THE
MONTICELLO
ASSOCIATION


Monticello Graveyard

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

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