Count Me as a Book-Owning Woman

Thomas Jefferson rules this town and if you have any doubt about that, just go to a Banner Lecture about TJ at the Virginia Historical Society. But get there early, because the parking lot is completely filled half an hour before the event.

At previous lectures, I'd observed that R.E. Lee was a big audience-getter, but I think TJ topped even old whisker-face. Speaking today was Susan Kern on her new book The Jeffersons at Shadwell, about the great man's birthplace. Oddly enough, she warned us that there would be much talk of punch.

Kern displayed a keen sense of humor immediately, saying that what had been discovered about TJ at the archaeological dig at Shadwell TJ didn't match the Five Ponds Press textbooks Virginia is using.

I couldn't resist laughing out loud which made the tiny little gray-haired woman next to me look at me in horror (my grandmother also thought I had a tendency to be too loud). The guy on the other side of me nudged me and gave me a thumbs-up in agreement, though.

Her lecture was full of fun facts, highlighting all the new information gleaned from the dig. The home of Peter and Jane Jefferson had five or six heated rooms, the dining room could hold twenty people for intimate little dinner parties, and Jane was the only woman in Virginia who owned her own books.

Some pieces of of Peter's surveying tools were even discovered and Kern said she got a huge thrill matching up the hash marks of his to her own tool. It was these images that ended up on the cover of her book, if that gives you any idea of how satisfying it must have been for a history geek to find them.

The two most startling facts I heard today were that it took five days of travel to get from Shadwell to Williamsburg and that Peter's will bequeathed his slaves to his eight children by age.

So his two year old was bequeathed a two-year old slave, the better for the servant to spend a lifetime learning the needs of serving the gentry. And, you know, so when you left the family home, you could take a person who'd known you your whole life.

As for the punch angle, a bowl of it was apparently part of the deal when Peter acquired the land for Shadwell and again at his funeral where 35-100 pounds of sugar were required to make sufficient punch to send him off.

After her lecture, Kern said, "Were it later in the day, I'd suggest a bowl of punch, but instead I'll take questions." Quite honestly, I would have preferred the questions followed by punch, but I think I'm getting spoiled by lectures with benefits.

But at least we're back in lecture season, so I'm happy to take what I can get, with or without punch.