www.Monticello.org is an excellent web site that provides information about the life and times of Thomas Jefferson. The site is run by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the same non-profit organization that owns and operates Monticello, the mountaintop home of Thomas Jefferson. Since 1923, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has steadily expanded its role as a museum and educational institution. In recent years, the organization added www.Monticello.org as a major method of reaching people worldwide who might otherwise be unable to visit Monticello.
The Monticello.org web site has several features of interest to genealogists, including one that will be especially useful to anyone researching Black American ancestry at Monticello:
The Monticello Plantation Database at http://plantationdb.monticello.org contains information on over six hundred people who lived in slavery on Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia plantations between 1774 and 1826. It provides details of life span, family structure, occupation, and the transactions of bondage (sale, purchase, gift, and hiring). There are also short biographies of individuals and accounts of various aspects of slavery at Monticello.
The Getting Word website at http://www.monticello.org/gettingword/ contains information on a project begun in 1993 to interview the descendants of Monticello’s African-American families. The seventy-odd pages of the website include biographical information on dozens of enslaved men and women (and their descendants) as well as plentiful photographs and the results of research in historical records and interviews with over 170 people.
The Monticello Classroom at http://classroom.monticello.org/ is a teacher-student website for elementary and secondary classroom use, a compilation of resources about Thomas Jefferson and life at Monticello.
The Jefferson Encyclopedia at http://wiki.monticello.org/ is a wiki-style online encyclopedia with articles written by Monticello researchers and respected Jefferson scholars.
The online library catalogue at http://tjportal.monticello.org/ is a catalog. that is available to all. However, most of the materials listed are available only in person, NOT online.
You will find the Thomas Jefferson Foundation's web site at http://www.Monticello.org to be an excellent resource for genealogists and historians.
Daniel Jordan, a scholar I have known many years, is in charge of Montecello. In my garden I have a Chinese golden rain tree about 20 feet tall that I bought as a sprig at Montecello. It showers down golden leaves. Also I have two twin-leaf plants from there and two blue hostas.I also have a lot of memories of the stories I heard on visiting Moncello. There is always something old or new to marvel over when visiting there. Dan has been an enterprising custodian! Alice H. Williams
Posted by: Alice H. Williams | August 24, 2008 at 04:17 AM
For people interested in Jefferson, many of his papers were donated to the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS)in Boston. a big collection was donated by members of President Coolidge's family. If you go on their webite, there is quite a lot on line http://www.masshist.org/ and if you look for The Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson manuscripts, you will see that collection.
MHS has a wealth of information on many topics. When I was there several years ago the past diretor mentioned when articles about Jefferson were written scholars visited MHS.
Posted by: jane lindsey | August 24, 2008 at 09:29 AM
Thankyou for putting this information in your letter; since I am involved in a busy writing project, I usually have to save your letters in an email folder for reading in the future, but this one was of particular interest to me. Recently, I tracked down a cousin whom I thought was deceased, who had done years of old fashioned research on my grandfather's line. With the information she sent me a flood of information opened up and I found out that one line married into the Randolph's of Virginia; I nearly passed out as I started tracing backwards and found out I am related to all of these founding men of our country whom I admire so much. I felt it a great privilege and responsibility to have this in my line. It is good to know about this foundation. Thankyou so much for telling us about it. Sue
Posted by: sue maxwell | August 24, 2008 at 10:16 PM