mechanics were the best in Virginia. Even the family coach was made at Monticello, and the painting and the masonry of the mansion were all executed by slaves on the place.
On the Rivanna Jefferson had a mill, where his wheat was manufactured into flour and sent down to Richmond on bateaux to be sold for a good price, and cotton brought home to be made into cloth on the plantation. No wonder, when the master was gone, so extensive an industrial plant ceased to be remunerative.
Jefferson was always sending home shrubbery and trees from Washington,—he knew every green thing on every spot of his farm; and Bacon, the manager, seldom failed to send the cart back laden with fruit from Monticello for the White House.
While the President at Monticello was giving orders to Goliah, the gardener, to Jupiter, the hostler, to Bacon and all the head men of the shops, Lewis would gallop home to visit his mother at Locust Hill just out of Charlottesville.
Before the Revolution, Meriwether's father, William Lewis, had received from George III. a patent for three thousand acres of choice Ivy Creek land in Albemarle, commanding an uninterrupted view of the Blue Ridge for one hundred and fifty miles. Here Meriwether was born, and Reuben and Jane.
"If Captain John Marks courts you I advise you to marry him," said Colonel William Lewis to his wife, on his death-bed after the surrender of Cornwallis. In a few years she did marry Captain Marks, and in Georgia were born Meriwether's half brother and sister, John and Mary Marks.
Another spot almost as dear to Meriwether Lewis was the plantation of his uncle Nicholas Lewis, "The Farm," adjoining Monticello. It was here he saw Hamilton borne by, a prisoner of war, on the way to Williamsburg, and here it was that Tarleton made his raid and stole the ducks from Aunt Molly's chicken yard.
A strict disciplinarian, rather severe in her methods, and very industrious was Aunt Molly
