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His early death, when Thomas was fourteen, caused his teenage son to look to his teachers for fatherly advice and direction. He had also made a name for himself as the commander of the local militia, a talented surveyor, and a country politician.
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By the time of his death in 1757, the elder Jefferson owned 7,000 acres of land in western Virginia. He owed his good fortune to the financial success of his father, Peter Jefferson, a planter of some means. For Jefferson, the study of law, as directed by Wythe, was more than just a means of earning a living Jefferson felt that examining legal issues enabled one to consider many aspects of society, including its history, politics, culture, institutions, and the moral conscience of its people.ĭuring Jefferson's time, few colonial Americans could afford the quality and personal education that he received. Under Wythe's tutelage, Jefferson emerged as perhaps the nation's best-read lawyer upon his admission to the Virginia bar in April 1767. From 1762 to 1767, Jefferson pursued legal studies under George Wythe, who also taught John Marshall and Henry Clay, two of the most outstanding figures in American history. The precocious Jefferson fell under the influence of Professor William Small, who had brought the latest Enlightenment thinking to Williamsburg from his native Scotland, and dined frequently with Governor Francis Fauquier and other luminaries in the provincial capital.
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In 1760, Jefferson enrolled at the College of William and Mary, taking classes in science, mathematics, rhetoric, philosophy, and literature. He continued boarding school until age sixteen, excelling in classical languages. Intellectual BeginningsĪt age nine, Jefferson began his formal studies, boarding with a minister-teacher nine months out of the year. Along with his parents and three siblings-three other sisters and one brother were later born to the family-Jefferson spent the next six years roaming the woods and studying his books. This journey was undertaken with his family as they moved to a plantation that Jefferson's father was to manage, acting as executor of a friend's estate. His first childhood memory, at age three, was of the fifty-mile horseback ride he took with his father's slave into the Virginia wilderness. Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at Shadwell plantation in western Virginia.