Thomas Jeffersonwas born on April 13, 1743, in Albemarle County, Virginia, the third child of Peter Jefferson, a surveyor, and Jane Randolph, daughter of a distinguished Virginia family. Their estate, Shadwell, was on the banks of the Rivanna River in the sparsely populated Piedmont Region, ...
Albermarle county, where Jefferson was born, lay in the foothills of theBlue RidgeMountains in what was then regarded as a western province of the Old Dominion. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a self-educated surveyor who amassed a tidy estate that included 60 enslaved people. According to ...