Albemarle County: Jefferson Quotations
1787. "I know of no condition happier than that of a Virginia farmer might be, conducting himself as he did during the war. His estate supplies a good table, clothes itself and his family with their ordinary apparel, furnishes a small surplus to buy salt, sugar, coffee, and a little finery for his wife and daughter, enables him to receive and to visit friends, and furnishes him pleasing and healthy occupation . . . My habits are formed to those of my own country. I am past the time of changing them and am therefore less happy anywhere else than there." (TJ to James Currie, 4 August, B.11.682)
1788.
"I have been planning what I would shew you: a flower here, a
tree there; yonder a grove, near it a fountain; on this side a
hill, on that a river. Indeed, madam, I know nothing so charming
as our own country. The learned say it is a new creation; and
I believe them; not for their reasons, but because it is made
on an improved plan." (TJ to Angelica Church, 17 February, B.12.601)
1791. "On the whole I find nothing any where else in point of climate which Virginia need envy to any part of the world . . . . Spring and autumn, which make a paradise of our country, are rigorous winter with them [New Englanders] . . . . When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensations it excites, and the productions it is the parents of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such an one as that of Virginia." (TJ to MJR, 31 May, B.20.464)
--Kristen K. Onuf, Monticello Research Department, 25 March 1991
Photograph of vineyards at Monticello by Skip Johns