Washington: Dozens of former US president Thomas Jefferson’s books, some including handwritten notes from the third American president, have been found in the rare books collection at Washington University in St. Louis.
Thomas Jefferson, 1743 to 1826, was the third US President from 1801 to 1809 and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. An influential founding father, Jefferson envisioned America as a great “Empire of Liberty” that would promote Republicanism. He was the first US Secretary of State and second Vice President of the United States.
Now, historians are pouring through the 69 newly discovered books and five others the school already knew about, and librarians are searching the collection for more volumes that may have belonged to the founding father.
Even if no other Jefferson-owned books are found, the school’s collection of 74 books is the third largest in the nation, after the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia.
“It is so out of the blue and pretty amazing,” said Washington University’s rare books curator Erin Davis of the discovery that was announced on President’s Day.
The books were among about 3,000 that were donated to the school in 1880 after the death of Jefferson’s granddaughter, Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge, and her husband, Joseph Coolidge.
There was no indication at the time that any of them had belonged to Jefferson. But it turned out that 2 1/2 years after Jefferson’s 1826 death, his library of 1,600 books was sold to settle debts. Ellen Coolidge’s grandfather helped oversee her schooling when she lived at his mountaintop estate at Monticello from age 13 to 28.
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