COLLECTION GUIDES

1705-1827

Guide to the Microfilm Edition

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Representative digitized documents from this collection:

Restrictions on Access

Use of the originals is restricted. Select items are available as color digital facsimiles (see links below). Black and white microfilm is also available for use in the library.


Collection Summary

Abstract

This collection consists of approximately 9,500 items, including more than 8,000 pieces of correspondence (letters to Jefferson and retained copies of outgoing letters often made with a polygraph machine), journals, account books, and other personal papers of Thomas Jefferson.

Biographical Timeline

13 Apr. 1743
Born to Peter and Jane Randolph Jefferson at Shadwell in Albemarle County, Va.
Jan. 1758
Enrolled in school of Rev. James Maury; remained for two years.
Mar. 1760
Entered College of William and Mary, Williamsburg.
1762
Left college to study law under George Wythe.
1766
Began garden book.
1767
Admitted to Virginia bar.
1769
Construction of Monticello underway.
Elected to Virginia House of Burgesses through 1776.
Nov. 1770
Occupied Monticello after burning of Shadwell.
1 Jan. 1772
Married Martha Wayles Skelton.
Mar. 1773
Named to Committee of Correspondence to channel communication and to unify the colonies.
Jan. 1774
Began farm book.
July 1774
Delegate to Virginia Convention in Williamsburg; illness prevented attendance; drafted "Albemarle Resolutions."
Aug. 1774
Published "A Summary of the Rights of British America."
Chairman of Committee of Safety in Albemarle County.
Mar. 1775
Attended Second Virginia Convention.
May 1775
Delegate to Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
Sep. 1775
Named commander of Albemarle militia.
June 1776
Virginia accepted his draft for state constitution, the first colony to become a state.
Completed Declaration of Independence.
2-8 July 1776
Declaration signed.
Sep. 1776
Resigned from Congress.
Oct. 1776
Attended sessions of Virginia House of Delegates through 1779 and started revision of Virginia legal code.
July 1779
Elected governor of Virginia.
June 1781
Retired from office after much dispute.
Sep. 1782
Wife Martha died.
Nov. 1782
Congress named him to peace commission in France.
Apr. 1783
Released from commission after preliminary peace signed with England.
Nov. 1783
Delegate to Virginia Congress; drafted 31 state papers.
May 1784
Appointed minister plenipotentiary with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to negotiate treaties of commerce with Europe.
Aug. 1784
Arrived in Paris.
Mar. 1785
Succeeded Franklin as minister to France after latter's retirement.
May 1785
Notes on the State of Virginia first published in Paris; written 1781-1782.
Jan. 1786
Virginia Assembly passed his "Ordinance of Religious Freedom," written in 1779.
Mar. 1786
Journeyed to London for seven weeks to assist John Adams.
Mar. 1787
Toured southern France and northern Italy for three months.
Oct. 1787
Re-elected minister to France for a three-year term.
Mar. 1788
Visited Germany and the Low Countries for seven weeks.
Nov. 1789
Returned to America.
Dec. 1789
Accepted President Washington's offer of position of secretary of state.
Reworked and expanded Monticello from 1789 until 1809.
Mar. 1790
Sworn in as secretary of state in New York.
Nov. 1790
Moved to temporary capital at Philadelphia.
May 1791
Traveled for a month with James Madison through New York, Vermont, and Connecticut to line up political support.
31 Dec. 1793
Resigned from position as secretary of state after conflicts with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
Nov. 1796
Placed on Republican ticket for president in national election.
Feb. 1797
Votes counted; received second most votes to become vice president under John Adams.
4 Mar. 1797
Sworn in at Philadelphia.
Acted as president of the American Philosophical Society until 1814.
Sep. 1798
Wrote Kentucky Resolutions in defense of states' rights in protest of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Nov. 1799
Second set of Kentucky Resolutions passed.
May 1800
Republicans organized first national platform with a caucus, with Jefferson for president in election.
Dec. 1800
Tie between votes for Jefferson and Aaron Burr.
11-17 Feb. 1801
Special session of House of Representatives called to break the tie; Jefferson finally voted in as president.
4 Mar. 1801
Inauguration held in Washington, D.C.
May 1801
Tripoli declared war on the U.S. over commercial policy; warships sent to the Mediterranean.
Dec. 1801
Sent first annual message to Congress.
Feb. 1802
War with Tripoli declared.
Mar. 1802
Repealed Judiciary Act of 1801 to nullify judicial appointments.
Apr. 1802
Signed bill against internal taxes.
Oct. 1803
Louisiana Purchase ratified; bought for $15 million, it restored right of deposit at New Orleans.
Feb. 1804
Re-nominated and re-elected as president with George Clinton as vice president.
May 1804
Lewis and Clark departed from St. Louis to start exploration of new territory.
4 Mar. 1805
Second inauguration held.
June 1805
Peace treaty with Tripoli and Morocco signed.
Jan. 1806
House authorized $2 million to buy Florida from Spain.
Summer 1807
British troops began practice of impressment.
British ships banned from American waters after Chesapeake attack.
Dec. 1807
Embargo Act passed.
Mar. 1809
Repeal of Embargo Act.
Jefferson retired to Monticello.
Sep. 1814
Offered to sell personal library to Congress for $25,000; transferred six months later.
7 Mar. 1825
University of Virginia opened.
4 July 1826
Jefferson died at Monticello.

Sources

For further information on Jefferson's library, see:

Sowerby, E. Millicent, ed. Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983.

Wilson, Douglas. "Jefferson's Libraries." Thomas Jefferson: A Reference Biography. Ed. Merrill D. Peterson. New York: Scribner, 1986.

Collection Description

The Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts held by the Massachusetts Historical Society, by number of documents, is second only to the Jefferson Collection at the Library of Congress. The Coolidge Collection chronicles the personal life of Jefferson, for it is composed, for the most part, of his private rather than his official papers. There are close to 9,500 items in the collection, including more than 8,000 pieces of correspondence (letters to and from Jefferson); 400 architectural drawings; account books and journals, including Jefferson's farm and garden books (estate and plantation records); the manuscript catalog of his personal library; the manuscript of his only major published work, Notes on the State of Virginia; and other miscellaneous manuscript documents.

Thomas Jefferson retained the letters he received, filing them in his desk. His use of a polygraph (a letter-copying machine) enabled him to keep a copy of each letter he sent out. Late in his life, he made wet letterpress copies of his letters. His meticulous record-keeping accounts for the estimated total of 50,000 letters written by or to him that survive.

The letters penned by Jefferson found in the Coolidge Collection are mainly addressed to relatives, close friends, and business contacts, though many do deal with the politics of the time or are of a more public nature. There are also many letters of introduction and reference written to him. Other documents in his own hand include legal papers, promissory notes, accounts, tax statements, contracts, leases, indentures, and memoranda on Monticello. There are also, not in Jefferson's hand, accounts, bills, receipts, invoices, diplomas, some official papers such as Congressional documents, and some miscellaneous letters not addressed to Jefferson but found among his papers.

All dated letters and documents by Jefferson in the Coolidge Collection have been individually cataloged in the MHS card catalog. The card catalog also contains entries for most letters to Jefferson. Off-site researchers may consult the Catalog of Manuscripts of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1969 and 1980 Supplement) for a list of individual items in this collection. Entries marked with an asterisk (Jefferson*) indicate Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III's 1957 additions to the original Coolidge Collection. These items appear in a separate chronological sequence on Reel 14 of this microfilm. A list of the undated items in this collection is available in the MHS library.

This microfilm edition was filmed in 1977.

Acquisition Information

Gift of Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, 1898, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, Jr., 1911, and Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III, 1937, 1957. Jefferson's manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence, which is included on this microfilm but is not a part of the Coolidge Collection, was a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander C. Washburn, 1893.

Custodial History

The Coolidge Collection held by the Massachusetts Historical Society was compiled from four separate gifts by members of the Coolidge family over a span of 60 years. The Thomas Jefferson papers in their possession came to them through a circuitous route.

Jefferson bequeathed his entire personal collection of correspondence, documents, and manuscripts to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph in 1826. Randolph published a four-volume edition of the papers, Memoirs, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson in 1829. In 1837, Jefferson's close friend, George Tucker, wrote a Life of Thomas Jefferson, relying on Randolph's collection and also a selection of letters held by Nicholas P. Trist, husband of one of Jefferson's granddaughters. Trist's collection indicates some division in the correspondence, but Randolph maintained possession of the bulk of the collection until he offered to sell it to the government in 1848.

On August 12, 1848, Congress authorized $20,000 to acquire the papers. As a condition of the purchase, the papers were deposited in the State Department for examination by Henry A. Washington, the librarian of the State Department. He was to divide and keep the "public" manuscripts and return the "private" papers, in which there then was little interest, to the family. Apparently, Washington divided the manuscripts inconsistently and neglected to return the "private" papers. In 1869, Randolph demanded recovery of this part of the collection in accordance with the act of 1848. The "private" papers finally were returned to him a year later in 1870.

Upon the death of Randolph in 1875, possession of this collection of "private" papers that would later form the core of the Coolidge Collection passed to his daughter, Sarah Nicholas Randolph. In 1889, she again offered the papers to Congress, but the bill for purchase failed to pass in 1892. The collection passed into the hands of Sarah's sisters, Carolina Ramsay and Cary Ann Nicholas Randolph, after Sarah's death in 1898.

Thomas Jefferson's great-grandson, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge (1831-1920) of Boston, had become interested in the collection, and he obtained it from Carolina Ramsay. He presented this collection of over 8,000 items to the Massachusetts Historical Society in June 1898. His donation comprises the bulk of the present collection: correspondence, including 3,280 letters written by Jefferson and 4,630 letters received by him; the garden book, 1766-1824; the farm book, 1774-1824; annotated almanacs from 1771-1776; account books for 1783-1790; manuscript expense accounts from 1804-1825; notes on the weather spanning the years 1782-1826; plans of American forts in 1765; law treatises, 1778-1788; legal papers, 1770-1772; and Jefferson's 1783 catalog of his personal library.

Thomas Jefferson Coolidge's son, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, Jr. (1863-1912), visited Monticello in 1911 and found there Jefferson's original architectural drawings for his home in the hands of two of Thomas Jefferson Randolph's granddaughters, Mary Walker Randolph and Cornelia J. Taylor. After buying some of them, he deposited them at the Massachusetts Historical Society the same year. In December 1937, his son, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III (1893-1959), presented to the MHS additional Jefferson-related material, including three volumes of "Acts of the Virginia Assembly," 1764-1765 and 1770-1772, two of which are believed to be Jefferson's own copies; correspondence between Jefferson and his business agents; correspondence between his daughters Martha and Maria and their respective husbands, Thomas Mann Randolph and John Wayles Eppes; and over 200 of the deposited architectural drawings.

The collection was completed in November 1957 with the gift of 282 Jefferson letters dating from 1775-1827 by Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III, including correspondence with business agents and overseers and letters between Jefferson, his daughters, and their husbands.

Restrictions on Access

Use of the originals is restricted. Select items are available as color digital facsimiles (see links below). Black and white microfilm is also available for use in the library.

Other Formats

For digital images of the 1783 and 1789 Catalogs of Books, the manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence, the farm and garden books, the manuscript of Notes on the State of Virginia, and Jefferson's architectural drawings, see the Thomas Jefferson Papers: An Electronic Archive.

Jefferson's farm and garden books have been published in facsimile as: Thomas Jefferson's Garden Book, 1766-1824 (Philadelphia, 1944; Charlottesville, 1976, 1987) and Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book (Princeton, 1953; reprinted 1974, 1985), both annotated and edited by Edwin M. Betts, and The Garden and Farm Books of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Robert C. Baron (Golden, Colorado, 1987).

The manuscript of Notes on the State of Virginia served as the setting copy for the privately printed Paris edition of 1785. (When Jefferson was in Paris in 1785 representing the United States as a diplomat, he paid to have 200 copies of Notes printed for private distribution.) Two years later, in 1787, Jefferson authorized his London bookseller, John Stockdale, to publish for general sale a somewhat expanded edition of the work.

The Jefferson architectural drawings in the Coolidge Collection are reproduced in Fiske Kimball's Thomas Jefferson, Architect (1916; 1968). Frederick Doveton Nichols's Thomas Jefferson's Architectural Drawings (1960 and more recently revised editions) contains a somewhat less complete and less detailed inventory of the MHS Jefferson architectural drawings. These two publications are the sources of the "K" (Kimball) and "N" (Nichols) numbers listed in Series V below. For more information about the various numbers associated with the architectural drawings, see the Thomas Jefferson Papers: An Electronic Archive.

The Massachusetts Historical Society also holds a 31-reel microfilm set of the papers of Thomas Jefferson filmed in 1944 with funds from Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III. This 16-reel microfilm edition, made in 1977, supersedes that set.

Detailed Description of the Collection

Expand all

V. Architectural drawings, ca. 1772-1819

This series consists of 396 items comprised of more than 600 manuscript pages. Some items are single sheets with drawings on one or both sides, but many items are multipage and are comprised of notes with small sketches or just manuscript notes. About half of the items are plans and notes for Jefferson's home, Monticello, but the series also contains plans of his other homes, such as his Paris apartments; sketches for friends' homes; and "public" drawings for municipal and civic institutions, including the University of Virginia, Capitol buildings for Washington and Richmond, the President's House, and the governor's residences at Williamsburg and Richmond. Also included are some 40 sketches of miscellaneous household objects and machines. Most of the drawings were done by Jefferson himself, but the series also contains 30 drawings by other individuals, ranging from a design for the Washington Treasury Office by George Hadfield to sketches for timbers of a barn in an unknown hand.

The Jefferson architectural drawings are not included on the microfilm edition of the Coolidge Collection. The Thomas Jefferson Papers: An Electronic Archive contains digital images and detailed descriptions of these items. Online presentations of all items are also available from this collection guide. Expand each section below to see the links.

Four different numbering systems have been applied to the architectural drawings at different times, and all of these numbers are included below. The "K" (or Kimball) numbers were assigned by Fiske Kimball when he published 233 drawings in 1916. The "N" (or Nichols) numbers were assigned by Frederick Doveton Nichols for his 1960 publication. Some drawings were given "M" numbers after they were acquired by the MHS, but the origin of these numbers is unclear. Previously unnumbered drawings were assigned "MHi" numbers in the 1990s.

Close V. Architectural drawings, ca. 1772-1819

Preferred Citation

Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Access Terms

This collection is indexed under the following headings in ABIGAIL, the online catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related persons, organizations, or subjects should search the catalog using these headings.

Persons:

Adams, Abigail, 1744-1818.
Adams, John, 1735-1826.
Cosway, Maria Hadfield, 1759-1838.
Eppes, Maria, 1778-1804.
Jefferson, Peter, 1708-1757.
Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826--Farm book.
Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826--Garden book.
Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826--Notes on the state of Virginia.
Ko'sciuszko, Tadeusz, 1746-1817.
Madison, James, 1751-1836.
Monroe, James, 1758-1831.
Randolph, Martha Jefferson, 1772-1836.
Wythe, George, 1726-1806.

Organizations:

Monticello (Va.).
Poplar Forest (Va.).
Republican Party (U.S. : 1792-1828).
Shadwell (Va.).
United States. President (1801-1809 : Jefferson).

Subjects:

Account books--1783-1890.
Agriculture--Virginia.
Architectural drawing--18th century.
Embargo, 1807-1809.
Family history--1750-1799.
Family history--1800-1849.
Plantations--Virginia.
United States--Politics and government--1775-1783.
United States--Politics and government--1783-1809.
Virginia--History.
Virginia--Politics and government.

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