Jacqueline Langholtz: Jefferson is a local boy. He grows up, he's born at Shadwell, which is really just as the base of this mountain, and you can picture him and friends, good friend Debney Carr, jogging up this mountain, coming up here to play, and fantasizing about living here one day. And if you saw the map that Elizabeth Chew referenced in the gallery there, it shows Monticello, the smaller mountain, and behind it is Mount Alto, and you'll see that on the west side of the house.

Jefferson being a man of the Enlightenment, he's also very interested in nature and bringing nature in, specifically to his house. So he brings in light, he brings in color. Help me get my bearings. Which direction are we facing? Anyone want to be the Boy Scout for the day?

Teacher 1: Sun rises in the east.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Sun rises in the east, yeah, so this is the East Walk, right here, that's what we call it. Jefferson doesn't have a back and a front, he has two fronts. This is the East Front of the house, the West Front of the house is where we will emerge after the tour, and it's where you'll see the more iconic side of Monticello.

So this went really well the other day, I had a visitor from New York and I asked her how many floors the house had, and she gave me the perfect answer, the one I wanted for. What is your answer as you glance at this. How many floors, how many stories? What'd I hear back there? You said four, anyone have a different number? Three. Well, just if you're doing a quick glance, you're not making a careful study, you just glance up at the house. You thought it was only two? One and a half back here. Great. My friend who was visiting for the very first time said, I didn't realize it was only just one story. So now if you're looking, can you understand how someone might think it was just one story?

Okay. That's what Jefferson was really hoping for, that it appears to be one grand floor, and some of the rooms on the first floor will take up two stories, but he's actually tucked a second story in. So above the windows with the shutters, do you see smaller square windows? If you're in the second floor of the house, where family and guest rooms were, to open those windows you actually open them, they're down on the floor, like that. But it's meant to be enjoyed from the outside, to give that appearance of one grand story.

Also if you look very carefully, under the roofline, there are skylights. That's the third floor, there, and that's where the dormer room is. But a lot of the house is meant to be enjoyed aesthetically from the outside and to give a certain impression, actually to make you think of buildings that you might have seen in Europe. And what kind of a building does it make you think of? Rather than a palace. It's not traditional Georgian architecture, it's got me thinking of a very different time and place. The columns. Okay, zeroing in on that. So what does that make you think of? Yeah, ancient Greece and Rome. Exactly right.

Jefferson called it his essay in architecture, meaning he was constantly revising it. He said he delighted in putting up and pulling down. So there's a Monticello One and then when Jefferson is Minister to France, and he travels through France, he comes home with so many ideas that he does such a drastic remodeling that we call this Monticello Two.

Alright, anyone want to read this for us? It does keep moving, doesn't it? We'll take a best guess. Generally coming from the north, right? Varying a little bit northeast and northwest. Jefferson would have recorded this, if you were down in the galleries and you took a look at that log for the weather. 1780s, I think, 1780s or '90s date, I forget which. It said the temperature was about 20 degrees colder than it is today, but it also had a description of cloudy. So we have a similar day. As Dr. Chew described in the galleries, Jefferson took standard weather recordings at the same time each day for the same time for over 40 years. One at dawn, which means you're up at dawn, right? So, we'll talk more about Jefferson's daily routine and how very different it is from mine in his bedchamber. But one at dawn and one at about four o'clock. So getting those standard readings there.

You see another Jefferson device here in front of us. What else do you see on the house?

Teacher 2: The clock?

Jacqueline Langholtz: The clock. And don't be shy, big loud answers, I absolutely love them. The plantation clock here has how many hands? Can you still tell them accurately with one hand?

Teacher 3: Yes.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, relatively so. I think so, too. Inside the house you'll see the exact same clock, it has two faces to it. Jefferson designs this clock, and it is installed in the house about 10 years after he designs it. The nice thing is—this side, it's called the plantation clock, we get a lot of questions about it. The students who visit Monticello are often really intrigued by the clock itself, because inside it not only tells you the time but it also tells you something else. The teachers who have been here before will certainly know. It's a calendar clock, so what else does it tell you.

Teachers: The date.

Jacqueline Langholtz: The date. Exactly right, yeah. It also has three hands inside, so it gives you precise measurements, and only someone who views themselves as a scientist, who's interested in precision and measurement would have a clock with time down to the second. You'll see a clock in almost every room of the house, and one of Jefferson's granddaughters describes him as a 'miser of his time,' that's how obsessed he is with efficiency.

Jacqueline Langholtz: We've been talking about the plantation clock. As advertised, does it have three hands? Yes. As advertised, does it also have a calendar function? Somebody find that for me. Where is that? Excellent, excellent. Okay. So let's break this down. A pendulum clock usually has what that hangs from it?

Teacher: Weights.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Counterweights, exactly. So we've got the pendulum, but the counterweights, which normally come straight down from a grandfather clock could not come straight down because they'd be in front of the door. So they attached the pulleys on the sides and the weights would descend there. What day is it today?

Teacher: Saturday.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Saturday, one of the most intriguing days to be at Monticello, because you can't see the weights. Exactly right. Days of the week are on the wall here, starting with Sunday. So if Sunday's at the top, what day of the week is the clock wound?

Teacher: Sunday.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Sunday. That's when the weights are all the way at the top. So it's wound on Sunday, and the last day in that whole cycle is Saturday. That's when you see that there was a miscalculation in Jefferson's plantation clock. He designed it before it was installed in Monticello, about 10 years prior. When he brought it to the room, it's too big for the room. So he puts the calendar function—Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is on the floor, Saturday is actually in the basement, and to keep from having weights set and rest on the floor because then the clock wouldn't be able to continue, he cuts holes on both sides there, both sides of the floor, so that the weights can make their full descent, all the way into the basement. So we'll make sure that we find Saturday in the basement there.

Earlier you told me that your students often study westward expansion and the travels of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery. There's a lot in this room that has to do with that major contribution of Jefferson's. You see a map on the back wall here that shows the size of the country before the Louisiana Purchase, which does what to the size of our country? Doubles, yeah. Pretty easy to say doubles exactly. Great deal. Just about three and a half cents an acre for over 800,000 acres of land.

How is that paid for? Hm.

Teacher: Taxes.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah. Well, taxpayer dollars, exactly right. So, while now, we see this as, I think, a great decision, it was actually one that was met with some mixed feelings during Jefferson's time, and some pushback on whether or not he was actually authorized to make that decision.

Also in this room, you see, in addition to New World, you see quite a lot Old World, you see Old World art here on the wall, and some European influences with French philosophers, Voltaire and Turgot here on the wall. And actually an American here. Anyone know who this man is? 'Opposed in death as they were in life,' according to Jefferson, whose bust is opposite him. Alexander—

Teacher: Hamilton.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Hamilton. Absolutely. So depending on what conversation you wanted to have with your students, you could have it be about government, you could have an Enlightenment conversation here, you could have it be about art, about science, there's just so much in the room. And certainly visitors waiting to meet the president or to shake his hand or to get an audience with him, sitting in this room would be treated to a natural history lesson of their own. It's a wonderful room for education.

This is the Edgehill portrait. Someone describe that man's expression to me.

Teachers: Grim. Glum.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Great, grim, glum. What else?

Teachers: Tired.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Tired. Yeah, absolutely. Jefferson described the presidency as a 'splendid misery and a daily loss of friends.' Do we know him for any really rousing speeches?

Teachers: No.

Jacqueline Langholtz: What—no. What do we know him for more than his presence and his gung-ho power. Ah, maybe his—okay, some of his specific contributions, things like the Louisiana Purchase. There's a very important document. And writing. Exactly right. His writing. So the Declaration of Independence hangs over here. Certainly when we are talking about the things we remember and love Jefferson for, revere him for, it's his public service and it's things like the Declaration of Independence. Written, he's the primary author on a committee of five. And he's only 33 years old when he writes it. He calls it 'an expression of the American mind.'

So what is this room used for? It's very different from the one we were just in. This is not a public room.

Teacher: It's a parlor.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Sort of like a parlor, but we're going to see a fancy parlor for guests and entertaining a little bit later. Oh, who said—I like office. What made you say that?

Teacher: It looks like one. There's a desk. There're books. There's not too much else.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah. Mm-hm. Yeah. This is an office and a schoolroom. It's an office for the woman in the lower painting here. This is Martha Jefferson Randolph, Jefferson's oldest daughter. And she came to live here and essentially be mistress of the plantation for Jefferson during his retirement years. So after 1809, Jefferson can smile again, after being president, come home to retire, and his eldest daughter is mistress of the plantation. And so, think of all the work that would have had to be done, planning the menus, accommodating guests. She'll have meetings in here with the house staff. So people like Burwell Colbert, the head butler, here. Probably also with Edith Hern Fossett, the chef. Martha's doing a lot of that work organizing the goings-on and logistics of a 5,000-acre plantation that is popular, at a time when there was no Secret Service, right? So anyone who wanted to come up and knock on the window and shake the former president's hand would probably have to be greeted and dealt with. Either invited in or told, thank you, goodbye. And that's what a lot of Martha's —she writes often about working 12-hour days.

Jefferson suffers severe personal tragedy during his lifetime. So he is a family man and someone who loves his family. Is he married, actually? Here's a question, actually, back up. Is Jefferson ever married?

Teachers: Yes. Yeah.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yes. They have six children. Martha dies in childbirth with their sixth child. Only two of those six children survive to adulthood. So Martha, Martha his eldest daughter in the portrait there is one of only two. And he buries the second daughter before he dies. So she is the only one who actually survives him. She has a large family. You can only imagine that after many years of public service, not being home, having his own children pass away, being here as a grandfather with those grandchildren is a great delight to him.

So we have great stories of him running foot races with the kids on the West Lawn and giving them dried fruit and helping them with their studies. Having books for them to—drawing straws so the person who draws the longest straw will get to read the book first, all the way down, the person who draws the shortest straw gets to read it last but then gets to keep the book. So you can just imagine him being a wonderful and supportive grandfather.

Jacqueline Langholtz: It is Jefferson's—

Teachers: Library.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Library. Exactly right. Imagine having access to your grandfather's library and it is like this, 200 years ago. Jefferson described himself as having a canine appetite for reading, which is a wonderful wonderful description. This is his third library, his retirement library. His first one actually burns while he's a student. So Jefferson studies law at William & Mary, his personal library burns at that time, he describes his sadness over that.

His second library, which he works very hard to build, he gives it away, he donates it. He is paid for. Yes, excellent, nice job, teachers, exactly right. So tell me the story there. Can anyone say why it's packed up and sent to Washington? What does it, um—

Teacher: After the British burn Washington—

Jacqueline Langholtz: That's right. So here we are, 2012, actually, 200 years ago the War of 1812, which we could be talking even more about and maybe within your grant you do. But the library is burned by the British. So Jefferson, who believes in the power of knowledge, and that—I'm going to mangle this quote, but it's 'a country that expects to stay both ignorant and free and in a state of civilization expects what never was and never will be.' So if you're going to be an active and healthy democracy with a voting population, the people who are voting have to be—

Teachers: Educated.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Educated. Educated on the issues. Exactly right. That's further evidence—Jefferson, he calls it the hobby of his old age, he starts a university.

Teachers: UVA.

Jacqueline Langholtz: UVA, exactly right. Not only does he design the buildings, so we have the academical village plan here, but he also designs the curriculum. And rather than situating the buildings around a church, what was the center of the campus?

Teacher: The lawn is.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yes, the lawn, but it leads up to—what was that center building at the head of it.

Teachers: The library.

Jacqueline Langholtz: It would have been a—exactly, it's a library. And that with tradition, really. It should have been a chapel, if you were keeping in step with other universities of the day. So Jefferson was, you know, a large supporter, passionate about public education, sends his books to DC, 16 wagonloads. Actually the bookcases that you can see are boxes, so you can imagine that they're very easy to just take down, you put wood on top of it. Sixteen wagonloads to DC and then he writes immediately to John Adams and says, I cannot live without—

Teachers: Books.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Books, exactly right.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Jefferson read in seven languages. Can we name those?

Teachers: Latin.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Latin, excellent. So he's educated in Latin and the other classic language—Greek. Exactly right. I heard another one. French.

Teachers: Italian.

Jacqueline Langholtz: And Italian. Monticello, he studies architecture. And he'll read those Italian books.

Teachers: Spanish.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Spanish! And he uses that copy of Don Quixote to teach himself Spanish. He's en route to France, Minister to France, and he brings Don Quixote and a Spanish-English dictionary with him. So that's five. And the other two are actually so easy that it would be hard to guess. English. And then this one is Old English, which is used in the study of law. We know that he dabbles with German, but we don't put it into that fluency list. Just, yeah.

So here we are, in the bedroom and office of a man who reads and writes in seven languages and reads and writes a lot, right? Over 19,000 letters. That is the polygraph copying machine that you see on his desk there. Someone tell me how it works. We've got two pens that are connected here. Works differently than the one you saw in the gallery that pressed and made a copy, an exact copy, with the impression. How does this one work, if you

Teacher: If you're writing with one, the other one—

Jacqueline Langholtz: If you're writing with one, the other one makes an exact copy, so you keep one of those. He calls it 'the invention of his age.' Behind it we have a revolving bookstand, so Jefferson can look at five books at once. Maybe he's comparing translations. As a copious letter writer and writing to people about—while he actually even writes to a former governor of Ohio because he's heard about the mammoth cucumbers that they have in Ohio, so he writes and asks for seeds.

And then, I loved it, as we came in, one of the first things one of you said was 'efficient design' or 'efficient use of space.' To brighten it, we have one of Monticello's 13 skylights, exactly right. We have not just 90 degree angles here but pretty much bay windows that connect to that shaded porch where Jefferson would have—and getting southern exposure on that, would have lemon trees and just beautiful fragrances. And this alcove bed, what do you all think of this as efficient design? Thumbs up, thumbs down for who wants it. Yeah, I would absolutely want it. Probably easy to change the sheets. You can decide if you want to roll out of bed and be in the bedroom, or I'd probably connect it to maybe the kitchen or something, or the living room.

Teachers: It's like the desk lights that you get for the piano.

Jacqueline Langholtz: That's right, that's right. And you also have space above the bed, which can be used. We believe this was an out-of-season closet. I also happen to believe on a personal level that the grandkids must have hidden up there, because if I were hiding around and playing around in my grandparents' house, that's where I would go. We talked earlier about Jefferson's stature, he's described as having posture as straight as a gun barrel. What do you think that meant? People often tell us it looks short. People often tell us it looks short. Do you think it looks short?

Teachers: It's hard to tell.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yes, well, who designed Monticello? Do you think he's going to make his bed too short? It's six foot three, he's six foot two and a half. Perfect fit, perfect fit.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Here's the part of the tour where I get to use an original Jefferson gadget, the same mechanisms that operated these doors 200 years ago. Thank you for gasping for breath, because it is really exciting. What's that?

Teacher: They're both going to close together.

Jacqueline Langholtz: They're going to close together.

Teacher: And all of the equipment runs...

Jacqueline Langholtz: That's right.

Teacher: That's pretty amazing.

Jacqueline Langholtz: These are Jefferson's self-operating doors, with actually two original panes of glass, too, those are the wavy ones here, have been unbroken for over 200 years. And the chain underneath it is a figure eight, so if we picture something very similar to a bicycle chain, that's what runs it, but we're very proud that it's still going. Jefferson is proud and happy to have it in the house.

You see plenty of examples of good design in this room. You see Jefferson's parquet floor. So if you look at this, speaking of hidden mechanisms and equipment, where is the hardware. Do you see any screws or nails?

Teachers: No.

Jacqueline Langholtz: How is that floor fitted together?

Teacher: It's like the furniture.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Ah, the joints! Exactly right. So this is a floor—Jefferson is inspired by floors he sees in France, he sends a drawing of how he wants it to look. This shape, the contrasting beech and cherry woods, the joints specifically that will be used, and he sends these directions to James Dinsmore. He's a free white worker who lives here at Monticello for about 10 years, helping with the construction of the house, and John Hemmings, brother to Sally Hemmings. And the two of them put this floor together. What do you think of it? Does it look nice? It looks nice.

So they are bringing Jefferson's ideas to life, right? He sends instructions and drawings and they're not traveling through France with him. They get these instructions and then they make it happen in his house. Is John Hemmings paid for his work? He's enslaved. No. What about James Dinsmore? Free white worker?

Teachers: Yes.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yes, he's paid. And the quote is like 'he wouldn't do it again for twice the pay,' because Jefferson's designs are so intricate. Here's a man who says he delights in doing math to the sixth decimal point. Here's a man who's interested in precision, following his directions. I think it must have been a nightmare, absolutely right.

And, you know, I want to go back to talking to Adams for a moment, because Adams, there was a bust of Adams in the cabinet area. Some of you saw that, good. Adams and Jefferson have a complicated friendship throughout their life, right? Actually one student taught me the word 'frenemy,' which I thought was really funny. They become friends again later in life. And tell me about their end days. Is that a story that—tell me—

Teacher: They both die on the same day, and they say, 'Adams lives' or—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, exactly. They die on the same day, and what day is that?

Teachers: July 4th.

Jacqueline Langholtz: July 4th. And not just any July 4th.

Teacher: Fifty years after.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Fifty years to the day. You got it exactly right. So July 4th, 1826, Jefferson dies in that bedroom, on that bed, where we just were, middle of the day, and we know that Adams died on that same day in Massachusetts and his last words were something to the effect of 'Jefferson survives,' exactly right.

We have Ben Franklin in the corner. Couldn't give it up, that's right, God bless him. And here, you know, these are the three things we must talk about in this room. The three greatest men the world's ever known, according to Jefferson. Elizabeth Chew told us the names of two of them. Who's the man who looks like but is not Shakespeare? Sir Francis—

Teachers: Drake.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Bacon. Sir Francis Bacon. Father of the scientific method. In the middle, another scientist, Sir Isaac—

Teachers: Newton.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Sir Isaac Newton. And on the end, the man on the right writes about the natural rights of man, John—

Teachers: Locke.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Locke. And you see a lot of John Locke's thinking in the Declaration of Independence.

What do you all think about this bright color? What'd you say?

Teacher: It wakes you up.

Jacqueline Langholtz: It wakes you up, that's right. A nice place to have breakfast in the morning. Anyone not a fan?

Teacher: It looks expensive, too.

Jacqueline Langholtz: It looks expensive. We have reason to believe it was about four times the price of some of the other paints that could be had. So if other paints could be had, why choose this color? There's got to be a reason. What's that?

Teacher: Because you can.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Because you can. There's got to be a better reason. Ah, okay, that's right. So some of us like to believe maybe it is because you can, maybe it is because the money, but then you think intelligent design, right, and the bringing the outside in and times of the day when this would be used. He's got his personal suite and he's writing letters in that beautiful southern light. What is the north side of the house like?

Teachers: Dark.

Jacqueline Langholtz: It's dark. And it actually is cold, too, right. So this brightens up the room and gives the perception of it feeling brighter. And there's a skylight, and you get some of the western light from the West Lawn here. Again, without the dark right angles, so you get some more light. But what about warmth? You can actually close these pocket doors and in this arch, you'll also see glass. And you'll see the first storm window, I believe the first storm window in a residence in the United States. So there's good design in this room down to the wine dumb waiter. Did you see that hidden in the fireplace?

There's a great story. You saw our BFF forever hanging next to Jefferson, our French friend, the Marquis de Lafayette. So he visits Monticello in 1825, the year before Jefferson's death. Lafayette is on a victory tour, seeing old friends. The two men embrace on the East Lawn. Lafayette stays here for about a week, and Jefferson writes that after Lafayette leaves he has to restock the wine cellar. So you picture old friends talking about the days when they were forming a new nation, I'm sure they were up all night, and I love thinking about that wine dumb waiter just going up and down. 'Can we have some more?' Jefferson sees that design at a restaurant called the Café Mecanique in France and brings that back. He sees another good design in a monastery for a revolving door that you'll see when we leave this room, and that's how food actually came into this dining space. So have we seen a kitchen yet?

Teachers: No.

Jacqueline Langholtz: No. It's under the house and it's actually on the other side of the house. So it's on the south side. Food would have come all the way up under the house in the all-weather passageway, would have come up a very narrow set of stairs that you'll see, which, I am the world's worst waitress, I tried it for about a month and I'll never go back, and I can't picture food coming up those stairs. They're then put, those dishes, on a revolving service door, turned into this room, and then with minimal service needed, minimal may be one or two of the domestic house servants in this room, food is put on the buffet tables that have wheels and brought into the room. Otherwise it's mainly self-service, very little ceremony here at the house.

Here's a man who was President of the United States, he's our first Secretary of State, he's our second vice-president, he's our third president, he's Minister to France, he's Governor of Virginia, what does he want to be remembered for?

Teacher: The Declaration of Independence.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Declaration of Independence. Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom. And founding the University of Virginia. So, essentially, those are what sorts of freedoms, if you had to break those down for me? Education, religion, freedom—and personal freedom. Yeah, exactly right. So that's what he sees himself as worthy of being remembered and instrumental for, and devoting his life to, over 40 years of public service.

So that's what I try to also remember him for. And it's the reason for being here today, right? As much as it is a beautiful house and an icon, there are many beautiful houses in Virginia that you can visit, right? So this is an expression of Jefferson's thinking. It was actually called the 'curiosity of the neighborhood' during his lifetime.

Let's actually come onto the West Lawn a little bit. That way we'll talk about after his lifetime. The plantation, 135 slaves, are sold at auction after his death. And when we talk with students and visitors about slavery, Monticello is not a typical Southern plantation, right? It's not actually useful to use this as a model or common example of what slavery looked like in the American South. Can you tell me why, or why we feel that way?

Teacher: The family units.

Jacqueline Langholtz: That's why, exactly, that there are family units. Jefferson recognized marriages within the groups, and families were kept together. So we know—I mean, you heard me talk earlier about Edith Hern Fossett, the chef here. So she's the French-trained chef, she's Jefferson's chef in DC when he's president, she's here at Monticello, we have her room down by the kitchen. We know she's married to Joe Fossett of the blacksmith's shop. We know about their children, and what duties they had here. We have information about specific individuals and their families, and often multigenerational families here, over 70 Hemings family members at one point or another worked and lived at Monticello. And at Jefferson's death, when 135 were sold at auction, that breaks them apart. So that's a very tragic part of the story. Jefferson frees five slaves in his will. All of those have marketable skills. He says John Hemings is unrivaled in his skills and abilities as a joiner, and certainly these skills would have been sought after by merchants and people in Charlottesville. I mean, these are the people who have the ability to make this house, they made this house, in the blacksmith's shop, and really very skilled labor force here, but only five of them—they're given their tools and equipment and they're given their freedom, but you have sometimes husbands who are freed and wives who are not. So it's a very sad story here.

The house is sold to a local Charlottesville farmer. Essentially just the land is used, and for a number of years the house falls into disrepair. It's then purchased by Commodore Uriah Levy, a New Yorker, he made a lot of money in real estate, and then became the first Jewish naval officer in the United States. And we make a point of saying that he was Jewish, and the first Jewish naval officer, because he made a point of saving the house largely influenced and in gratitude for Jefferson's work promoting religious freedom in the United States.

Elizabeth V. Chew: This visitor center facility opened in 2009 and it has radically improved our ability both orient our visitors to just explain to them why Jefferson is important and so, why they're here, and to engage and educate.

This exhibition is really one of four that's in the building. This is the largest one, it's the one that is intended to put the house, which is the one piece of Monticello that mostly everybody sees, in the context of Monticello writ large, Monticello as a 5,000-acre working plantation.

If you look up at this light pencil drawing on the banner here, you can see the view that the young Jefferson would have seen from Shadwell, looking over across the Rivanna River, the little low mountain in the front here is Monticello. The high mountain behind Monticello is the mountain that Jefferson called Mountalto, and he bought—he bought what he could see from his mountain of that mountain in the 1770s. And so, as a boy, the little mountain just drew him and he had a dream of living there as an adult when he was a teenager. And that would have been the least practical place you could ever live. In a time when the river was a major means of transportation, where getting around was difficult at any time, where water was a constant problem and need, to live on a mountain made no sense. He really elevated ideals over being practical, over practicality.

The central section in the middle of the room here goes through and gives examples of Jefferson's just complete and total dedication to doing what he would call gathering, recording, and sharing and disseminating this idea of useful knowledge, whether it was related to science, to farming, to government, to transportation, to what you could and couldn't grow somewhere. He was interested in really every point of knowledge on the human spectrum. And nothing—there was almost nothing that was too small for his attention.

We have several really fun kind of interactive elements in the exhibition, and this one uses Jefferson's travels, both in North America and in Europe, and it shows people what, when Jefferson was traveling, what he was doing, and he said it himself, that he was gathering ideas that would be useful—'useful'—back in this country. So what we do is follow his travels—and I'm looking at southern France right here—and we talk about everywhere he went, what he was looking at.

So here we are: viticulture or wine-growing in the Burgundy region of France, or ancient architecture in Orange, France. He was also completely obsessed with the idea of people in this country growing olives. He thought that olive oil was going to be the new revolution and that the rice planters in Southern Carolina should stop growing rice and grow olive trees. And he really worked hard to convince them of that. Really, he's so interested in these little details of things that he thinks are going to help him come back here, share the ideas, and even put them to use himself.

So, this is a fun way, and, all as you all know way better than I do, young people love this kind of thing.

Elizabeth V. Chew: So I've talked about how the center is about his dedication to all this gathering and sharing and disseminating. This short wall here is dedicated to a horizontal look across the social spectrum at Monticello. Because we obviously know that Jefferson and his elite family in their 'big house,' they're the tip of the pyramid here, but obviously everything that happens that makes his household run, that makes his cash crops grow, is done by the labor of enslaved people.

So we also look across the spectrum of the enslaved community at people working in the fields versus enslaved people who work in the house or in the [?] industries, and we compare those also to hired white people. There were some hired white workers here who did things like, well, build a house, for one thing, or serve as blacksmiths or certain kinds of carpenters. They also trained enslaved people to do these kinds of jobs.

We've learned an amazing amount about the lives of enslaved people all over the plantation. So, what we know is that enslaved people owned material goods. We tend to have a notion of slavery, I think, or at least I used to, as being very fixed and abstract and this big box of awfulness and yes, it is that. But you can also come to understand it in a much more textured way where you see—we know a great deal about the names and activities and lives of the individual people who lived here in slavery and what happened to their descendants. And that combination of Jefferson's record keeping, archaeology, other kinds of written records, and then genealogy and oral history that we've been doing here for 40 years.

So we know that people who worked in the fields owned the same kinds of really fashionable tablewares that slaves who worked in the house and lived up on the mountain owned and that, in many cases, are the same kinds of things being used in the big house. Slaves had several different ways of making money. Jefferson preferred to give cash incentives to slaves rather than use harsh physical punishment, so some skilled slaves received cash money. Slaves also kept poultry yards and gardens on their own time and sold the products of those, both to the big house and sometimes in markets in towns. Slaves were paid by Jefferson for doing particularly onerous jobs like cleaning out the sewers underneath the privies, and slaves were given tips by visitors quite routinely. So with the money that people here in slavery owned, we know that they went into town on Sundays and shopped in stores. Scholars have studied shopkeepers' ledger books and found that there are records of slaves coming in and buying things.

So what we see here, I think, is examples of how enslaved people survived in a system that denied them their basic humanity. We see how people figured out ways to just get through it. And we see families over generations here whose descendants go on actually to be very involved in all kinds of work towards emancipation and later civil rights.

Elizabeth V. Chew: On the wall here behind you, we break down Monticello into four areas. We look at gardens, agriculture, plantation industries, and the house. And my interest here was making it all on the same plane. Often we tend to privilege the house over everything else. I think Jefferson saw it as being all of a piece.

So we look at how he puts what he considers to be this useful knowledge to work, in all aspects of his operations here, whether it's what he grew in the garden, his attempts to grow grapes to make wine, his intense interest in the technology of agriculture. For example, he himself invented a kind of plow moldboard. People think of him as being an inventor. He was mostly a creative adapter because of all these things he learned about, wrote down, and then later used here at Monticello. The one thing that he ever truly invented was a plow moldboard. And we have a recreation plow right here that shows this curved—it's the curvy wood part that sort of turns over the soil once it's cut by the metal blade. So he had witnessed people plowing in France that he thought were really inefficient, and he has this geometric idea for the shape of a moldboard that will do a better job with less resistance in turning over the ground. So he has this plow made here at Monticello and he writes to all of his people all over the world to tell them about it. Even though he won several awards for it, it was never really widely adopted.

The Garden Book is really a bravura demonstration of his record keeping interests. Let's see. We have a little facsimile of it right here, and it's really hard to see, but he basically—he started it as a young man still living at Shadwell. After his retirement here in 1809, he really does it every single year in earnest, where he writes down, keeps a chart where he writes down everything he plants and when, when it sprouts, how it does, and then eventually 'when it comes to table,' which means when they get to eat it in the house, and when it goes to seed. And he does this every year for over 20 years. He doesn't care if something doesn't do well, he just tries something else. His interest is really in what will grow well in this particular climate here in Albemarle County, Virginia. He wants to know what he can grow here that will be useful. So things like benne or sesame, he grows that. These hot peppers a friend in Texas sends him. There are a number of examples of things that people send him that he tries to grow. He really really really wants to grow wine grapes, but he never can. He would actually love the fact that wine is such a big deal now in Virginia.

So even though he has this amazingly gorgeous, 1,000-foot-long garden, we know for a fact that this garden was not primarily meant to furnish the table. We know that because from the beginning to the end of Jefferson's life at Monticello, we have record books kept by the women of his family, the white women of his family, recording purchases of large quantities of garden produce from slaves, and this is one of them right here. So Jefferson's garden was mostly a laboratory and an experiment. If something came to the table, that was great, but they were not relying on it. They had this very good backup plan that they had to use almost every week.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Tell me more about yourselves and what, when you woke up this morning or heard about this trip two weeks ago, you wanted to take away from it.

Teacher 1: Well, I teach fifth grade, so it's mostly U.S. geography, that's the emphasis for our course, so—

Teacher 2: Westward expansion?

Teacher 1: Yes, that's really—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Okay, so Lewis and Clark's why you're here? Great, okay.

Teacher 1: Especially the scientific discoveries and we're putting more of a science emphasis on the flora and fauna of different areas, too. So what their findings were and also what they found—yeah, I think it'll be very helpful.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Wonderful. Great.

Teacher 2: Is there information on the relationship with Jefferson or his time period with the Native Americans, because that's one of the things that we try to do as we move from region to region is that Native American element of that region.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah. Yeah. So the question was the relationship that Jefferson specifically had with Virginia Indians?

Teacher 2: And his contemporaries.

Jacqueline Langholtz: And his contemporaries. Okay. Jefferson's own and only self-published book, his own book, Notes on the State of Virginia, would probably be a good resource and that's a primary resource there. That's a field that I think people are really just beginning to explore and learn more about, and I think you'll hear some different opinions about, what did that really honestly look like, and I think you'll see a lot more scholarship about that coming out, I hope so.

Teacher: Do you think that it was typical what Jefferson had here, was that a typical economy for a plantation in the South?

Elizabeth V. Chew: No. You mean the slaves—

Teacher: What you found in the—

Elizabeth V. Chew: Oh, yes, I do. Yes, I do, actually. I think Jefferson was unusual in what he said he wanted here was to use things like work incentives and not harsh punishment, that keeping families together made people more productive because they were happier. That was not typical.

Teacher: Right.

Elizabeth V. Chew: Yeah. But I think that the slaves raising gardens and chickens, perfect, totally normal. Slaves owning goods across the South, completely typical.

Teacher: Wow.

Elizabeth V. Chew: It's probably the thing that most people don't know about slavery, that is most surprising to them. That is absolutely the case. In the very very deep South, like Louisiana, and maybe even Alabama, it's less so, but in the Mid-Atlantic, the Carolinas, it's completely the way it is.

Teacher: And these are very high-quality goods that they had, then, would that have been typical as well, that they had—

Elizabeth V. Chew: It's what was available. You know, they're on the spectrum of things you could have. They're not at the very top. Jefferson has some Sevres porcelain from Paris, but he has this stuff also.

Teacher: Wow.

Elizabeth V. Chew: So it's sort of like your everyday china, as opposed to your grandmother's fancy china, but it's absolutely the same thing that any of the other

Teacher: And where would that have come from, from Europe as well?

Elizabeth V. Chew: Stores in the area. These would have still been English by this time, but they would have been available, widely available in stores in every town in the U.S.

Teacher: So, typical. Like Pfaltzgraff kind of.

Elizabeth V. Chew: Yeah, he could have gone to Charlottesville on Sundays and bought them. Merchants stayed open on Sundays so the slaves could come, actually. And they bought things like tablewares and then clothing, things like buckles and buttons and hooks for clothing that they would make themselves and fabric. Jefferson gave slaves basic food, two sets of clothing a year, blankets, and then cook pots when they got married, but people had a lot more than that, that they acquired through their own incredible ingenuity and entrepreneurship basically.

Teacher: That's interesting.

Elizabeth V. Chew: It took a lot, it took so much effort and ability to survive laboring like that.

Teacher: Is there any evidence that slaves worked with Jefferson intensely on his inventions and machinery?

Elizabeth V. Chew: Oh, yeah. That's such a good question.

Jacqueline Langholtz: What was the question?

Elizabeth V. Chew: Whether slaves worked with him. Slaves definitely made the plow. I think, he lived in this cerebral region of his brain that he never, hardly ever went out of. I think he just saw—he drew all these geometric models of how he derived it. I think he kind of felt it in the abstract and then he had slaves—made it, build it, and then try to use it. But they probably were not involved in the design decisions.

Teacher: Right. Because that would have taken a lot of skill to craft.

Elizabeth V. Chew: No kidding.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Well, I get these same feelings about what you see in the house, or even the Campeachy chairs, even the friezes. So Jefferson is—he's the one traveling, he's the one reading, and then he's saying oh, I want this in my house. And then you have John Hemmings and James Dinsmore. But John Hemmings, who has not traveled, who hasn't read about these—

Elizabeth V. Chew: Who wasn't educated.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Right, who wasn't educated, making 3D versions, bringing Jefferson's physical ideas to life. It's just incredible to me.

Teacher: Wow.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Take a few minutes working in groups to figure out what’s in the pocket in front of them. So first, what is it? How would have it been used? And then lastly, who they think would have carried this pocket. So I am going to just give you the exact same challenge, take 10 minutes or so, talk within your group.

[Group 1:]
Teacher 1: Somebody’s a seamstress.
Teacher 2: Yes.
Teacher 1: Must do some cooking or . . .
Teacher 3: Had responsibility—
Teacher 2: Yes.
Teacher 3: —because I remember reading about that in the dependencies.
Teacher 2: Yeah, cause not everybody had the keys.
Teacher 1: No.
Teacher 3: Martha had the keys and there was one other.
Teacher 1: And there was a sewing little table in there.
Teacher 2: Also a number of geese were killed.
Teacher 1: I would think this would be like somebody who's either a supervisor or somebody that’s not the bottom person.
Teacher 2: No.
Teacher 1: This person writes so it couldn’t be a slave, right? Because they weren’t suppose to be able to write. Not that they couldn’t.
Teacher 3: Yeah, yeah.
Teacher 2: For our own eating 28 hams of bacon. Twenty-one shoulders and 27 middlings.
Teacher 1: Well, I think it’s a she based on the embroidery, on the fan.
Teacher 2: Sewing stuff.
Teacher 1: Right.

[Group 2:]
Teacher 1: I think we have it.
Jacqueline Langholtz: You got it.
Teacher 2: Yeah.
Jacqueline Langholtz: So that’s a—
Teacher 1: We think this is a slave child’s pocket.
Teacher 2: Or a child’s pocket.
Jacqueline Langholtz: What makes you say that?
Teacher 1: Well, you said they made nails.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Excellent.
Teacher 1: Marbles.
Jacqueline Langholtz: What were the marbles for?
Teacher 1: A game.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, keep going.
Teacher 2: Making extra money if, like, they made some extra nails or they were able to—
Jacqueline Langholtz: That’s right. And can I ask you would you have known that before you did your gallery tour and your house visit?
Teacher 1: No, because I had no idea they made money.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, that is a surprising fact to a lot of students and teachers to find money in the slave’s pocket
Teacher 1: And that they had china and stuff.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, so that’s a great opportunity for discussion because a lot of people will think this must be from someone else’s pocket or they’ll look at this and say ‘I thought it was a slave pocket but there's money in it,’ but you knew why there might be money in it, good for you.
Teacher 1: Fishing.
Teacher 2: We had said actually, originally, we thought this might be something that they either made like a handle or we thought is it something that shaped the, you know.
Jacqueline Langholtz: And once you know it, it’s right there in front of you but for students finding their way through this on their own, it’s a really good activity and they have a lot of fun with it. And then we get to you know dim the lights and we'll do a flint and steel show for them.
Teacher 1: I like this as a pre- and post- activity. That’s amazing.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, and photos for a lot of this are online, too. And you knew what this was?
Teacher 1: She did.
Teacher 2: Yeah, I did.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Good for you, do you have a name for it?
Teacher 1: Mouth harp?
Teacher 2: Something, yeah, it’s a mouth harp. I think it’s the mouth harp.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, so if you then had to group these items, too, or tell us what types of things you see—work, right, you see some home life, you see some entertainment, slave garden.
Teacher 1: Yeah, like this would be making a fire at home. This would be work.
Jacqueline Langholtz: And possibly spinning, this is flax.
Teacher 2: Okay.
Teacher 1: This would be play. This could be work or play.
Teacher 2: Or I was going to say, or extra food.
Jacqueline Langholtz: And there are some things that can be made and some things that are bought.
Teacher 1: Why would they carry seeds?
Jacqueline Langholtz: You tell me, I don’t know. And we don’t know that all of this was always carried.
Teacher 1: Why would they have seeds? Maybe they traded for them or something.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Well, do you remember Elizabeth Chew told us a story about the gardens—well, she said the garden's main function was not to supply all the food for the table and then she supplemented that with the story about the main house actually sometimes purchasing food from the slaves so purchasing cucumbers that they have grown or . . .
Teacher 1: So this boy maybe is going to plant some seeds to grow some food.
Teacher 2: So there are slave gardens.
Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, sometimes for themselves. So on a plot of land where they're able to supplement their rations, food that they're given by the house or maybe they choose to grow something that they know that the house could have a use for and they sell it back to the house.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Who thinks they know whose pockets they have? Just with a silent show of hands. I know, I know who my pocket represents. Great! Ah, wonderful.

Teacher 1: It’s a list and it’s written so we knew that person had to be educated—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Great.

Teacher 1: 'Cause even if they didn’t write it they had to read it.

Jacqueline Langholtz: And it’s a list of what kinds of things, can I ask?

Teacher 1: Ah, things they’re going to buy or—like it says kill chickens and stuff like that, you know, it would be like a grocery list.

Teacher 1: Like a grocery list, great.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Keys.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Can you hold those up so that we can all see them too? How would you describe that key set? If you said, oh, I left my keys on my desk, go and grab them. They look like . . .

Teacher 1: Like jail keys, no.

Jacqueline Langholtz: They’re big, right?

Teacher 1: They’re big, they’re bulky, they’re heavy. Must be somebody important 'cause not everybody had keys.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Great deduction, yes. And what’s that door like probably?

Teacher 1: Heavy.

Jacqueline Langholtz: It’s not a dainty little door, right. Great, what else is in your pocket?

Teacher 1: We had a fan and then an embroidered bag, so that led us to believe it was probably a female's bag.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Excellent. And that is a pocket that’s worn on the outside, tied around your waist, great. How about the big reveal? Whose do you think it is?

Teacher 2: Well, we thought it was Martha, Jefferson’s daughter.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Round of applause. Excellent. Yay. So, so why it, why is it Martha Jefferson Randolph’s pocket?

Teacher 2: Well, we knew based on what we had seen in the dependencies about the keys and the importance of controlling stores . . .

Jacqueline Langholtz: Great.

Teacher 2: And the list, keeping that. And then it was kind of also interesting, lots of sewing items.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yep. You have spices in there, I heard you talking about the vanilla, you have a sewing kit—and carrying the keys, you’re right, even that phrase is responsibility in the house. So if I’m carrying the keys to the storehouse, I’m responsible for what’s inside there, and she would sometimes pass the keys over to a domestic house servant or a slave who needed to get in to retrieve something or she would get it for them. And this was apparently an exercise that each one of the granddaughters had to do for about a week and they write and complain about it because it’s such a pain that people are constantly coming and finding you and interrupting you because they need access to something in the storehouse. And it reminds me of when I was in high school or junior high and they made me carry around a fake baby for a while. I don’t know if that’s still done in schools but it was to teach that this is—being an adult is a lot of responsibility.

Teacher 3: Well, one of the things I knew 'cause I knew somebody that actually had one of these and could play it. It’s a mouth harp. So you can put it in your mouth and when you put it in between your lips and you go like this then you can change, like, and it makes a twangy kind of sound like—yeah, like a real twangy kind of sound so we thought that that would probably be some sort of recreational something that would be in this pocket.

Teacher 4: And then there's nails, and I remember somewhere we heard that they make nails in the—that the children make nails, so—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yes, in the what though? You were about to tell us where?

Teacher 4: In the, I forget, the place where they make nails.

Teacher 3: The forgery.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, that's the forge, the blacksmith shop, great.

Teacher 4: And then fishing line and a hook and a bobber doohickey.

Teacher 3: And then a flint, which we didn’t know what this was, but you can make fire with it and you've got the flax—yeah, Chris helped us. At first we thought it was a handle on something, but you can actually hold it and you can do that and make fire.

Teacher 4: And it’s small so it’s not like an adult could use it because the way you use it has to be small for small hands.

Jacqueline Langholtz: I use it, I use it. That’s a typical striker size.

Teacher 4: Oh, it is? Oh, okay, I thought it was small.

Jacqueline Langholtz: But you’re right in saying that it's small, you’re also letting us know something about it, that it’s portable. Right? And if we are looking at pockets, everything wer'e looking at is something that is portable here.

Teacher 3: And then really quickly, interestingly, we had these little pieces—they look like Monopoly pieces, and so you can put them together and make a coin. Apparently you used to be able to break a coin apart to make change.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Not like a piece of candy bar, though, but cutting it.

Teacher 5: Like a piece of eight.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Piece of eight! So okay, there’s a story there. What do you know?

Teacher 5: They would cut it and they would weigh it so that they would make sure that they paid the right amount.

Jacqueline Langholtz: That’s right.

Teacher 5: 'Cause your silver was very precious to you.

Jacqueline Langholtz: That’s right. So cutting and weighing the silver. And a piece of eight—eight of those pieces go into a dollar piece.

Teacher 4: And then marbles, which are also recreation.

Teacher 3: So we thought that it was a slave's pocket, like a child slave or, you know, young person.

Jacqueline Langholtz: And they got it right. And we had what I thought was a great discussion, too, because often times if—even teachers—but students do this activity before they’ve gone through any part of the mountain or before they’ve gotten exposed to some of the things in the galleries, sometimes the money in that pocket can throw them off. They either think, well, I thought it was a slave's pocket, but there’s money in it, so it’s not, or they think the money is from someone else’s pocket, so it’s a great way to also teach about how Monticello has different roles and responsibilities for slaves here and that sometimes slaves were paid for their work. People like Joe Foset, the blacksmith, or John Hemmings who often times sold some of their work in town and then had some money from that or selling produce back to the house as Dr. Chew told us.

Teacher 1: We had a sampler with the alphabet on it. A game that has different levels of difficulty, either trying to catch it on top here or in the hole, which is next to impossible. We also had marbles in ours, as well. A little squirrel, which, that actually ended up being a game piece as well. We had a slate with the engraving—I don’t know if you call it chalk or not but—and we had a book in French that was on Anne of Cleves and that’s all we could really figure out because it’s entirely in French. And what was most helpful was a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Patsy that was written—it was dated 1783 in Annapolis and kind of went over his educational expectations for her while he was not at Monticello and that led us to believe that this was the pocket of Patsy, his daughter.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yes, and would you mind for everyone’s intense enjoyment walking us through what the "miser of his time," Thomas Jefferson, recommends for how a young girl should spend her day?

Teacher 1: "From eight to 10 o’clock, practice music. From 10 to one, dance one day and draw another. From one to two, draw on a day you dance and write a letter the next day. From three to four, read French"—that explained the book—"From four to five exercise yourself in music. From five till bedtime read English and write"—looks like "writed." Communicate this plan to Ms. Hopkinson—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Her tutor.

Teacher 1: —"and if she approves of it, pursue it as long as I remain in Philadelphia. Activate her"—"articulate her affections, she has been a valuable friend to you and her good sense and her good heart make her valued by all who know her."

Jacqueline Langholtz: Excellent. Wonderful reading. So from family letters we learn a lot about the daily life—I mean, that’s the name of this program right, Daily Life at Monticello—for the family, for the staff, so for those who live in the house, for those who work in the house. We love that letter. And what do you think students—how do you think students react to that letter? What do they hear when they see it? They’re like, did she not eat? No, she ate. Did she not sleep? Right, but it sounds—you know, it sounds pretty stern. So who’s missing from this picture? El Jefe, right? Take us through what was in your pocket.

Teacher 2: Well, the first thing that was noticed was it's nice leather when we opened the pocket itself. The thing that we thought—we found really curious was the ivory for note-taking, for this. The glasses are really nice and they—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Ah, the spectacles.

Teacher 2: So they can be compacted a lot more. And this feels like very nice leather. There is a letter inside, it’s been sealed with the wax and the seal from here and it’s signed from Thomas Jefferson. It’s dated Monticello, April 16, and then the year 10, obviously 1810 because what other century could it be?

Jacqueline Langholtz: Right, but great question.

Teacher 2: And it says, "Dear Jefferson"—our question is who’s the Jefferson he’s writing to, it’s a person, he says they’re out of salad oil, he’s wondering if they have any in Richmond, if it’s good quality, they wanted—

Jacqueline Langholtz: They want a lot of it.

Teacher 2: They want a lot of it. I’m trying to think how many. If it’s mediocre then they want two or three. If it’s not so good just a single bottle just to serve them until he can get some from Philadelphia.

Jacqueline Langholtz: This is a man obsessed with salad oil, just so you know. Thomas Jefferson is obsessed with salad oil and this is—if it’s good stuff, get a lot of it, and if it’s bad, I need some, so just give me some and then we'll get some good stuff later on whenever we can. Yeah, that’s what that is.

Teacher 2: Just too fun. And then at the very end he says that everyone in my family is well except for Benjamin whose health isn’t too good. How are you in Richmond? And he said he’d probably see him in Richmond at some point in time. But we don’t know, at least we couldn’t figure out who Jefferson was. Was it his brother or somebody?

Jacqueline Langholtz: Well, that’s a great question and it’s someone in the family. Does anyone here—anyone here in a family where names are repeated in your family? Yeah, so the same thing here. And you’ve already seen that Martha’s name is repeated so his wife is Martha, his eldest daughter is Martha, and here his name is repeated—Thomas Jefferson Randolph is the grandson. He’s actually the executor of the will, so this is a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Randolph.

Teacher 2: Randolph, the grandson.

Teacher 3: Provider of salad oil.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Provider of salad oil, that’s right.

Teacher 2: Okay, do we go through everything?

Jacqueline Langholtz: I like that next thing you’re grabbing, so please do.

Teacher 2: It’s a—this one is the quill—portable quill and the ink as well.

Jacqueline Langholtz: It’s a portable writing set. I love that. It’s so funny, too, because sometimes students ask us if it’s perfume or do you want to guess the other thing they were like—

Teachers: A flask.

Jacqueline Langholtz: A flask. No, no, no! Jefferson’s a man of letters, it’s for writing, yeah.

Teacher 2: Then there’s more money. If you want to show them the money.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah, and more money compared certainly to what you had in your pocket, yeah. Excellent. And any sort of epiphanies or questions you have about Jefferson the man after looking through a recreated pocket for him?

Teacher 2: I just love seeing this after we’ve talked about it. This was awfully fun for me.

Jacqueline Langholtz: So what did we—what did we say about this? Or I don’t know if the whole group heard the discussion&#8212

Teacher 2: It was—it was made from ivory and you can write on it with a pencil.

Teacher 4: How accessible was that?

Jacqueline Langholtz: I don’t know, that’s a great question. Jefferson often has things made specifically for him to his specifications. I, at least, haven’t seen this in other venues—David, I’m looking towards you. I mean I learned about it here but that’s not to say that no one else used it. Certainly other people and Jefferson is not alone in being obsessed with data collecting as a man of the Enlightenment, he’s doing this and he’s sharing data with other people, but this is his system of collecting, but you can’t buy these so they're at least uncommon enough that no one makes reproductions of them. So these are piano keys, this is ivory from piano keys that we bought and then they're just sort of tacked together. And he had very small ones for travel and slightly larger ones in the galleries too. And you’re right—you take shorthand notes on them in lead and then transfer it to the appropriate book, so maybe it transferred into the weather book or the garden book or the plantation book and then wipe it off and reuse it. I love these.

Teacher 4: Were some of Jefferson’s actually found onsite?

Jacqueline Langholtz: We have some of his upstairs but I don’t think they were ever buried and unearthed. I think they were always known to be his and treasured or at least known of. Let’s give them a round of applause. Wonderful job!

Briana Zavadil White: So, within the education department what we do is we use the portrait as a springboard into a conversation about history and biography, because the Portrait Gallery considers itself to be a biography, history, and art museum. So the art, the portrait, is always our focus, yet we're using that to get into a much deeper conversation.

The activity that we like to do is called a puzzle activity. You will need to share, and some of you will get your own. All right, this is what I would like you to do. In your pairs, or individually—depending on if you have a pair or you're working individually—just look at your puzzle piece, and try to identify what it is that you see. You're not trying to put the puzzle together yet, because we will get to that point; don't share with another group what it is that you have, just identify what it is that you're looking at. Okay? And then we'll go through in just a second.

[One group converses]

Speaker 1: [Unintelligible]

Speaker 2: It makes him seem really easy and relaxed.

Speaker 1: And interested in what he's saying. The other person over there, it's like he's not party to that conversation.

Speaker 2: Right, like he's focused on something else over here.

Speaker 1: Doesn't that look like he's looking at—maybe the city—

Briana Zavadil White: Just identify to the group what it is that you saw, but not showing anybody else your puzzle piece. Okay? Okay?

Speaker 1: Levers, wheels, some type of transportation tool? Lots of wood, and lots of levels—platforms—made of wood.

Speaker 2: We had a rug, a couple shoes—with feet and pant legs. And a map, or sketch of a building unrolled on the floor.

Speaker 3: I had what looks to be a blueprint sitting on an end table with a red rug on the floor.

Speaker 4: We have a meeting; there are many men involved. Two men are having an aside—one is turned to the other listening. There's something strange on the table, a metallic device, it looks like it's got tape through it; so we were wondering if it’s a telegraph receiver or something.

Briana Zavadil White: What do we know for certain about this portrait?

Speaker 5: That it's a formal affair.

Speaker 6: The signing of the Declaration of Independence or something?

Speaker 7: There's no women.

Briana Zavadil White: So it's a meeting, there's no women, it’s a formal affair, the signing of perhaps the Declaration.

Speaker 8: They look like prominent, powerful men; they have authoritative dress.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, so their clothing is telling us that—again, this idea of formality—but also that they are prominent gentlemen.

Speaker 9: Movers and shakers.

Briana Zavadil White: We talked about the rug, there's some red drapery, right? And the marble pillars.

Speaker 10: There's the Franklin portrait.

Briana Zavadil White: There's the Franklin portrait.

Speaker 10: Which would mean that it's not the Declaration of Independence signing, but maybe it's inventors or industrialists.

Speaker 11: Maybe the period of Enlightenment, invention, science.

Briana Zavadil White: And you had said mid-19th century. Why did you say that?

Speaker 12: The clothing.

Speaker 13: No powdered wigs.

Speaker 12: The dark black coats that seemed to have been popular around that time.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, okay. What do you want to do with it?

Speaker 13: Put it together?

Briana Zavadil White: Why don't we do it right there, in that open space?

[Attendees assemble puzzle]

Briana Zavadil White: What's the big "so what?" of a puzzle activity?

Speaker 14: If you did it with a class, they'd be questioning where things go, where things are placed, what's the significance of observing.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, so observation [and] visual thinking. What else?

Speaker 15: Spatial awareness of where something's located within something larger.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, and making inferences. Anything else?

Speaker 16: Working collaboratively.

Briana Zavadil White: The puzzle activity works really well when you choose a portrait that has a lot going on in it, like this piece does. It allows the opportunity to get into the individual pieces, because no one piece doesn't have a lot going on. Even the piece in the corner that sort of looks like a lot of just dark space, I mean, it's still an important piece of the puzzle.

Briana Zavadil White: What do all of these men have in common? Speaker 1: They've got to be inventors. Speaker 2: They're trying to make a decision. Briana Zavadil White: They have to be inventors, they're trying to make a decision. What visually in this portrait is leading you to believe "inventors" and, again, this idea of a meeting and trying to make a decision about something? Speaker 3: Blueprints, models. Speaker 4: Different things, like the gun could be a Colt; just all the different little contraptions, definitely the blueprints, and Franklin again, I think that's— Speaker 5: He's symbolic. Speaker 6: You've got the gentleman pointing at whatever it is, and it looks like the three of them together in the center are pointing at it. They may agree on something and the guy turning across the table to talk to the gentleman behind him…maybe there's two different ideas about what's going on. Speaker 7: I'm wondering though about the men on the left. The lighting is on them so they're significant somehow, but they seem on the fringe of what's going on. So I'm wondering why are they there and what impact do they have? Speaker 8: Or are they just the investors. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, okay. So this is interesting right? You're thinking that perhaps some of these individuals are investors. So again I guess the question would be, what do they allhave in common? Speaker 9: They don't look happy. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. Speaker 10: Well, they're all white males. Briana Zavadil White: What does that tell us? Speaker 10: They are leaders of some industry, because white, and they probably are property owners because they're making a decision and at this timeframe you had to own property to have any kind of power or authority. Briana Zavadil White: What does it say that Ben Franklin is in this portrait, but as a portrait within the portrait? Not physically among them. Speaker 11: It's past his time, but he's influenced the thinking or whatever is going on. Speaker 12: He's pretty much the "Great Inventor." He represents the spirit of inventing. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, so, it's past his time—which is starting to help us date this portrait a little bit; we know we're past 1795. He is above them, again as the Father of Science and Invention—the patron saint. Okay. What else? Speaker 13: This guy in the center is probably one of the lead authority figures in this group because his body is facing toward us, and his body scale is a little larger, seemingly, than some of the other ones—just the width of him. Briana Zavadil White: He's spread out, right? The way that the artist has positioned him we actually see his whole body, not profile. All inventors, right? So, we've got Franklin as the Father of Science and Invention watching over all of these men, okay? One of the reasons why we know that they're all inventors is because—this is when it all fits so nicely together for you as educators—because these men are placed in this portrait with their inventions, with models of their inventions. You've got the Colt Revolver; you've got McCormick's mechanical reaper; you have Goodyear's rubber soled shoes right here. I have had so many conversations—I was just having a conversation this morning with two of the Portrait Gallery's historians, and for the life of us, we just don't know what this is! This is the telegraph. We think that this is a model for a printing press. This is a sewing machine. And the carpet loom. And one of the reasons that we know that we're smack dab in the Civil War for this portrait is the facial hair. Think about it, Abraham Lincoln—with the facial hair—I mean, we're very much in that style. So, you've all been very curious about the individuals, and the lighting, and the way that they're faced, so here's my question to all of you: You are the preeminent inventors of the era; are you all going to have time to come together and have time to sit for your portrait to be painted? Group: No. Briana Zavadil White: No, absolutely not. So what the artist, Christian Schussele, has done in this portrait—just like he did with Washington Irving and his friends at Sunnyside right there—is he sketched them individually from life, so the connection between the artist and the sitter, and then brought them together in his imagination. Okay? So this is why we've got a little bit of strange lighting right here. It's also why most of these men don't necessarily seem to be looking at each other. I mean, they're looking in the same general direction, but it's not as if it's a straight-on conversation.

Speaker 1: It's like a memoir. Like it's telling about his history, not just that moment in time. Speaker 2: Somebody made it to show honor or respect to him. Was he president at the time? When was it painted, like right then or after? Briana Zavadil White: So even though we're seeing "Grant, 1863," the question is: Is this 1863 or not? Is it later? Speaker 3: I think it's later. Briana Zavadil White: It is later, it's 1865. Alright? So when you know that this is Grant at Vicksburg and it's 1865, what does that tell us? Speaker 4: Well, I mean, he was a failure. He was considered a failure in so many different ways. And looking at him, you know, Vicksburg was a big deal; it effectively split the South in two. So it was a big deal. You look at this and Hey, look, I am a— Speaker 5: But I think he looks sad. I don't think he looks like "I am—"; I think he looks sad. Speaker 4: He brought—he pulled himself back up. Speaker 6: The frame is black, and I find that odd—I don't think I've ever seen a frame at all like that. I mean, black is usually mourning. Speaker 7: Black and gold. Briana Zavadil White: My sense is that it's probably meant to contrast with the gold. We've got the acorns referencing oak leaves, and oak leaves are a symbol of strength, right? So it could be it's meant for the battles and for the acorns to stand out. Speaker 8: It's like somebody wants us to know that he's not a guy who just sits around and signs things, he is a man of action and taking charge of whatever. It's all done and now he's in the midst of this mess, not sitting in a tent waiting to hear how it turned out. Speaker 9: And I think his face—I do, I just see this poignancy in his eyes like glory has pain. That's that look in his eye. Speaker 10: The frame and his positioning in the picture makes it seem like he's trying to promote an agenda. Briana Zavadil White: I don’t necessarily know if the portrait was created for him. What I can tell you though is that the artist who created it, Ole Peter Hansen Balling—he was a Norwegian, I believe—he also created the portrait of John Brown that you took a look at out there. He also created Grant and His Generals, I saw some of you looking at it; it's that huge 10 by 16 portrait. This was an artist who did portraits on the side of the Union, right, and so he was commemorating. Especially with that portrait of Brown, that painting was created in 1872, long after Brown had been hung. In a way, I guess the question is: Are these portraits acting as propaganda? Speaker 11: With an agenda? Briana Zavadil White: Maybe a little bit. Right? Right?

Speaker 1: He's leaning forward like he's engaged, he's not passive. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, what else? Speaker 1: Because, you know, sitting is a passive act. Speaker 2: Also, even though he's in a suit, it's ruffled and it has the wrinkles in it. So that whole, common man, rail-splitter platform that he won the election with. Speaker 1: Even the cuff of his pants is caught up in his boot. Speaker 2: And that jacket being so crumpled in his chair. Speaker 1: His boots look a little worn, they don't look new. Speaker 3: There's a neat line that I thought of when I read—when I saw this picture; he said—they were talking to his law partner—"he had a slow but tenacious quality of his mind," [he] noted that Lincoln's "intellect worked not quickly nor brilliantly, but exhaustively. He not only went to the root of the question, but dug up the root, separated and analyzed every fiber of the root before he would come to a decision." Briana Zavadil White: I wonder what could you do—how could you make the connection with your students between that quote and this portrait. What could you have them do? Speaker 2: Pose it in a way that would represent them. Speaker 1: Make cartoon balloons of what he's thinking at that moment in time, because that would go with that thought process. Speaker 3: Yeah, he's certainly not thinking about what to eat for lunch. Speaker 4: I don't know, I think—some of the things that I read, like, at the Ford's Theatre talked about how these people were petitioning for places on his cabinet, and that he would listen to them, and that he's seen Sojourner Truth—it just seems like he was a listener. And that to me looks like he's almost listening to somebody talk attentively, he didn't brush people off—is what I kind of got the impression. Briana Zavadil White: So you're getting this feeling of him listening to somebody telling him something. Okay, interesting. Speaker 1: There's no accoutrements, there's no symbolism, there's no draped background, there's no mini log cabin on the floor. It's just him and the chair and the room. Briana Zavadil White: It lacks the objects, right? We know that there's a setting; it's most likely some sort of studio type of setting, right? But, again, like Sherman, we're forced to focus on Lincoln himself. So this particular piece—people always flock to it. It always strikes them for some reason, and maybe it's the pose, maybe it is that there isn't a lot of the extra stuff in it, but this particular image—which is by the artist George P. A. Healy—is actually a replica. Everybody knows the difference between a copy and a replica, right? A replica is a piece created by the same artist who completed the original, and a copy is a piece created by somebody entirely different. So here's the sneaky detail about this portrait, Lincoln had already died when Healey painted The Peacemakers. So he had to use a model, and then he used, mostly likely, photographs of Lincoln to create this likeness. Isn't that interesting? So, similar to the Brown downstairs—that portrait, like I said, is 1872—the artist had to use photographs from the trial to create the likeness. Alright, be in a position where you can see this portrait. Tell me about Lincoln's expression here. Speaker 2: At peace. Briana Zavadil White: At peace, what makes you say that? Speaker 2: He has somewhat of a smile on his face. Speaker 5: Relaxed. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. Does everybody agree that he has somewhat of a smile on his face. Speaker 4: He looks tired to me. Speaker 1: I don't think he looks peaceful. Briana Zavadil White: You don't think he looks peaceful. What's giving you the impression of him looking tired? Speaker 6: The eyes. Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to say the eyes. And the shoulders are kind of slouched a little bit. He just looks tired. Speaker 1: His hair is just sort of ruffled around his ears. Briana Zavadil White: Kind of a bit unkempt, Lincoln is known for that certainly. Speaker 1: The big bags under his eyes. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. So we've got these bags, right, under his eyes here. And tell me about his cheeks. Multiple Speakers: Sunken. Briana Zavadil White: They're sunken in. What else? Speaker 1: His bowtie is askew. Briana Zavadil White: His bowtie is askew, isn't it? And it's always so interesting because this is a formal photograph, right? And yet, here we have Lincoln with his bowtie askew and his hair sort of a little disheveled, okay? It really is a true likeness of Lincoln because that's how he often was portrayed. Speaker 2: He looks like a common man. Briana Zavadil White: So, this is a photograph; where is the focus? Because we all can see a focal point, we also can see a blurred piece of the portrait. So what becomes the focus? Speaker 8: His face. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. Right really in the middle of his face, right? And then everything else gets blurred out from there. Speaker 3: The crack of the glass plate negative is a focal point though, too. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, and everybody sees that? Speaker 3: That wasn't intentional though. Briana Zavadil White: No, it absolutely wasn't. It absolutely wasn't. So is this—we certainly know, think about the plaster cast on the other side. You can tell that this is Lincoln, right, at the end of the war. This is February 5, 1865. This is one of the last formal sittings that Lincoln sat for. And this wasn't the only portrait of him that was created on that day in Alexander Gardner's studio, but the reason why this particular image was saved is because of that slight smile. Speaker 2: He did accomplish what he set out to do: he kept the Union together. And that was the goal. Briana Zavadil White: I want you to think about all of the photographs of Lincoln that you've seen. Do you ever see that expression? Multiple Speakers: No. Briana Zavadil White: No. The crack has taken on so much importance in contemporary times. But the reason why, again, the portrait was kept then, was because of the expression on his face. People talk now about how the crack is a foreshadowing of his assassination, and how it's separating North from South—but that's all contemporary ideas. Absolutely. I would urge you—and I saw that you have the Lincoln Smithsonian in your classroom, right? Did you get that? So the Portrait Gallery partnered up with the Center for Education and Museum Studies to create that issue. So in that issue you will have this piece, along with the life masks, as well as the Cooper Union carte-de-visite that I was telling you about downstairs. It really does provide a nice comparison between Lincoln at the beginning of the Civil War and Lincoln at the end of the Civil War. The other thing that you're going to get as well—and I think it's either on the CD or in your folder—is a lesson about the chronology of Lincoln. So I'm giving you about 20 different images of Lincoln spanning from I think 1857 to 1865 for your students to be able to consider that chronology and place—really place the portraits in order and to do it visually.

Tour Guide: Okay, everybody, now I want ya'll to face the house. I've seen it before, so grab your photos. You are standing in front of the iconic Mount Vernon, the home to our first president. I think you could probably show a picture of this to someone in any country and they could recognize it as George Washington's home. But actually, there's another story to be told here. The very first mention of slavery in Virginia is a letter written by John Rolfe to the Virginia Company in London. This is in the early 1600s. Now I asked a student once, "What does that tell us?" And they said, "George Washington didn't invent slavery." Well, it wasn't exactly what I was going for, but I thought, fabulous answer. He didn't invent slavery. In fact, Washington becomes a slave owner at the age of 11. His father dies, and part of his inheritance are 10 slaves. He owns them, just like you own your pair of shoes. You can do with them what you want, you can sell them, give them away, gamble them away, or rent them. Now it's interesting because of course people say—one of the big questions here—is, was Washington a good slave owner? Washington was actually a pretty typical Chesapeake slave owner. I can tell you how he differed. Washington recognized marriages. Don't forget, chattel property—like your shoes—don't have rights; and, of course, one of those rights are marriage, it's a right! Washington recognized families and marriages. And very early on Washington decided not to separate families and to honor those marriages. That is a significant way in which he differed from other Chesapeake slave owners. Now, we're going to head over and we're going to talk about daily lives of slaves here at Mount Vernon.

Tour Guide: In archaeology we see the real hidden lives. So we're going to go around and see where they lived. Saida Patel: I've never been to Mount Vernon before, and when you walk through the mansion or the slave quarters, you see that most of the places are defined by the people and I've never really communicated that with my students. I've never told them that place is defined by people. I hope to use that in different units that we do and talking about different places and how you can learn about people through studying those places and how people define those places as well. Tour Guide: Well, don't forget, you lived where you worked. Who were the skilled workers? The men. And most of the females are agriculturists. Samantha Brewer: The tour was really like, this is the information, this is the history, I'm going to tell it to you. Tour Guide: Now, Washington really wanted there to be positive incentives for working. Samantha Brewer: And the activities were much more what can you as an observer, as an intelligent person who has some amount of background knowledge, deduce from this without me telling you anything, just what can you see in the situation here. Voice off-screen: Who has the clipboard? Teacher 1: Alright, we're looking at things. Alright, start talking and I'll start writing. We do have some guiding questions, do you have your detective hats on, I don't notice them. Teacher 2: It's close quarters, just a common little cough, common little sneeze, could infect everybody here. Teacher 3: And there's not really a lot of ventilation. Teacher 4: Right, and it's dark. Teacher 2: Dark and a little damp. Teacher 3: They wouldn't have had these lights. Teacher 5: The window is like cross ventilation there. Teacher 3: Yeah, but that's the only—'cause there are these windows but— Visitor 6: 'Cause I was thinking the stairway from the kitchen that might have been where the main slave woman in the house that might be—have been her quarter. Multiple Visitors: Oooh. Saida Patel: We were supposed to put what we knew behind. So, we went with a clear mind and we were assigned into groups. We had daily life with the slaves. She told us to go in as "foreigners" and look at the objects there and analyze them: Why were they used? Why do you think this was here? What is this? Which I really enjoyed and I think it would be great to use with the students as well because it engages them automatically with the material. Samantha Brewer: It's really transferable to any sort of place, even if it's some place that we haven't studied or a place that I personally don't know a lot about going into it.

Meagan Rafferty: Sometimes you're going to have a teacher that comes in and their only thing that they really what to do here and take away from here is seeing the mansion. And other teachers say, you know, it meant everything to me to go on a slave life tour and learn more about the history of the enslaved community. And then still others say, you know, I just really wanted to do a hands-on workshop and walk away with these materials that I know I can just translate right into my classroom. Often times the group leader will have different expectations than the group members themselves. And so the way that I try to mitigate that is I try to put something in the schedule for everyone. Esther White: One of the things that we've been talking about a whole lot is, you know, when you go into these places every single thing that's there, it's all there for a reason. Someone has thought about even the direction that it will be placed on the thing and what is next to it and why it's there and every single one of those objects is supposed to sort of tell you a whole story about something. Teacher 1: One thing I found a little bit hard was the shaving kit, the actual little brush that people used to put the shaving cream on their face— Esther White: What I'm going to give you this afternoon is our internal memo that kind of goes through all the highlights of what's actually there and some of the decision-making processes that the curators used to get stuff back. So, yeah, the shaving kit is based upon a period shaving kit. Samantha Brewer: It's really not enough to just say this is what history was. You really have to ask people—kids—to really think about it and draw their own conclusions and take their own interpretations and that the process of evaluating different sources and different places really leads them to a much deeper, richer understanding of history that really stays with you and gives you things that you can actually work with in everyday life.

Esther White: I know probably on your slave life tour, right, it came up—let's see, what always comes up? Was George Washington a good master? I don't even know why we have to talk about that, right, he owned slaves. How do you put "good" with that, right? That's just a funny—

But I think then the challenge is how do we take that and expand the story? Expand it out. We're starting with that idea that, you know, yes, there are slaves here. Fact. There's either 316 or 317 depending upon the way you count the census, so I'm always a little bit fuzzy about that. But there's, you know, over 300 enslaved folks here. Now, you guys were looking at two bunkrooms, right?

Teacher 1: I would think showering is more of a maternal thing.

Teacher 2: And shaving would indicate male quarters.

Teacher 3: And the children, you know, if you think about it—

Esther White: What did you guys observe about work, or free time, from looking at the stuff in the those quarters?

Visitor 1: Well, I guess one thing we said, that some of the things that they might have been doing that were part of work could be used also for leisure, like knitting or sewing, you know, cooking food. We did see some other activities related to children in women's quarters, like marbles, and we noticed that there was a doll.

Esther White: Maybe a lot of leisure activities cross over. From stuff you're doing maybe for fun or for relaxing and stuff you're doing for work.

Visitor 2: We noticed also that what they did for work they also had to do for their home, as you could call it, if that's what it was. What they did for work—they also had to do laundry, mansion [laundry and] laundry for themselves; cooking at the mansion, cooking for themselves. Like she said, some of those kind of crept over into leisure—not really leisure, but you know what I mean.

Esther White: But that's not really leisure, right? Where's Group Two?

Teacher 3: Oh, right here.

Esther White: What themes did you guys have?

Teacher 3: Food.

Teacher 1: Washington's stuff is in the bags over there.

Esther White: Did it surprise you guys about the variety of food that there was?

Teacher 3: Yes, I was.

Teacher 4: I was surprised.

Esther White: That's one of the things—

Teacher 5: Well, we couldn't see the variety that was in the sacks.

Esther White: Okay.

Teacher 5: We could assume there was grains, flour—

Teacher 3: And was what was in the sack for them or was that—

Esther White: For elsewhere? Oh, good question.

Teacher 3: Right. It said GW on the bags.

Teacher 5: Because you asked us to try to differentiate foods that were rations and foods that were theirs, we assumed that those were rationed out foods from GW. And is that right?

Esther White: I think that's what they're supposed to be. They are rationed out foods and they are rationed out cornmeal. So all those sacks are only cornmeal.

Teacher 3: And in the women's quarters there seemed to be much more cooking going on. You see the cornbread made, you see some stews. And in the men's you see a rabbit, you see a duck.

Esther White: Yeah, I always notice that when I go in. The man has the rabbit and the women are doing the cooking. So is he going down with his rabbit and saying, you know, what that might be? "Hey, I've got a rabbit. Oh, I'm sweet on you, would you like to cook it up for me?" Or?

Teacher 5: Or I caught the rabbit, you cook it, let's eat it together.

Esther White: Right, because I'd like to spend time with you. Or I'm in charge of hunting and you're in charge of cooking and that's just the way that we have negotiated our spaces up here because we have got to get along. And you can just pull it apart in lots of different ways and begin to really think about individuals and what we know about them and where they're living, and then begin to concoct bits and pieces of their lives.

Rex Ellis: Good morning everyone, my name is Rex Ellis. I am the Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs at the National Museum of African American History and Culture—that's just a long title that says I do whatever they tell me to do. What we’ve tried to do with this exhibition is to suggest three things. Number one, we've tried to grapple with the whole idea of slavery especially in the era of the American Revolution and the paradox of liberty—those who are asking for liberty actually being those who are also slave owners. That's the paradox that we examine and try to talk about. Second thing that we wanted to do was to talk about Jefferson and his life. A little bit about Albemarle, a little bit about his parents, and a little bit about Jefferson the man and the sort of paradox that he is as well. Not only his public life, but his private life as well. There's a third section that happens to focus on the enslaved population at Monticello. That enslaved population reached, at some point throughout his lifetime, over 600 people. And so, we feel that there's—it's difficult to understand Jefferson without understanding his enslaved population. You will be introduced to six families within that larger population. And then finally, there is a section that we are calling, for lack of a better term, "Getting Word," because that is the name of the project that in 1993 two historians at Monticello embarked on to try to find descendants of the enslaved at Monticello. And that section talks about those descendants and where they are and the kinds of things that they are doing. What you see on the outside here are two visions that in some way suggest this whole paradox that we're talking about. Here is Thomas Jefferson and he's behind the Declaration of Independence; and here is Isaac Jefferson, he was a Granger, but he changed his name once he was freed to Jefferson. He is behind a farm book that Jefferson kept from 1770 all the way up until the beginning of the 19th century. That book was supposed to be a sort of diary of his farm and it has turned into one of the most important sources that give us some sense of who the enslaved were and what they did. Because as you see here, there are families that he mentions within the farm book; so with that information we know approximately when they were born, we know what their names were, and we can someway put them into the historical record in ways that we could not if we did not have this information. Also I will tell you that I don't believe Monticello is typical of the slave experience in the Colonial Chesapeake, I think it's very atypical. As you go through it, I think you will see that there are sort of parallels to the larger slave system. But Mr. Jefferson in a variety of ways was a unique man. He was a scholar, he was an author, he was an inventor, he was a farmer—he'd tell you he was a farmer, other folk would tell you no, no, no, he wasn't too good a farmer. But in a variety of ways he was a very, very—that sort of quintessential Enlightenment man who was much more of a Renaissance figure than he was sort of ensconced in the colonial period, as many were. They looked to him and what he said to determine what they should be thinking, in many ways. So as you go through, keep that in mind as well. Rex Ellis: This first area focuses on Jefferson and the idea that in order to see Jefferson clearly you must see him through the lens of his enslaved population. You will see a statue of Jefferson and then behind him you will see a series of names. They are names of over 600 enslaved—that we know—lived and worked in and around Monticello. And the idea here, again, is it allows us to see Jefferson more clearly. You will also see here Jefferson's lap desk, which was what he drafted the Declaration of Independence on. So in many ways that lap desk and the statue of Jefferson and what you see around it—the information you see around it gives you some sense of Jefferson's prominence, not only in the colonial period, but also his prominence as a slave owner. Christopher Hamner: I wanted to do, since we didn't get a chance yesterday, to do a little debrief on the museum and what was particularly useful about it, what changed the way that you thought about the past, what changed the way that you think about this chapter to your kids. Do you remember what the sort of framing is? Teacher 1: It's the Declaration of Independence on the one side— Teacher 2: On the right. Teacher 3: It's slavery— Teacher 4: The farm book on the left. Christopher Hamner: Yeah, right. And just those two images, you have to pick one or two things that go on the outside. And then the title: "Paradox of Liberty." This is all really carefully selected to get you thinking some new way about this person. If you just want to think about context and you want to think about content and this as a source. Think about how different the experience you have of Thomas Jefferson is if you spend 22 minutes in the "Paradox of Liberty" exhibit at the Smithsonian verses 22 minutes at the Jefferson Memorial, which is not very far away. How do you summarize a life if you've got…you can use 61 images, you can have a total of 12 hundred words, and the average visitor is going to spend 18 to 22 minutes walking through there. What parts of the story do you tell and what do you leave out. When I approached it that way I thought, gosh this is an impossible task that they have carried off really well.

Rex Ellis: The objectives in this area are several. Number one, to give you some sense of slavery in the Atlantic world, especially in the colonial period. Then to give you some sense of Mr. Jefferson and the kind of background and upbringing he had. Then to suggest some sense about Jefferson's attitude towards slavery. At the beginning on the wall that I'm facing you will see a variety of things that suggest the institution of slavery. There's a small map on the left-hand side of that portrait by George Morland that gives you some sense of the number of Africans who came to the New World. You will see that they came from all portions of Africa, from Senegal to the Bight of Biafra to the Bight of Benin all the way over to West Central Africa, even Madagascar and other places. But the largest number comes from, as you will see, West Central Africa. Somewhere around 5 million Africans disembarked in places like Pernambuco, Brazil, and South America. Somewhere around four million landed in the Caribbean—Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, Cuba, those areas. Four hundred thousand came to North America. Four hundred thousand. Whether they were dealing with slave ships, building slave ships, and going—and transporting Africans back and forth, the American economy—the agricultural economy of America in some way, directly or indirectly, depended on the institution of slavery. So Jefferson from the very beginning of his life, there was an enslaved person who actually put him on a pillow and presented him to his father, Peter, and his mom, Jane. There was a slave at the end of his life, his name was Burwell Colbert, who actually fluffed up his pillow because he was the only one who understood what Jefferson was saying when he was at the end of his life and couldn't speak. He was the only one who understood that he was uncomfortable and that he needed his pillow adjusted. So, from the time he was born until the time he died, slavery was a part of the world that he lived in. Here you see a series of items that relate to the period of the Enlightenment. You see an inkwell by Voltaire, that's an image of Voltaire's head. You see glasses and you see Jefferson—who was a voracious reader, by the way—you see this revolving bookstand where he could read one, two, three, four, five books at a time. Speaker 1: You know how he had that bookstand, where he could read five books at a time and keep them open so you don't lose your place? And then you walk a couple feet that way, and some guy, his whole day every day is to pound nails. Like, so you get to do all of this fascinating stuff, and the people working for you are pounding nails over and over and over. And you saw, there were like five steps to making a nail and your sole goal is to make the most nails. So you get to be creative, thoughtful, and everybody around you has to be bored? Christopher Hamner: You know, I took away like the "Paradox of Liberty," that there's this really uncomfortable connection there. That some people were free to do all this grand philosophical thinking about politics and government and the nature of morals because other people were bored. You know, the fact that Jefferson—the leisure time that Jefferson enjoyed was on the part built on the backs of enslaved people piling up all this wealth and stuff so that he was freed. Rex Ellis: You will see here some sense of what we're suggesting about his view of enslavement. And you will find out as you read that Jefferson was not—that Jefferson believed in emancipation. He did not believe that emancipation was something that could happen here. He believed in emancipation connected with colonization. So that he felt that blacks and whites could not live together and once they were set free they should be delivered some place else in order to enjoy their freedom. Interestingly, 1791 he has a letter—somewhere around August he has a letter from a man named Benjamin Banneker. He's an African American, he's a scientist, he is an author, a very, very learned person himself. He writes a letter, what he said was he wanted Jefferson to help and to assist in the liberation of his people, he used—he sent him a copy of the almanac, he used himself as a way of saying, "This is what's possible given the help, given the education, given the support, this is what's possible within the black community." Eleven days later, Jefferson wrote him back and said wonderful letter, wonderful almanac, but I don't believe that the enslaved can in any way rise to the level of intelligence and the level of sophistication that you have risen to. So I generally say to folk when they ask me what I think about Jefferson, I say he was a man who was in terms of his intellect, he was ahead of his time; in terms of his morality, he was a product of his time. I think, more than most, though, Jefferson grappled with this issue. Speaker 1: I think that kind of summarized the entire exhibit, was that intellectually Jefferson was ahead of his time, but philosophically he was a product of his time. Speaker 2: And that's so current for today, though. Speaker 3: He did a good job at not giving you the answer for how we should judge him, not saying he was this or he was that. I think what it does effective to us is we're all a product of our time now, we might think that other people are wrong. Two hundred years from now everyone might think we're all wrong. So it kinda makes you step back, too, and think, well, how do I see my time? Christopher Hamner: I think it shows we're supposed to—sometimes we forget but we're a fairly young country. And now we're kind of looking at it and saying, yeah, well, you know we got some things right and we got some things wrong and it's okay to look at both of those so that maybe we can be more right the next time.

Christopher Hamner: What were the objects or the text or—what part did you stop and go, "Whoa." Teacher 1: I thought that the map, the to-scale of his entire plantation in the back was really, really interesting. Christopher Hamner: What was it that kind of— Teacher 1: Well, there were two parts. One, obviously, his house is so built on that hill it's almost on a mountain compared with his farmlands. I thought that's interesting management-wise. He's got kind of like a little town up near his house, and yet he's got these dispersed houses throughout the farmlands. And then I started thinking did he give his slaves who lived in those farmhouses somewhat of an autonomy as they were farming those areas because his house was miles away on top. Rex Ellis: Mulberry Row I think is very important. It's a 13-hundred-foot space on the northeastern side of the house. If this is Monticello here, and this is the north here, and this is the east, here is Mulberry Row. Somewhere around 20 homes is what it had on it, domestic spaces, as well as—there was a nailery, there was a blacksmith's shop, there was a textile shop, there were domestic houses, dairy. You either worked as a domestic, you either worked as tradesman or a craftsman, or you worked in the fields. Generally those were the three areas. Mulberry Row became a real proving ground to determine which one of those might be your fate. Between 12 and 16, Jefferson would engage them in work, males and females, at Mulberry Row. He would use that to make some determination about where the aptitudes were and where he would then assign those who he had working there. Then he brought a variety of people from around the country and even outside of the country, Scottish tradesmen and craftsmen, to teach the enslaved at Monticello a variety of the skills. So a variety of those were sort of determined based on the experience at Mulberry Row. Christopher Hamner: And then how was the other way that you encountered enslaved people at Monticello. Teacher 1: Through their lineage. Christopher Hamner: Okay. Whose? Teacher 1: One of the most famous would be the Hemings. There was— Teacher 2: The Grangers. Teacher 3: The Fossetts. Christopher Hamner: That second part of the exhibit, remember, the six families, that struck me as another choice. You know, what are we going to do? Instead of trying to cover all 600, they made this choice that we'll pick six—one well known and maybe some that are less well known, but we’ll really focus on that, just on those families' experiences. Rex Ellis: Now, these families, George Granger is the only man I know that was actually assigned to be an overseer at Jefferson. During Jefferson's lifetime he must have had over 30 overseers on the property. Granger was the only one that he had that was from the black community. And Granger was one of those that we use at least to suggest that Jefferson wasn't someone who was so struck by color until he didn't understand that it was merit that was the most important in terms of whom he allowed to do work, whom he allowed freedoms, and whom he did not allow freedoms. But there is an argument to be made for the precedent of the Hemings family. There were five generations of that family on the hill, over 70 people in that family on the mountain, started with Elizabeth Hemings who was the matriarch of the family and five generations of her family were at Monticello. The Hemings were treated differently, they were given freedoms no one else was given, several of them were even allowed to not only work, but to live off the mountain, and also to sort of move around as free people even though they were owned by Jefferson. You will find that the Hemings were the ones who did either the least work or worked as domestics or received privileges that others did not receive. And then finally for me the Fossett family. They were also Hemings but they were—Joseph Fossett was the grandson of Elizabeth. Joseph, the reason I wanted to mention him is because Joseph was the only member of his family that was freed in Jefferson's will. He set Fossett free, but Fossett was not free at the time that the auction took place, so he could not bid on his family. He watched his family being sold away. But he also knew some folk in Albemarle County that he had done business with, so he made requests of them that they purchase members of his family, and that, as a blacksmith, he was able to work and he promised and whatever it was that they paid for the price for them that he would then pay them back the price of his family. Somewhere in 1837, he purchased five of his children and four of his grandchildren and they all moved to Ohio. Teacher 1: The Hemings family, there were like these really nice pots from France and I just thought that helped paint a complex picture of Jefferson. Teacher 2: Right, I thought that—I enjoyed learning about the families, it was interesting to see the different dynamic that that plantation would have had than a lot of others. But I thought, too, it kind of focused on the fact that these were his most skilled slaves. They had the chair that that one person built, I know he had a trained French chef as a slave, that's not normal. Christopher Hamner: You get to know those six families really well, but at the same time you lose sight of all these people. And that's a trade-off. Do you want them to learn a couple of people's experience really deeply, or do you want them to get a bigger sense of the whole, the whole enormity of the operation.

Rex Ellis: Interestingly, that Joseph Fossett that I was telling you about, Joe Fossett had a great-grandson by the name of William Monroe Trotter, who founded—with W.E.B. Dubois—the Niagara Movement, he was an activist himself, a very, very well educated man. All of the families, the Hughes family, the Fossett family, the Hemings family, all took on responsibilities that in many ways were civic responsibilities. Frederick Madison Roberts, that you'll see on this end, was the first African American legislator in California. You will see also that the descendents of Sally Hemings and of Eston and Madison fought in the Civil War. So that continuation of family, that continuation of faith, Peter Fossett became a minister. It was Peter who said this, "My parents were here in Ohio and I wanted to be with them and be free, so I resolved to get free or die in the attempt." Peter ran away several times and was recaptured. And finally with the help of his family his freedom was bought and he finally rejoined his family in Ohio. Christopher Hamner: I thought this was one of the best museum exhibits that I'd ever seen. And I was particularly impressed because it's really sensitive. Plus, it's the Smithsonian Museum of American History, it's on the Mall, it's yards from the White House, and a stone's throw from the Congress building. There's a sense that this is the official history, it has this sort of weight based on where it is and the fact that it's the Smithsonian. Teacher 1: What struck me, I was wondering if this means how far we've come as a society, because do you think that 50 years ago you could have had an exhibit like this? Christopher Hamner: No, and that's something they didn't talk about, but I love the way that you're thinking in terms of this as a source. If you went back 50 years ago, totally different. Teacher 2: I liked the human touch to it, because they're much more complicated and they have to deal with their times. Rex Ellis: We know a great deal about a small number of the enslaved at Monticello. I told you there were over 600; I've introduced you to maybe 30 or 40 that we know a great deal about. Don't you dare leave thinking that those other 500 are not important as well. The fact that we have their names is a testament to Jefferson's record keeping and also to the history and the historians who have made this all happen. But if you ask me why I would say that Jefferson was anomalous and he was not normal—Jefferson said that he did not want—and I'm paraphrasing—but he said he wanted his enslaved population to respect him; he did not want them to fear him. He tried to keep the families together, he discouraged abroad marriages, he tried to get them to marry on the mountain so that the family was together there. So all of that is what makes me suggest that as a slave owner—Now I don't think that there is such a thing as a "good" slave owner, especially someone like Jefferson—when you think of the fact that he was governor of Virginia, when you think of the fact that he was a two-term president, when you think of the fact that he was Secretary of State, he had a variety of opportunities to do something significant about the institution of slavery. He never did. So, there is that reality to him; but there's also the other reality. And I think the public Jefferson and the private Jefferson are two different Jeffersons all together. In order to see Jefferson clearly, you have to see him through the lens of his enslaved community as well.

Christopher Hamner: Somebody who's been to the FDR Memorial describe that one.

Teacher 1: An experience.

Christopher Hamner: Okay. What does it look like? How big is it.

Teacher 1: It's huge.

Teacher 2: It's larger than life.

Teacher 3: It's the different acts or time periods in his life.

Christopher Hamner: So how much—it covers a fairly large spread of ground. It covers different phases of his life. The centerpiece is. . . ?

Teacher 4: Him in his wheelchair.

Christopher Hamner: Yeah, exactly. He's in his wheelchair, I think he's got his dog Fala—which is always a crossword puzzle answer—F A L A, if that comes up. Why is this here if we have a perfectly good memorial over by the Tidal Basin?

Teacher 5: The money? They had extra money.

Teacher 6: This one was earlier.

Christopher Hamner: Yeah, this one's first. That's a good question, but this one is actually first. And this is the one that FDR suggested during his lifetime. He had been elected president four times; it seems more likely than not that he might someday get a memorial. When asked what would be an appropriate way to commemorate his life as a public servant, I believe he was in the Oval Office, and he said a block of marble the size of this desktop with my name and my birth date and placed at the National Archives. He thought that—which I think is very understated, he picked the location, he picked the design, and that's exactly what you've got. The FDR Memorial at the Tidal Basin is totally different—in so much as he told us exactly what he wanted, it kind of flies in the face of his wishes and his explicit instructions.

There's a further twist there and if you remember back to the second week when Michael O'Malley came in and talked about political theater. The centerpiece of the memorial at the Tidal Basin is FDR in his wheelchair. For a president who went to such enormous lengths over the course of his entire political career to never be photographed in his wheelchair. Remember Professor O'Malley talking about how he would set up rails so he could appear to walk to the podium, so that he could carry himself to the podium, he had a car outfitted with hand controls. This is not just someone who did not make a big deal about the fact that he was in a wheelchair; this is someone who went to great lengths to disguise that fact.

Christopher Hamner: That’s a great point to talk about: Who is this memorial for? Is it for the person; is it for the generation for whom he was such a central figure? There's a whole generation of Americans and he guided them through the Depression and the Second World War, is the memorial for them? Is it for us, for contemporary generations who are trying to place him in a historical context? Those are really useful questions and they're transportable. You can ask these questions about any monument in any place.

Christopher Hamner: Why do we do that?

Teacher 5: We've got to teach now. The other memorial is supposed to be a teaching memorial. This I think was probably done fairly close after his death—

Christopher Hamner: I would imagine.

Teacher 5: It's not designed to teach.

Teacher 7: I know! There's a little marker right there that explains. It was put in by his friends of his to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his death in 1965.

Christopher Hamner: Is that the right thing to do? To go…when somebody says this is how I want to be commemorated and you go and say yeah, alright, we're going to do something different.

Teacher 7: It depends on who it's for. If you're doing it for that person, yes. The other memorial is not for him.

Christopher Hamner: So who is it for?

Teacher 8: Everybody else.

Christopher Hamner: Yeah, that could be a glib but accurate answer.

Teacher 5: But it's for people who didn't experience New Deal programs. At this point—I had the reality check that I am now wholly in a totally different generation than my students this year. Their great-grandparents fought in World War II versus my grandparents. And that their grandfathers fought in Vietnam whereas my father fought in Vietnam. So you've got so many people that are so far removed at this point that this isn't going to teach them about who Franklin Roosevelt was.

Christopher Hamner: Is that what a memorial is supposed to do?

Teacher 5: That's I think what the goal of the other memorial is.

Christopher Hamner: This is where you get into the sort of interesting, undefined territory of what do we want to use this space for?

Teacher 1: There's a contrast. I think that FDR was rather shortsighted when he said I want to be remembered this way. Because I do believe that there is a teaching technique, the teacher in me comes out, but those are memories. If I wasn't an American, if I was not a history teacher, if I was just walking down the road, this just looks like a gigantic tombstone for some schmoe. Therefore, there is no memory being projected and I think that you have to honor him. I love that idea—that "I was a simple man"—but I think he was being shortsighted because we will not remember him without knowing the great things that came with him.

Christopher Hamner: I think part of the power of this is exactly how understated it is. Particularly in a city where there's Logan Circle, there are huge statues, 15-foot-tall statues, of Civil War figures that people have totally forgotten. Here is someone whose place in 20th-century history is immense and there is a kind of disconnect between the immensity of his contributions and the really plain nature of this. To that extent I think it does have some power because there's so many statues around here that are so overly grandiose and kind of hit you in the face with the importance of what they're celebrating and you think, not that important, not that significant in the long run. Whereas this, if anything I think Roosevelt's reputation has been burnished by historians over the years and this is incredibly plain and understated.

Teacher 2: How would we not remember him? That's the other component of it.

Teacher 1: Time. Time kills it.

Christopher Hamner: I think about the Martin Luther King Memorial. He talked during his life a lot about how he was a part of something, that he was not the Civil Rights Movement, but that he was a part of a larger wave. I think that that was an important statement in part because it indicates his humility but also because it underlines the rightness of the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn't one person saying okay, now the country's going in this direction but a large segment of the country saying this injustice has to be corrected. I'm not sure how comfortable King would have been to be singled out with a statue of him covered with his quotes.

On the other hand, to not do something is sometimes sending as powerful a message as to do something. To have the National Mall, which celebrates Lincoln and Washington and Grant and a lot of white elite political figures, and to not have part of the Civil Rights Movement and the African American leaders who helped push it through, that's a conspicuous absence. To not put anything is kind of an interesting—that makes an interesting comment, too.