The Jeffersons at Shadwell Book

Merging archaeology, material culture, and social history, historian Susan Kern reveals the fascinating story of Shadwell, the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson and home to his parents, Jane and Peter Jefferson, their eight children, and over sixty slaves. Located in present-day Albemarle County, Virginia, Shadwell was at the time considered "the frontier." However, Kern demonstrates that Shadwell was no crude log cabin; it was, in fact, a well-appointed gentry house full of fashionable goods, located at the center of a substantial plantation.

Kern’s scholarship offers new views of the family’s role in settling Virginia as well as new perspectives on Thomas Jefferson himself. By examining a variety of sources, including account books, diaries, and letters, Kern re-creates in rich detail the daily lives of the Jeffersons at Shadwell—from Jane Jefferson’s cultivation of a learned and cultured household to Peter Jefferson’s extensive business network and oversight of a thriving plantation.

Shadwell was Thomas Jefferson’s patrimony, but Kern asserts that his real legacy there came from his parents, who cultivated the strong social connections that would later open doors for their children. At Shadwell, Jefferson learned the importance of fostering relationships with slaves, laborers, and powerful office holders, as well as the hierarchical structure of large plantations, which he later applied at Monticello. The story of Shadwell affects how we interpret much of what we know about Thomas Jefferson today, and Kern’s fascinating book is sure to become the standard work on Jefferson's early years.

Publishers Weekly

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was born and raised in Shadwell, the Virginia plantation home of his father, his mother, their eight children, and more than 60 slaves. When it burned in 1770, Jefferson moved to nearby buildings that soon became Monticello. Shadwell vanished from history until archeologists began digging up the site in 1943. A former archeologist for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Kern combines their findings with existing documents, letters, wills, and business records to deliver a scholarly portrait of life in the pre-revolutionary South that overturns some popular perceptions and historians' views, most particularly that Jefferson's father was a hardy frontiersman rather than a member of the gentry. According to Kern, Shadwell was equipped with all the material and cultural trappings of elite Virginia society. Kern leaves no stone unturned, and primarily academics will appreciate her lengthy enumeration of archeological remains, inventories, itineraries, and demographic statistics, but she provides an intensely fact-based account of the young Jefferson's "well-ordered, well-connected world," from the layout of his childhood dwelling and its contents to the lives, possessions, and social position of his parents, neighbors, hired hands, and slaves. Illus., map. (Sept.)