The Monticello Graveyard
Charlottesville, Virginia
| This
graveyard had its beginning in an agreement between two young men, Thomas Jefferson and
Dabney Carr, who were schoolmates and friends. They agreed that they would be buried under
a great oak which stood here. Carr, who married Jefferson's sister, died in 1773. His was the first grave on this site, which Jefferson laid out as a family burying ground. Jefferson was buried here in 1826. The present monument is not the original, designed by Jefferson, but a larger one erected by the United States in 1883. Its base covers the graves of Jefferson, his wife, his two daughters, and of Governor Thomas Mann Randolph, his son-in-law. The graveyard remains the property of Jefferson's descendants, and continues a family burying ground. |
Photograph courtesy of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation |
