Perhaps the best story of all that are still told of Jefferson and his fiddle is that about two young men admirers of the young and beautiful widow Skelton. They called on her one evening and found “Tom” Jefferson there already. He was playing his violin while she accompanied him on her spinet—an old-fashioned piano. They listened a moment and laughed. “We won’t play ‘second fiddle’ or break up their duet,” said one of the callers. So they went away without leaving their names. It was not long before Thomas Jefferson, like George Washington, married a wealthy widow and brought her to live on one of the largest and finest estates in old Virginia.
Thomas Jefferson had planned and built a new house in place of the one which had been burned down. He chose a high hill on the plantation, from which, across the surrounding country, the town of Charlottesville could be seen miles away. He named the estate “Monticello,” the Italian word for “little mountain.”
About the time the Jeffersons were married the whole country was stirred by the Stamp Act and other taxes demanded by England of the American colonies. These taxes seemed unjust, because the people were not allowed the right to send men from America to help make the laws which they had to obey. Jefferson wrote a pamphlet on the subject, which he called “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” In it he said, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.”
When the people of the colonies in America were fully aroused, they sent men to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia to decide what to do about the unjust acts of the British king and his wrong advisers. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee were among the men, called delegates, sent from “Old Virginia.”
One day in the Congress, Richard Henry Lee arose and made this motion:
“Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”
After discussing Lee’s resolution for three days, the
