Peter Jefferson

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Peter Jefferson (February 29, 1708 - August 17, 1757), was the father of President Thomas Jefferson.

He was the son of Thomas Jefferson I (1679-1731) and Mary Field (1680-1715) [1]. Jefferson was born in Chesterfield County, Virginia, the third son and fourth child of six children. He did not receive any formal education while young, but according to his famous son, he nevertheless "read much and improved himself." In 1734, Jefferson claimed the land in present-day Albemarle County which he eventually named Shadwell. He married Jane Randolph in 1739 (daughter of Isham Randolph and granddaughter of William Randolph). For a year or two following his marriage, his residence was in present-day Powhatan County Virginia near Fine Creek. Jefferson built a house on the Shadwell tract in 1741 or 1742, and moved there sometime before Thomas Jefferson was born.

He was made one of the first officers of Albemarle County in 1745. Later in that same year, he was made guardian over the children of William Randolph, his wife's cousin who had recently died. He and his family moved to Tuckahoe in Goochland County, where Thomas Jefferson first attended school. In 1749, Peter Jefferson, along with Joshua Fry, Thomas Walker, Edmund Pendleton and others, established the Loyal Land Company, and were granted 800,000 acres in present-day Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. He was a cartographer and surveyor who, along with Fry, completed the survey of the Virginia-North Carolina border, begun by William Byrd II some time earlier. The detailed Fry-Jefferson Map, cited by his son Thomas in Notes on the State of Virginia, was produced by him and Fry. He and his family moved back to Shadwell in 1752.

Peter Jefferson died at his house on the Shadwell tract in Albemarle County. It burned down in 1770. The area around his house is being studied, but his burial location is unknown.