The Monticello Graveyard

The graveyard at Monticello began with an agreement between two young men, Thomas Jefferson and Dabney Carr, who were schoolmates and friends, that they would be buried under a great oak that stood there. Carr, who married Jefferson's sister, died in 1773, and his was the first grave on the site, which Jefferson laid out as a family burying ground. Jefferson was buried there in 1826. The present monument is not the original one designed by Jefferson, but a larger one erected by the United States in 1883. Its base covers the graves of Jefferson, his wife, his two daughters, and Governor Thomas Mann Randolph, his son-in-law. The graveyard remains the property of Jefferson's descendants and continues to be a family burying ground.

Virginia · United States