Today was truly a step back into the history and lives of three of our founding fathers. My day started off at 9 am at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

Monticello, in Charlottesville, Virginia was Thomas Jefferson's home for the remaining fifty-six years of his life. He spent forty years designing it, building it, tearing it apart, redesigning it, and finally putting it all back together. He loved the house and its' property, and knew the name of every tree planted on its grounds. And, if one of his trees died, he knew it. He used his own kilns to bake the more than half-million bricks he used in the various stages of its construction.

While serving as Minister to France, he filled almost a hundred crates with furniture and various works of art for the many rooms at Monticello. While in France he would collect fruit trees and bring them with him on the long boat trip home.

When Mr. Jefferson was President of the United States, he would long for his home at Monticello. Whenever possible he would make the long four day trip there from Washington.

After his death, practically everything at Monticello was sold at auction.

In the Foundations efforts to collect his original property, they have amassed more than one hundred-fifty items, collections from museums, universities, private homes and Historical Societies. These original items are on display at Monticello in a special exhibition titled, "The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello."

Some of the many items included in this special exhibition are a collection of Native American artifacts presented to Thomas Jefferson by Lewis & Clark; a buffalo robe; his famous astronomical clock that he built because his old less-accurate clocks caused him to miss the eclipse of 1811. Also, included are his original dining room tables; a three-inch bell that Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha, gave to her nine-year-old slave girl, Sally Hemings; and more than thirty original paintings. The floor of the entrance hall has been repainted the grass-green that it originally was, and the walls of the family sitting room have been returned to its original indigo. These efforts to return Monticello to its original state will provide visitors an almost exact feeling as if Thomas Jefferson lived there today.

Thomas Jefferson picked out the site for such a house as he had planned from his father's estate when he was twenty-one-years old. He named it "Monticello" which is Italian for "Little Mountain."

Monticello was intended to be fashioned as a traditional Palladian building, but its location was not practical. It had been said that building a house on a mountain was most impractical. As a result of it's impractically, Jefferson paid dearly in his efforts. He had to transport tons of stone and timber. Once the original structure was up, there was not enough water in the well to meet the needs. He then had to transport water using carts from the nearby springs.

Life was uncomfortable and difficult in the early years of construction, especially for his wife, Martha, who had to live in a house, that in her lifetime was never finished. She had to tolerate unfinished walls & roof, being subjected to severe cold winds, brick and plaster dust, all the while bearing six children in ten years, having lost four of them, until her death in 1782 at the early age of thirty-three.

Throughout the many discomforts and hardships experienced at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson felt there was a brighter side, in that nothing like Monticello had ever been built in Colonial America.

Thomas Jefferson was an extraordinary man. In his fifty-six years at Monticello it seems he always kept himself quite busy. He designed and invented many things. He would start his day at first light, reportedly when he could read the hands of the obelisk clock that he designed. This clock was marked by clangs from a Chinese gong placed on the roof. The gong was powered by the clock located in the entrance hall. The mechanism was controlled by fifty pound cannonball weights that would descend slowly throughout the week, falling through holes in the floor by Friday, spending the next two days falling further into the cellar.

Some of his other inventions include a dumbwaiter; a polygraph machine that enabled him to make exact copies of letters as he was writing them; Venetian blinds he used to regulate sunlight in his greenhouses; a moldboard for a plow; and his achromatic telescope.

When he was not busy building, designing or inventing, Thomas Jefferson spent many hours writing one of his more than 20,000 letters, or reading from one of his more than seven thousand books in his library. His library contained books in seven languages, two of which were Latin and Greek, languages he had mastered. When he worked at his desk, he would have no less than twenty books at a time in which to refer.

Thomas Jefferson spent over forty years in public service. He was a Delegate to the Virginia House of Burgesses (1769-1793); and the Continental Congress (1775); Governor of Virginia (1797-1801); Minister to France (1785-1789); Washington's Secretary of State (1789-1793); John Adam's vice-president (1797-1801); and President of the United States (1801-1809).

Monticello through all its greatness also had a flaw. An economic flaw. Although Thomas Jefferson could feed and clothe its inhabitants, it did not produce enough cash crops to pay for the country-gentleman lifestyle so accustomed to Jefferson. As a result it was worked by the most oppressive of labor systems, human slavery. Jefferson did however deplore human slavery and was optimistic that it would one day be abolished. He knew though that the only way to run a plantation of this size was through the use of slaves. He did manage to free a few of his slaves, but by the time of his death the remaining slaves as well as the remainder of his property were offered for sale to pay his debts.

Throughout his lifetime Thomas Jefferson is remembered for his wit, his designs and inventions, his writings, and his public service. But let us not forget that it was he who wrote the Declaration of Independence and also as President of the United States signed the authorization for the Louisiana Purchase, thus acquiring for the United States what is now the present states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Montana. This was perhaps the most endearing service to his country.

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Thomas Jefferson wrote in his account book in 1826 the inscriptions to be cut on his tombstone. He made no note that he had been President of the United States, but wished simply to be most remembered for founding the University of Virginia, for writing the Declaration of Independence and Virginia's Act for Religious Freedom. The last line was to read: Died July 4, 1826.

It was only fitting that Thomas Jefferson died at Monticello, the place he loved to live.

After my tour of the home and ground I visited the Jefferson cemetery and saw the grave of the third president.

A little further up the road I visited the home James Monroe. Encouraged by his close friend, Thomas Jefferson, Monroe purchased a deed for one thousand acres of land adjacent to Monticello in 1793 for an equal number of pounds from the Carter family. The land formerly had been a part of the Blenheim Plantation owned by Champe Carter. Six years later, Monroe moved his family onto the plantation, where they resided for the next twenty-four years. In 1800,

Over the next 16 years, Monroe continued to add on to his home, adding stone cellars and a second story to the building. He also expanded his land holdings, which at their greatest included over 3,500 acres However, by 1815, Monroe increasingly turned to selling his land to pay for debt. By 1825, he was forced to sell his home and the property.

The tour was about ½ hour long and then I was off to Michie’s Tavern. Michie Tavern has welcomed travelers for more than 200 years. Imagine arriving by horseback, on foot or by coach. The rooms would be thick with the scent of cooked venison and tobacco. Voices, some raised in heated political debate, would carry from room to room. As you cross the threshold of old Michie's Tavern you enter another time. Our costumed hostess welcomes you into the past as "Stranger," an early 18th-century term for a traveler.