About the Exhibition: As author of the Declaration of Independence, architect of the Virginia State Capitol, founder of the University of Virginia, and third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson is one of history’s best-known figures. Surprisingly, the largest collection of Jefferson’s private papers (more than 8,000 pieces) cannot be found in his native Virginia but is instead in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Highlights: For the first time since the late 1800s, the most significant pieces from the Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts returned to Virginia to be displayed in the VMHC's exhibition, The Private Jefferson: From the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The Private Jefferson featured Jefferson's manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence and more than sixty architectural drawings, broadsides, and letters. The exhibition offered a unique opportunity to see these important American documents in one place.
- These objects ranged from a 1785 printing of Jefferson’s “Act for Establishing Religious Freedom” and letters by him regarding the war between England and France to 1801 and 1814 editions of Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice (still partly in use in the House of Representatives) and Meriwether Lewis’s report of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
- The Massachusetts Historical Society added to the show three documents from its collections that are among the most important in American history: a copy handwritten by Jefferson of his first (and longer) draft of the Declaration of Independence; a copy of the Declaration handwritten by John Adams; and a printed copy of the Declaration that was issued in Philadelphia in 1776.
The Massachusetts collection was placed there in 1898 by the president’s great-grandson, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge of Boston.
The exhibition at the VMHC was sponsored by Altria with additional support from The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and The Elmon T. Gray Fund for Virginia History.