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Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826
Born Shadwell (now Albemarle County) Virginia
In 1780, Thomas Jefferson, governor of Virginia, received queries from the Marquis de Barbé, secretary of the French Legation, seeking information about the state. Jefferson, an inveterate observer of all phenomena, organized his notes and sent an elaborate response focusing on Virginia's natural history -- its minerals, vegetables, and animals. He was eager to refute the French naturalists, specifically the Comte de Buffon, who believed that animals degenerated in America. Jefferson sent out inquiries, requesting the heaviest weights of American specimens, "from the mouse to the mammoth." When he received numerous requests for copies of his response, Jefferson decided to print the work, but did not publish it until 1785, when he was minister to France. Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson's only published book, became famous not only because of its author, but because, as his biographer Dumas Malone noted, it revealed a "man of most unusual and diverse talent."
The young American artist Mather Brown produced this first likeness of Jefferson in Paris.
Mather Brown, 1786 |