Thomas Jefferson’s Birthplace, Virginia

Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 in a farmhouse built by his father at Shadwell, one of a number of plantations owned by his extended family. He inherited Shadwell on his 21st birthday, in 1764, and it continued to be his home until the house burned down in 1770, destroying his first library, records about the house, and all but his fiddle, they say. After the fire Jefferson moved to a hillside nearby, where he had already started building his dream home, Monticello (little mountain). By the early 1900s, Shadwell had returned to being sheep and cow pasture. Later archeological work at Shadwell determined the location and footprint of the original house, but there are no plans for any reconstructions, or to open the site to the public. A granite monument erected by the St. Louis Historical Society on Jefferson’s birthday in 1926, 100 years after his death, the only monument commemorating his birthplace, sits alone in a grove of trees, behind a locked gate.