Thoughts From the Lawn

by Lisa Francavilla

While reading just about anything these days, it’s not unusual to come across a Jefferson quote –  sometimes real, sometimes not – but how often do you get what appears to be a complete Jefferson letter in the mail?

While serving as president, in November 1803, Jefferson wrote from Washington to ask Craven Peyton if a $558.14 note coming due in December could be put off or broken into smaller payments until the entirety was satisfied. If you’ve only ever heard a little about Jefferson’s income, debts, and spending habits you would probably not find the content of this letter very surprising.

But, in the midst of the Great Depression in 1936, Gary M. Underhill of the Morris Plan Bank of Richmond, Virginia, saw this letter as the perfect advertising gimmick. The bank directed the Richmond printing firm of Whittet & Shepperson to create 30,000 facsimiles on specially aged paper to use as part of a mass mailing promoting the Bank’s loan services. 

The facsimile letter, a modern-type envelope on the front of which was a facsimile of Jefferson’s address cover, and an accompanying letter from the Morris Plan Bank, identifying the letter as a “reproduction,” were mailed out together. But it seems that hundreds of the recipients discarded the advertising letters and kept the cool facsimiles, putting them away in trunks, cupboards, and file cabinets where they were discovered years later by unknowing family members.

The occasional discovery of these facsimiles began within just a few years of the original mailing in 1936 and they’ve continued ever since, generating a great deal of excitement for the discoverer and sometimes garnering the attention of local and national newspapers and magazines.     

At least once every year I have the unpleasant task of having to tell someone that what they’ve got is not an original Jefferson document, but one of these facsimile letters.

Understandably, everyone is disappointed. Some get angry – but whether it’s with me or with their family member (“why on earth did he keep this silly thing then?”), I cannot always tell. My favorite response though was several months ago when a gentleman told me that he and his wife found the Morris Plan Bank story interesting, had a good laugh about it all, and have retained the facsimile as a conversation piece.

If you’re interested, the original documents – both Craven Peyton’s received copy and Jefferson’s retained file copy – are in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

I have often been amused at the “modern” use of the Founders, their likenesses, and their words for the promotion of a wide variety of products. So, for me, the Craven Peyton letter facsimiles, together with their history as recorded in a variety of newspaper stories over the last 70 years or so, provide an intriguing glimpse into the Depression Era and one bank’s creative attempt to attract business.

We thought you would find this article of interest about Jefferson’s eyeglasses.  It appears he spent at least two years corresponding with an optician in hopes of receiving the perfect eye glasses to ensure he would be able to continue writing and reading.

“Thomas Jefferson’s Spectacles”
(Feb/Mar 2012 Issue of Albemarle Magazine)

Thomas Jefferson may have made a name for himself as a great thinker, reader and writer, however this did not exempt him from vision problems. Despite having declared his vision to be his faculty least impaired by age, Jefferson had a history of using eyeglasses for reading. It is not hard to imagine why: the hours on end he must have spent reading and writing by candlelight at Monticello would exhaust even those with twenty-twenty vision. He went through numerous pairs of glasses in his lifetime, searching for the perfect fit. During the second term of his presidency, he enlisted the help of Philadelphia optician John McAllister, from which a two-year correspondence grew. It would take about two weeks to produce a frame, which Jefferson would at times reject. In an effort to create a pair that would satisfy him, he began to become actively involved in the spectacle’s design. After exchanging ideas with McAllister, a design was reached that would effectively achieve the benefit of trifocals.

More resources on Jefferson’s spectacles:

www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/eyeglasses
http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Eyeglasses&printable=yes

Jefferson’s Use of the Legal Word

by John Ragosta

In trying to understand someone’s arguments and conclusions, I generally find that it is useful to remember if they were trained as a lawyer, and this holds no less true in the case of Thomas Jefferson. While Jefferson had an extraordinary vision, and his thoughts and ideas often rambled beyond careful legal paths (not infrequently to be recalled by the ever-cautious legal draftsman, James Madison), Jefferson’s training as a lawyer is evident in much of his work and central to his vision of the new American republic.

I was reminded of this recently while reviewing the actions of the First Continental Congress (which Jefferson did not attend). One of the important disputes in Philadelphia in the late summer of 1774 was whether a remonstrance on the rights of the colonies should be based on natural rights, the rights of British citizens, or colonial charter rights. Not surprisingly, the new national politicians reached a political compromise, resolving to protest in the name of “the immutable laws of Nature, the principles of the English Constitution, and the several charters or compacts.” Had Jefferson been there, his Summary View of the Rights of British America suggests that he would have urged the congress to rely primarily on natural rights.

Summary View, Jefferson’s first significant literary and political composition, was intended as instructions for the Virginia delegation to the Continental Congress. It was not used for that purpose largely because it was too radical: insisting that Parliament had no authority over the colonies and that many recent British laws were not simply improper, but void. Rescued from obscurity when published as a pamphlet, Summary View had an important impact on public opinion and helped to propel Jefferson to prominence. While historians are undoubtedly correct to note that Summary View evidences a developing and sometimes confusing mix of arguments based on British and natural rights, the focus – as Jefferson insisted in retirement – clearly seems to be the latter. (more…)