the purchase of tickets to Monticello, Ash Lawn-Highland and the Michie Tavern. A Presidents’ Pass, a discount combination $17 ticket for all three, is sold at the center. A friendly receptionist can give you advice on where to park when you visit the University of Virginia.
The center’s permanent exhibit-“Thomas Jefferson at Monticello”-illustrates what Jefferson called his “passions-books, science, my farms, my family and friends.” You learn of his role in such matters as:
– Crop rotation. Substituting wheat production for tobacco.
– Invention of an advanced plow.
– Invention of a copy press, a sort of 18th-Century Xerox.
You learn about Jefferson’s wife, Martha, a widow of “beauty, amiability and a sprightly tongue,” who played the harpsichord. And that Jefferson, who had 187 slaves and 14,000 acres of land in 1774, in 1778 introduced a bill to prevent the importation of slaves. Also, that he died with $100,000 in piledup debts, mostly incurred during his service to his country as a minister to France, in the Cabinet and as vice president and then president.
At Monticello (pronounced Mont-ee-CHELL-o), you park and are taken by shuttle up the rest of the mountain to the home itself. There you are given a guided tour of the house, where among furniture and artifacts you will be shown some of Jefferson’s inventions to make life more efficient. Examples: A silent butler. A revolving bookshelf. A wheel-mounted reading desk. A self-winding clock with falling weights whose daily progress was noted by markings on the wall.
Outside are views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the gardens he laid out and the remains of slave quarters and outbuildings.
Jefferson’s tomb is at Monticello. It bears the epitaph he chose, listing the achievements in which he took the most pride: writing the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, and founding the University of Virginia.
Jefferson died July 4, 1826, his nation’s 50th birthday, the same day that John Adams died. Adams, the second president, was a political foe, but in their declining years they restored their friendship.
At lunchtime you may want to stop at the Michie (pronounced Mickey) Tavern for a buffet lunch of colonial fare, including meats, pickled beets, cornbread and apple cobbler. (The ticket is needed only to see the “museum”-the lodging rooms upstairs and a nearby grist mill.) The tavern itself was moved to this site but in such a way as to seem authentic.
Up the road a short way is Ash Lawn-Highland, a low-key, homelike place. The guide is likely to tell you that Ash Lawn is a later name for the plantation, and that eventually the hope is to revert to what the Monroes called it-Highland.
The guide also may tell you that archaeologists and scholars continually learn new elements about Ash Lawn-Highland, such as that it probably was painted white originally rather than the present yellow that always has been assumed.
(Jefferson’s burned-down birthplace at Shadwell is not open, although plans are afoot to create a historical site there.)
For certain, no one visiting Jefferson Country should miss visiting the Rotunda and Lawn at the University of Virginia, an institution chartered in 1819 and opened in 1825. In many ways, there you find the culmination of the life of this genius in his many roles of educator, lawgiver, architect and inventor.
You start at the Visitor’s Center in the Rotunda, where you will meet a student guide. (The free tours are at 10, 11, 2, 3 and 4.) Before long you will realize that the glory of the place is not just the Rotunda, modeled after the Pantheon in Rome. It’s also the layout of the buildings that extend from the Rotunda area down the sides of the Lawn.
As a knowledgeable guide likely will tell you, when Jefferson made the plans in the second decade of the 19th Century, he realized that very few of the students would have the opportunity he had had to see the architectural wonders of Europe. So he incorporated into what he called his “academical village” along the Lawn 10 “pavilions,” featuring one or another famous edifice in Italy or France.
The pavilions were designed as classrooms and homes for faculty, interspersed among rooms for students, all connected by colonnaded arcades. The idea was to offer the opportunity for a mingling daily of faculty with students.
The grassy area of the Lawn is as impromptu a place for everything from touch football to sunbathing.
Nowadays, the Lawn’s student rooms are reserved for senior honor students, a privilege that instantly woos any honoree from more sumptuous lodgings in a fraternity, sorority or residence hall. A plus in each room is a fireplace; a minus, the lack of bathroom facilities. Your guide may describe the early morning scene as men and women in their bathrobes hurry to the facilities.
A day or more in Jefferson Country will do much to persuade you of the aptness of the famous greeting that President John F. Kennedy gave at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners on April 29, 1962:
“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
