Why Jefferson Let His Granddaughter Stay Next Door

Subscribe to my channel    / @loveandsuccession   On March 8, 1819, Thomas Jefferson wrote that he had "for some time taken for granted" that his granddaughter would die at her husband's hands. Five weeks earlier, that husband had stabbed her brother outside the Charlottesville courthouse. She lived on the farm next door. Ann Cary Randolph Bankhead was Jefferson's first grandchild, the girl who kept his flower beds at Monticello. At seventeen she married Charles Lewis Bankhead, a law student of her grandfather's and the son of an old friend. Within a few years he was drinking at the Charlottesville taverns, and in 1815 Jefferson wrote to the young man's father describing "an assault on his wife of great violence." What's in it: Two deeds from April 1, 1815, written in Jefferson's own hand The copy of a letter in which Jefferson crossed out his own first words An overseer's memory of Ann hiding in a potato-hole This video is built on Jefferson's own letters and deeds, the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, the family's letters at Monticello and the University of Virginia, and an overseer's memoir printed in 1862. The documents are clean. The motives are contested, and both sides are given. Where a claim could not be sourced, the video says so instead of filling the gap. If you want more of these, the document first and the story second, subscribe. There are more files than you would think, and I keep opening them. Watch next: Thomas Jefferson's Wife's Family Secret Was DARKER Than You Thought    • Thomas Jefferson’s Wife’s Family Secret Wa...   Sources: Thomas Jefferson to John Bankhead, February 20 and October 28, 1815, and October 1816 (Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series; Founders Online) Conveyances of Carlton and of land adjoining Carlton to trustees, April 1, 1815, in Jefferson's hand (Papers of Thomas Jefferson; Founders Online) Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Cary Nicholas, March 8, 1819 (Founders Online)