ieties. The elder Jefferson had
uncommon powers both of mind and body. His strength was such that he could
simultaneously "head up"--that is, raise from their sides to an upright
position--two hogsheads of tobacco, weighing nearly one thousand pounds
apiece. Like Washington, he was a surveyor; and there is a tradition that
once, while running his lines through a vast wilderness, his assistants
gave out from famine and fatigue, and Peter Jefferson pushed on alone,
sleeping at night in hollow trees, amidst howling beasts of prey, and
subsisting on the flesh of a pack mule which he had been obliged to kill.

Thomas Jefferson inherited from his father a love of mathematics and of
literature. Peter Jefferson had not received a classical education, but he
was a diligent reader of a few good books, chiefly Shakespeare, The
Spectator, Pope, and Swift; and in mastering these he was forming his mind
on great literature after the manner of many another Virginian,--for the
houses of that colony held English books as they held English furniture.
The edition of Shakespeare (and it is a handsome one) which Peter
Jefferson used is still preserved among the heirlooms of his descendants.

It was probably in his capacity of surveyor that Mr. Jefferson made the
acquaintance of the Randolph family, and he soon became the bosom friend
of William Randolph, the young proprietor of Tuckahoe. The Randolphs had
been for ages a family of consideration in the midland counties of
England, claiming descent from the Scotch Earls of Murray, and connected
by blood or marriage with many of the English nobility. In 1735 Peter
Jefferson established himself as a planter by patenting a thousand acres
of land in Goochland County, his estate lying near and partly including
the outlying hills, which form a sort of picket line for the Blue Mountain
range. At the same time his friend William Randolph patented an adjoining
estate of twenty-four hundred acres; and inasmuch as there was no good
site for a house on Jefferson's estate, Mr. Randolph conveyed to him four
hundred acres for that purpose, the consideration expressed in the deed,
which is still extant, being "Henry Weatherbourne's biggest bowl of Arrack
punch."

Here Peter Jefferson built his house, and here, three years later, he
brought his bride,--a handsome girl of nineteen, and a kinswoman of William
Randolph, being Jane, oldest child of Isham Randolph, then
Adjutant-General of Virginia. She was born