“My Love to Thomas,” she wrote her husband on the very day that Jefferson resigned as secretary of state (though she wasn’t yet aware of that). Despite the two men’s political ...

On August 19, 1791, Benjamin Banneker wrote a lengthy letter to Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, in which "having taken up my pen in order to direct to you as a present, a copy of an ...

Barton relayed Michaux’s idea to the society’s vice president, Thomas Jefferson, who also happened to be the U.S. secretary of state. Jefferson’s obsession with the frontier west of the ...

Thomas Jefferson was a contradictory character ... In 1789, President George Washington asked Jefferson to be his Secretary of State. Within weeks, the French revolution erupted, dividing ...

In 1781, Thomas Jefferson wrote Notes on the State of Virginia. Much of the book was devoted to descriptions of the physical terrain of the state. One section, however was devoted to Jefferson's ...

click image for close-up In October of 1793, Eli Whitney sent a drawing of his new invention, the cotton gin, to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in application for a patent. Jefferson replied ...

Courtesy: Monticello/Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. Jefferson had arrived in New York, then capital of the United States, in March 1790. The newly appointed Secretary of State had been abroad ...