When Thomas Jefferson retired from the Presidency he was surrounded at Monticello by his daughter, her husband, and eleven grandchildren. Daily association with the young people made him more anxious than ever to carry out a plan that was the growth of years. He wanted to see other children as happy as were those in his own home, and he felt that the one thing he could do to increase their happiness would be to see that the State made provision for their education.

During the remainder of his life he never lost sight of his project. “While he did not live to see his system of common schools established in Virginia, it was his joy to see the University of Virginia grow under his hands from an academy to a college and then to a university. From 1817 he labored for State appropriations for the school. A friend in the State Senate assisted him nobly. The reader of the published volume of the correspondence between the two men, a volume of 528 pages, will see how untiring was the labor that had its reward when the appropriation of funds made sure the founding of the university. Three hundred thousand dollars were provided for construction, as well as $15,000 a year for maintenance.

Jefferson himself drew the plans for the buildings and superintended the construction. Sarah N. Randolph, in “The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson,” says that” the architectural plan and form of government and instruction for this institution afforded congenial occupation for his declining years. … While the buildings were being erected, his visits to them were daily; and from the northeast corner of the terrace at Monticello he frequently watched the workmen engaged on them, through a telescope which is still [1871] preserved in the library of the University.” Edmund Bacon, the overseer at Monticello, gave to Hamilton W. Pierson, the author of “Jefferson at Monticello,” a humorous account of the early days of the project:

“The act of the Legislature made it the duty of the Commissioners to establish the University within one mile of the Court House at Charlottesville. They advertised for proposals for a site. Three men offered sites. The Commissioners had a meeting at Monticello, and then went and looked at all these sites. After they had made their examination, Mr. Jefferson sent me to each of them, to request them to send by me their price, which was to be sealed up. Lewis and Craven each asked $17 per acre, and Perry, $12. That was a mighty big price in those days. … They took Perry’s forty acres, at $12 per acre. It was a poor old turned-out field, though it was finely situated. Mr. Jefferson wrote the deed himself. Afterwards Mr. Jefferson bought a large tract near it. It had a great deal of timber and rock on it, which was used in building the University.

“My next instruction was to get ten able-bodied hands to commence the work. … Mr. Jefferson started from Monticello to layoff the foundation, and see the work commenced. An Irishman named Dinsmore, and I, went along with him. As we passed through Charlottesville, I … got a ball of twine, and Dinsmore found some shingles and made some pegs. … Mr. Jefferson looked over the ground some time, and then stuck down a peg. … He carried one end of the line, and I the other, in laying off the foundation of the University. He had a little ruler in his pocket that he always carried with him, and with this he measured off the ground, and laid off the entire foundation, and then set the men at work.”