MONTICELLO (home of Thomas Jefferson)

[Music] all right big one today i'm in monticello here in charlottesville headed up to the visitors center and um it's where i get my bus ticket uh a little van takes you up the mountain up to the uh up to the house [Music] [Laughter] [Music] all right so this would be his library says he can read in seven different languages so this is his bed chamber that's where he passed away at the age of 83 in 1826 50 years after uh the day he signed the declaration of independence oh wow this is cool room the parlor it's octagon shape it's kind of creepy part of his art collection and i guess his scientific hearers heroes said francis bacon isaac newton thomas locke recognize ben franklin of course okay this yellow paint was original it's called chrome yellow it's actually toxic it's pretty cool okay thanks is that the end of the house into the house you'll go to the basement okay okay all right trying to find my way to underneath the house and uh i guess i don't have much to say on thomas jefferson i think most people know the story and uh let's see he was virginia governor he was ambassador to uh france which turned into secretary of state he was a vice president president let's see architect okay here at the carriage house and this thing's called a phaeton i think that's how you pronounce it it says it's the sports car of its time so yeah it looks pretty light [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] said he gave names to however you felt the time while you're here uh to visit with all of our families and i mean not only the jeffersons pretty cool shot of the front of the mansion and just let you know uh monticello means little mountain in italian and um yeah we're all up on a big hill overlooking charlottesville let's see thomas jefferson got a lot of his architectural ideas from his uh his visit to france and he also designed popular forest university of virginia and the state capitol [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] i just finished the tour of the lower level of the house i used as a storage area stored beer wine cider groceries and a work area for the slaves and uh had a little exhibit on sally hemmings and uh yeah she was actually a uh half sister to thomas jefferson's wife um and uh his wife's family they were uh slave merchants and uh somebody down the line i guess uh i had a kid with one of the slaves and uh so it's it's kind of odd how they're all interrelated so down here we've got mulberry road it's kind of the industrial zone i guess of the plantation you've got all the textile shops uh boundary blacksmith shop and uh it's where a lot of slaves live uh craftsman or craftsman artisans and it was a pretty hopping area at the time and behind it you got the [Music] gardens all right so we've got the stables back here and uh it's kind of a shame we've got kobe going on uh a lot of these buildings are roped off i guess the one plus was they're letting you take pictures inside of the uh inside the mansion now so that's pretty cool all right down here at the joiner shop and they're wood craftsmen who make furniture and uh he hired a couple irish immigrants this i'm gonna guess is original they went through a lot of work to uh to keep it standing [Music] and uh like an old chimney and you can see the old uh english bond brickwork and then uh they finished it off with stone all right so this is a storage quarter for iron i knew they made nails here yeah um [Music] [Music] all right so i'm down in the gardens now and this is incredible view um just to let you know i don't know what direction we're pointed but uh thomas jefferson was actually born in north shadwell which is just a couple miles from here [Music] [Music] now we're gonna walk on down to the uh grave site so it's about a half a mile yeah you still have more buildings down here just past what they call the saw pit okay so i'm down here at the grave site and uh this actually isn't owned by the uh thomas jefferson foundation it's uh stolen by his family and they still use it as an active burial site that's pretty cool and this spot was uh chosen because uh it was an area where he studied with his childhood friend named let's see dabney carr and they made a ha pact that when they died they would be buried here and it looks like dabney died first thomas had him buried here and then uh yeah eventually this is where he was laid to rest yeah he got dad dabney died when he was 30. in that big obelisk i guess uh that's where that's thomas's uh tombstone all right these placards pretty much till the same thing and uh okay here's a list of all the family members buried out here [Music] and recent family members are being buried toward the back all right walking the trail back to the visitor center and uh so yeah i guess it wraps up my tour and um although i think there's a couple of museums down there better lighting down there that i'm probably gonna walk through and uh wow yeah the place was nice and uh i hope that didn't ruin me for uh future plantation houses and um kind of a bummer though we've got covey going on because a lot of the outdoor houses the dependencies were were closed off were roped off you couldn't actually go inside and um i came here about two years ago and i remember the inside of the house tour being longer could have swore we went up to the second floor but um yeah but anyway still still awesome and uh they let you take photos now so i guess maybe that's the trade-off um anyway so uh on the way out of here i'm gonna stop at mickey's tavern it's a uh colonial uh tavern that's on the road uh um leading out of here so probably hit that up and then got a big day tomorrow i'm headed out toward lynchburg to uh to visit poplar forest so still on this uh thomas jefferson kick so anyway that's it see ya [Music] over here looks like this area is dedicated to his travels and uh yeah of course he lived in france for about five years um looks like he traveled to england all right his uh us travels and um yeah it looks like you traveled up north a lot and uh yeah i love checking out these old maps so pretty neat to check out the family trees looks like thomas and martha had six kids uh only one didn't die uh prematurely that would be martha and uh she married into the famous randolph family and they had it looks like 12 kids all right so now i'm officially getting out of here and uh yeah that museum was pretty cool there's more to it than what i thought and then stopped by the uh the gift shop grabbed a couple books okay off to mickey's tavern

Channel: VA Travels

Views: 7,981

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Travel, Historical, Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, Charlottesville, President, Virginia, Plantation, Martha Jefferson

Id: RxpjFTWKAeU

Length: 16min 27sec (987 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020