By Kaleena Fraga
Politics lately have been exhausting. So let’s take a break and talk about Thomas Jefferson and his oddities.
Jefferson liked to wake himself up in the morning by sticking his feet in cold water. He thought this would keep him healthy. Jon Meacham, in his Jefferson biography Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, notes that this habit “wore a groove on the floor next to the alcove where he slept.” Since Jefferson lived to be 83 at a time when most men died before 40, maybe he was onto something.
Jefferson kept several mockingbirds as pets. His favorite was called “Dick.” The bird would perch on his shoulder, follow him up the stairs, and sit on his couch while Jefferson napped. Lucia Stanton, a Jefferson scholar, noted that the bird’s name was somewhat disappointing, given Jefferson’s tendency to give his horses more noble names (some highlights: “Allycrocker”, “Peggy Waffington”, “Remus and Romulus”, “Zanga”, Polly Peacham”)
An agrarian at heart, who saw this as the future of the new United States, Jefferson once committed international espionage in order to introduce a superior crop to American soil. As the Minister to France, he saw that Italian rice outsold American rice. Since he believed that, “the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to it’s [sic] culture,” Jefferson went to Italy and literally put handfuls of the rice in his pockets to bring back to the United States. At the time, such an act was punishable by death.
A less fun fact about Jefferson concerns Sally Hemings. Many know of Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings–if it can be called that, since, as he had all the power and she had none, there really wasn’t a question of consent on her part–but there’s another, fascinating layer to this. Jefferson’s wife, Martha, died when she was 33. He was 39. Martha asked that he never marry again, and Jefferson didn’t. He began his infamous relationship with Hemings instead–Martha’s half sister.
History First 