Background.

Thomas Jefferson was born on 13 April 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, the third child (and first son) of Peter and Jane Jefferson. His father was a successful planter, surveyor, and militia colonel and served two terms in the House of Burgesses. Jefferson attended a Latin school from the age of nine and when he was fourteen began attending a school run by the Reverend James Maury. He was in Maury's school when the Twopenny Act was passed but had left by the time Maury was the plaintiff in the Parson's Cause, the case that made Patrick Henry famous. Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary from 1760 until 1762 and spent the next five years studying law in the office of George Wythe, a prominent Williamsburg lawyer (who later became the first professor of law at an American college).

County Circuit.

Jefferson was...