Page 967 : JEFFERSON — JEFFERSON
south bank of the Missouri River. It has several fine buildings and state institutions, the state and supreme court libraries and a Carnegie library, and is the seat of Lincoln Institute, a negro normal school. Coal and limestone are found in its vicinity, and it has manufactories of farm-implements, wagons, foundry and machine shops, brickyards, breweries etc. It is on the Missouri Pacific and Chicago and Alton railroads. Jefferson City has electric and gas lights, street railways and waterworks. Population 12,000.
Jefferson, Joseph, a noted American actor, was born at Philadelphia, Feb. 20, 1829. He came of theatrical stock, his father and grandfather being well-known American actors, while his great-grandfather had been a member of Garrick’s company. When Jefferson was only three years old, he appeared in the play Pizarro as Cora’s child, and at four years he was dancing as a miniature “Jim Crow.” For many jears he went through the severe training of a strolling actor, and then played at New York, where in 1857 he made a success in several characters. In 1865 he visited London, and at the Adelphi theater played his world-famous part of Rip Van Winkle for the first time. With this character his name will be forever associated. Nor is this wonderful, for it is one of the most perfect works of art — beautiful in conception and delightful and delicate in execution. The art was all the actor’s; the dramatist had done nothing. Rip was a lazy, good-for-nothing vagabond; but Jefferson made him “the Arcadian vagabond of the world of dreams.” In his profession he gained both fame and fortune, and his personal character was high. His death occurred on April 23, 1905. See his Autobiography.
Jefferson, Thomas. The author of the Declaration of Independence was the most conspicuous and consistent apostle of democracy in America. When he asserted in that immortal document that “all men are created free and equal,” it to him was no high-sounding phrase of political philosophy, but a literal expression of the principle upon which he ordered his own life and his relations with men. “Jeffersonian simplicity” has for more than a century been the main timber supporting the platform of the party he founded. His forty years of distinguished public service were marked by such an entire absence of ostentation as to be felt as a rebuke by many of his associates. But his sincerity in this attitude was never questioned.
Yet Jefferson was the last man in whom such characteristics might have been expected. In birth, fortune, intellect and physique he essentially was an aristocrat. Born in Albemarle County, Virginia, April 2, 1743, the son of a well-to-do planter, his family and associations were of the leisure class, identical with the country gentry of England. His father’s land was tilled by slaves. Until he was twenty his time was employed in acquiring a gentleman’s education in England and in William and Mary College; and in riding, hunting and social pleasures. His superior mind easily gave him rank as a scholar in the languages, mathematics and natural sciences. In person he was over six feet in height, slenderly built but very erect. His features were delicately fashioned, his eyes a bright hazel-brown, his hair a sandy red and waving, his complexion clear and bright. He had an air of distinction but a manner of extreme simplicity that gave him popularity among all classes. He seemed designed by nature for public service. Inheriting his father’s plantation, with an assured income sufficient for a gentleman’s needs, his practice of the law was unusual for a man of his class. His talents secured him a place in the office of George Wythe of Williamsburg, then at the head of the Virginian bar. Jefferson’s success was immediate. In the fourth year of his practice he appeared in nearly 500 cases. In 1774 he had added to his estate until he owned 5,000 acres of tobacco-land. In 1772 he added to his fortune by his marriage to Mrs. Martha Skelton for whom he built the splendid mansion of Monticello, which for half a century was the most distinguished center of private hospitality in America. Much of his land remained uncultivated, however, for he was opposed to the institution of slavery. He would buy no new slaves, and tried to have a law passed by which he could free those he had.
From the time Jefferson was 25 years old until the opening of the Revolution he was a member of the House of Burgesses, and thus was officially connected with all the events which led up to the war. His writing of the pamphlet, A Summary View of the Rights of America, placed him among
Image: JOSEPH JEFFERSON
Image: THOMAS JEFFERSON
Individual articles:
