"Mem^sup dm.^ of Carpenters tools": Woodworking Tools at Monticello

Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Mar 2005 by Self, Robert, Stanton, Lucia

There is every indication that Jefferson expected his hired joiners to supply their own tools. Daniel Trump, a Philadelphia joiner responsible for making most of the window sashes for Monticello, recommended skilled workmen to Jefferson for employment at Monticello on at least two occasions. John Holmes was the first hired in 1800. Jefferson wrote to his Philadelphia agent in April:

I shall be glad to receive the young man recommended by Mr. Trump at the time you mentioned, as I had not employed another, in expectation of him, and in further dependence on him shall not employ another.... If he has tools, he had better bring them, as when he shall have got through my work they will enable him to enter on work for others. He could not get tools here to set himself up.14

Unfortunately, Holmes's employment at Monticello turned out to be tragically brief. On January 22, 1801, Jefferson noted in his memorandum book: "J. Holmes (my workman) died on the 14th. inst[ant]." Holmes, who fell from scaffolding, is the only known fatality during the building of Monticello. He had apparently done as Jefferson advised, as his "chest of tools" was sent back to Philadelphia to his father-in-law.15

Holmes's replacement was James Oldham, also recommended by Trump, to whom Jefferson wrote in February 1801, again warning of the scarcity of tools in Virginia:

I had agreed to give Holmes either 180 or 200. D. a year. I do not remember which tho' I have a note of it left at home. I will give the person you shall engage [Oldham] the same, with board and lodging. He will have a black man under him to rough out his work. It would be well he should carry his tools as they are not to be had there.16

On his departure from Monticello in 1804, Oldham very nearly had to leave his own tools behind, because of an altercation with the overseer, Gabriel Lilly. As Oldham reported afterwards to Jefferson, he asked to borrow a cart to transport his tools to Milton, the local head of river navigation. Lilly replied that "he would [see] me and all the tools in Hell first," whereupon Oldham borrowed a neighbor's oxcart. The overseer and his brother-in-law, carpenter John Perry, waylaid Oldham as he left, threatening to "blow [him] through" and shoot the oxen.17

ciety, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), 385;

Another tool inventory, in the estate records of John Neilson in 1827, reveals a Monticello joiner's tool kit eighteen years after he left the mountaintop. Included are basics such as bench planes (two sets), chisels, mallets, saws (five), a brace, clamps, and layout tools such as squares and gauges. Many other common planes are listed as well such as rabbet, plow, tongue and groove, beads, and hollows and rounds. Among the more sophisticated planes were two sets of cornice planes, a set of sash planes, three door planes, two side rabbet planes, and a cut and thrust. Of course, all of these tools were accumulated during a lifetime spent in the trade and were perhaps more than what he had when he came to Monticello in 1805. Nonetheless they give a good indication of the tools owned by a master joiner. Jefferson may have provided additional specialized tools such as snipe bill planes, other profiles of cornice planes, and different complex molders. Yet it is clear that many of the tools in the joinery list would undoubtedly have duplicated those already owned by men such as Dinsmore, Neilson, and Oldham.