"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

11. TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph, May 19, 1793, Boyd, Papers of Jefferson, 26: 65. Scotsman David Watson, a deserter from the British army when he was first hired in 1781, worked at Monticello at three different times in the 1780s and 1790s. Besides his work on the construction of the house, he made wheels, furniture, and carriages. George was an enslaved blacksmith.

12. Bear and Stanton, Jefferson's Memorandum Books, 2: 985.

13. Since there is no additional information about this purchase, it is impossible to say whether the tools were British or American, used or new. Did Dinsmore bring them from Ireland or buy them in Philadelphia? It is possible Jefferson bought Dinsmore's personal collection and that Dinsmore then pure-based new tools. It seems unlikely that Jefferson was buying a set of tools just for Dinsmore's use.

14. TJ to John Barnes, June 24, 1800, MHi.

15. Bear and Stanton, Jefferson's Memorandum Books, 2: 1034; TJ to James Stuart, May 12, 1801, MHi.

16. TJ to Daniel Trump, February 21, 1801, MHi.

17. James Oldham to TJ, October 7, 1803, Library of Congress; November 26, 1804, MHi.

18. Although Jefferson and some members of this large enslaved family spelled the surname "Hemings," the enslaved joiner, who was literate, used the "Hemmings" spelling. For more information on Hemmings, see Robert L. Self and Susan R. Stein, "The Collaboration of Thomas Jefferson and John Hemings: Furniture Attributed to the Monticello Joinery," Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 (1998): 231-248; Lucia Stanton, Free Some Day: The African-American Families of Monticello (Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 2000), 135-140, 146-149.

19. Miscellaneous memoranda, June 22 , 1799, Farm Book addenda, MHi.

20. TJ to James Dinsmore, December 15, 1807, MHi.

21. Miscellaneous memoranda, September / October 1799, Farm Book addenda, MHi.

22. Building notebook, "Work to be done by Mr. Dinsmore," September 24, 1804, and list of work for "reserved for J. Hemings," 1804-1805, MHi.

23. Edwin Morris Belts, ed., Thomas Jefferson's Farm Hook (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), facsimile, 114.

24. Mutual Assurance Company of Virginia, "Declaration of Assurance," 1796, Archives of the Mutual Assurance Company of Virginia (Betts, Farm Book, 6). The remains of the joinery, including the chimney and stone foundation, can still be seen on Mulberry Row, the plantation "main street" at Monticello.

25. In the early 1770s, before the joinery was constructed, Jefferson was planning to have a lathe. In a plan for domestic and plantation dependencies, he noted a "Carpenter's shop and turning wheel" (Nichols no. 85, MHi).

26. TJ to Edmund Meeks, July 19, 1819, MHi. For more information on gutters in joists, see "Jefferson and the Art of Roofing" in this issue.

27. Stanton, Free Some Day, 58-60.

28. Codicil of Jefferson's will, March 17, 1826; Monticello dispersal sale receipts, January 15-19, 1827, University of Virginia Library.

Author

EAIA member Robert Self, Monticello's conservator of architecture and furniture, has been an avid user and collector of woodworking tools for more than thirty years. The author wishes to thank Jay Gaynor and Gordon Lohr for sharing their knowledge of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century woodworking tools. In addition, he thanks his friend and mentor Edward F. Davis, now deceased, who taught him the essential skill of sharpening so many years ago and gave the author the set of hollows and rounds that formed the nucleus of his tool kit. (Author's note for co-author Lucinda Stanton appears on page 10.)