DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE DESK — BROWN 457 



ment of 40/ to Benjamin Eandolph on May 27 for 8 days' lodging.^ 

 Sometime during this period of association between Randolph and 

 Jefferson, either in 1775 or 1776, Benjamin Randolph made for 

 Thomas Jefferson a small, portable writing desk of mahogany inlaid 

 with a narrow band of satinwood around the drawer and the keyhole. 



It was on this writing desk that Thomas Jefferson, according to 

 his own statement, wrote the draft of the Declaration of Independence, 

 working in his second-floor parlor room in the boardinghouse in Phila- 

 delphia in which he was living at that time. 



Convenient in size and weight for carrying, the desk was made 

 according to Jefferson's own design. It is approximately ^% inches 

 long by 14% inches wide by 31^ inches deep, with a folding writing 

 board hinged to the top which opens to give a surface 19% inches 

 long. This writing board is lined with green baize. The desk con- 

 tains a drawer 1% inches deep, which is divided into sections for 

 holding paper and pens, and a compartment containing a small hand- 

 blown glass inkwell. 



From 1776 on, the desk must have been an indispensable part of 

 Thomas Jefferson's writing equipment. Its convenient size would 

 have made it an ideal traveling companion while he was abroad 

 in the service of his country and also during his terms of public office 

 with the Federal Government in New York, Philadelphia, and Wash- 

 ington. It is probably true that much of the extensive correspondence 

 that Jefferson carried on during his long and active life was written 

 on this desk. 



In 1825, when Ellen Randolph, oldest child of Jefferson's beloved 

 daughter and companion, Martha Jefferson Randolph, and a grand- 

 child to whom Jefferson was most devoted, married Joseph Coolidge, 

 Jr., of Boston, she was given for her new home in Boston a handsome 

 inlaid desk made by John Hemmings, skillful Negro carpenter at 

 Monticello. The desk was shipped to Boston in a packet sailing from 

 Richmond and was lost at sea.^ As a consolation Thomas Jefferson 

 determined to send for a substitute the writing desk on which he had 

 drafted the Declaration of Independence. He wrote to Ellen Coolidge 

 from Monticello on November 14, 1825 : ^ 



We condole with you on the losa of your baggage, (especially) that beautiful 

 writing desk ... it has occurred to me, however, that I can replace it, not 

 indeed to you, but to Mr. CJoolidge, by a substitute not claiming the same value 

 from its decorations, but from the part it has borne in our history and the 

 events with which it is associated. 



I received a letter from a friend in Philadelphia lately, asking for information 

 of the house, and room of the house there, in which the Declaration of Inde- 

 pendence was written, with a view to future celebrations of the 4th of July 



1 In the Manuscripts Division of tlie Library of Congress. 



» Kimball, Marie, The furnlBhlngg of Monacello, pt. I. Antiques Mag., November 1027. 



» Massachusettg Hist. Soc., Proc, vol. 12, ser. 2, pp. 271, 272, 1899, Boston. 



