Passed Presidents - # 3 – Thomas Jefferson

It seems only fitting to follow the John Adams grave story with Thomas Jefferson’s.  Our third president passed away on Independence Day, 1826, a few hours before the second gave up the ghost.  Almost two centuries later, in the 24/7 news cycle and internet era, Adams would have known that his dear friend was gone and not mistakenly uttered his famous last words, “Jefferson survives.”

 “Monticello”, Thomas Jefferson’s home, near Charlottesville, VA 
(30 June 2008)

I first saw Monticello in 1991.  The property is a private, non-profit concern and not a state or National Park site.  It was well before the ‘Dead Presidents Quest’ began and the visit was a minor disappointment because the place was undergoing serious restoration.  I took a picture of the iconic home and it is among my growing file of images called, “LANDMARKS UNDER SCAFFOLDING.”  More on that in a future post.

Ornamental gate in front of Thomas Jefferson grave (30 June 2008)

The visit that produced these images occurred in June 2008.  It was the last day of my post-retirement Road Trip IV, a terrific, 24-day odyssey that completed the grave-hunting quest and solidified the State Capitol adventure as the next serious undertaking.  Fittingly, I drove to Charlottesville after shooting the Virginia capitol that Jefferson designed in Richmond.

Unlike our modern presidents, our Founding Fathers, as we like to call them, operated in two worlds.  They were first British subjects, living in a string of colonies on the east coast of North America and ruled by the king and Parliament on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.  To the north, south and west were colonies controlled by France and Spain.  Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration that severed our control by Europe and he worked with these extraordinary people to craft and sustain a new kind of government...the finest representative democracy the world has known (in my humble opinion). 

 Jefferson’s Epitaph (30 June 2008)

Jefferson wrote this and considered these accomplishments

more important than having been president.

  

As president, he signed the Louisiana Purchase which doubled the size of the nation...828,000 square miles of territory...land that would become all or part of 15 states...for the price of what a modern hedge fund manager earns in a month.  Yeah, I know...a dollar went further in those days.

In 1962, President Kennedy hosted a dinner for 49 Nobel Prize winners.  In his welcoming remarks, he said, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

Of all the presidents, Jefferson was our own Renaissance Man.  He read Latin and Greek.  He spoke French and was an accomplished violinist.  He was an architect, scientist and engineer who constantly tinkered with ways to do things better.  When the British sacked Washington and destroyed the small Library of Congress, his personal library became the foundation for its replacement.   He not only founded the University of Virginia, he designed the buildings, developed the curriculum, recruited the faculty and acquired the library.

Thomas Jefferson

3^rd President; Served 1801-1809

Born: April 13, 1743, Goochland County, VA

Died: July 4, 1826, Charlottesville, VA

Grave Location: Plantation Home – Monticello, Charlottesville, VA

Date Visited: June 30, 2008

I sometimes despair at these modern times, where someone with ‘elite’ qualities is disparaged and Americans admit they are more drawn to a president they could have a beer with.  I’ll take a man like Jefferson every time.

Passed Presidents - # 2 - John Adams

This Independence Day strikes me as a good time to return to the Passed Presidents Quest.  We started with George Washington on September 21, 2011 and jumped ahead to Abe Lincoln on President’s Day, February 20, 2012. Unlike my schizoid patterns to present the state capitols, it makes sense to continue with the logical order of their terms in office.

Consequently, this holiday just begs for the presentation of Numbers TWO, John Adams and THREE, Thomas Jefferson, since both men shed their mortal coils on July 4, 1826.  Hollywood could not have created a more fitting and dramatic ending for these two giants of our history than to have them die on the 50^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  

“Old House”, the Adams’ residence in Quincy, MA (15 November 2007)

How do you follow George Washington?  Is there anyone in our history who turned down such power when it was legitimately offered to him?  He was in charge of the army and he resigned his commission.  They wanted to make him our king...King George the First.  He didn’t think that was right.   

A tough act to follow especially if you’re a dumpy, prickly New Englander.  I remember watching Paul Giamatti portray our second president in the great HBO miniseries.  While quite brilliant and the chief advocate for Jefferson’s Declaration, he was not the most congenial of men.  Ben Franklin wrote that Adams “is always an honest man, often a wise one but some times and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.”  It appears that dear Abigail deserves great credit for moderating his antisocial tendencies.

United First Parish Church, Quincy, MA (15 November 2007)

The second president lies alongside Abigail in a basement room of the United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts.  It is the town where he was born and lived until he died, but it was called Braintree at the time.  The Unitarian Universalist church was founded in 1639 and the current building dates from 1828.  Until the basement crypt was ready, the Adams’ were buried across the street in Hancock Cemetery.  I first visited the grave in July 1999.  The Quest had begun the year before and we were in Boston to visit an art exhibit.  For the presidential grave hunter, this would be a ‘two-fer’.  In the same room, in identical tombs, are John Quincy and his wife.  More on them when we get to Number SIX.

Plaque at the entrance of United First Parish Church, Quincy, MA 
(15 November 2007)

I returned to the area in November, 2007 to visit a bowling buddy and make digital images of the Adams’ graves...only to learn that there is an off-season for visiting and I would have to return again.  That happened two years later, when Road Trip VI got me to the state houses of New England.

He was America’s first vice president.  He ran for the top job but since his electoral vote total was second to Washington’s, he assumed the second position, which clearly did not thrill him.  He called the vice presidency “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”  

He was elected president in 1796 and was the first president to live in the White House.  He was the first of eight presidents who tried for a second term but failed to win re-election.  Thomas Jefferson, his vice president, defeated him in 1800.  While they were friends and colleagues during the Revolution and Washington’s time in office, the 1800 election soured him and he didn’t attend Jefferson’s inauguration. They had no relationship for the next eleven years.  However, from 1812 until their deaths, their renewed friendship was warm and devoted.  It resulted in one of the finest, most informative correspondences in our history.

Entrance to John and Abigail Adams’ Graves, United First Parish Church, Quincy, MA (9 October 2009)

The president’s grave is inscribed with only his name and is draped with a 15-star American flag.  I’m not certain why since there were 16 states in the union when he was in office and 24 when he died.  Checking the history of official American flags and their periods of use, the second president’s 15-star flag and the sixth president’s 24-star banner represent the official flags at the time they were in office.

John Adams

2^nd President; Served 1797-1801

Born: October 30, 1735, Braintree, MA

Died: July 4, 1826, Braintree, MA

Grave Location: United First Parish Church, Quincy, MA

Dates Visited: 7/24/1999, 10/9/2009

Until his record was broken by Ronald Reagan in 2001, Adams, at 90 years and 247 days, was for 175 years, America’s longest-living president.