"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

Notes

1. There were enslaved coopers and wheelwrights at Montirello, some with separate shops.

2. James A. Bear, Jr., ed., Jefferson at Monticello (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967), 18; The Chronicle 43, no. 3 (1990): 82; Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Tears of Washington Society, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), 385; Lillian B. Miller et al., eds., The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and His Family (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988) 2, pt. 2: 691. For an account of tool chests comparable to Jefferson's, see Jay Gaynor, "Mr. Hewlett's Tool Chest," The Chronicle 38, no. 4 (1985): 57-60, and 39, no. 1 (1986): 4-8, and James M. Gaynor, "Tools for Gentlemen," The Magazine Antiques (January 2001): 234-241.

3. Henry S. Randall, "President Jefferson's Plow," 1862 N. Y. State Agricultural Society Transactions (Albany, 1863) 22: 72-73; Margaret Bayard Smith, A Winter in Washington (New York: E. Bliss and E. White, 1824) 3: 263.

4. TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, April 12, 1798, Julian P. Boyd et al., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950-), 30: 269. James Dinsmore, from northern Ireland, was living and working in Philadelphia in 1798 when Jefferson hired him to come to Monticello. John Neilson, also an Irishman, worked at Monticello from 1805 to 1809.

5. Readers will also note a number of tools missing from this list that would be expected in a joinery, including hammers, rules, turn-screws, and shears.

6. Jane Rees and Mark Rees, eds., The Tool Chest of Benjamin Seaton (Bournemouth, England: The Tools & Trades History Society, 1994); Wallace Gusler, Furniture of Williamsburg and Eastern Virginia, 1710-1790 (Richmond: Virginia Museum, 1979), 182. Seaton's tools were bought from London planemaker and tool seller Christopher Gabriel.

7. See also Warren Roberts, "Early Tool Inventories: Opportunities and Challenges," The Chronicle 39, no. 3 (1986): 40-44. The largest number of planes recorded by Roberts, in his survey of 67 different inventories, was 84, owned by Absalom Wells of Woodford County, Kentucky.

8. One exception to this is the presence of a toothing plane, a plane type used exclusively for cabinet work.

9. The number of cornice planes listed (11) further attests to the almost extravagant nature of this tool kit. Of the 67 different inventories surveyed by Roberts, there were only a total of twelve cornice planes.

10. James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia Stanton, eds., Jefferson's Memorandum Books: Accounts with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), see index, Miscellaneous Articles: Tools. When in Washington, Jefferson bought files, chisels, planes, and other tools from Henry Ingle (invoices in Massachusetts Historical Society, hereafter MHi). Ingle imported from the firm of Robert Sutcliff & Co. of Sheffield a mahogany case containing a hand brace, bits, and "a few other tools" for Jefferson in 1802 (Ingle to TJ, June 28, 1802, MHi).