Resources

There are numerous Jefferson-related historical sites, websites, and electronic resources, many with similar names and overlapping materials. This list is meant to help users start their search for more information on Jefferson and his world.

Monticello

Monticello is both a historic place and an essential site for information about Jefferson the man, his Charlottesville, Virginia, plantation home, and the people—free and enslaved—who lived and worked there. Their website includes links to lesson plans, famous (and spurious) quotations, the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, Jefferson’s library database, plantation database, and the Thomas Jefferson Retirement Series, which publishes the Jefferson correspondence from 4 March 1809 until his death in 1826 as well as family letters from 1809 to 1873.

VISIT THE MONTICELLO WEBSITE

Sowerby Catalogue

In 1815, the Library of Congress purchased more than 6,000 books in Jefferson’s library as the basis for its own recreated collection. As part of the bicentennial commemoration of Jefferson’s birth, the Library of Congress commissioned E. Millicent Sowerby to catalog and describe the contents of Jefferson’s library. This crucial bibliographic tool, Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson; Compiled with Annotations by E. Millicent Sowerby, was published as a five-volume edition between 1952 and 1959. It is available digitally through the Library of Congress in facsimile scans of the catalogue pages and a separately constructed index.  Monticello also has a transcribed searchable electronic version as well through its Thomas Jefferson’s Libraries database.

VISIT THE SOWERBY CATALOGUE