THE PRESIDENTS’ GARDENS 147 
went into it—the date when the first peach blossom 
unfolded, likewise the date when the sickle went first 
into the wheat. Nothing important or otherwise that 
pertained to the garden or farm was omitted. This 
was in 1766, when he was beginning to plan a house 
of his own; seven years after Washington had brought 
his wife and her two children to dwell at Mount Ver¬ 
non, and taken up his life as a family man. Just why 
Jefferson should have planned at this time a separate 
house for himself, is not quite apparent. His father’s 
death when he was a lad of fourteen had given him 
the ancestral home; but he had an individual taste and 
the natural instinct of independence—which probably 
made him wish for something of his very own. At any 
rate, by 1770, when the old house at Shadwell was de¬ 
stroyed by fire, his new home at Monticello was suffi¬ 
ciently built to be livable. It was but the beginning 
of the mansion as it now is, to be sure, and at the time 
of his marriage two years later, it was still a very small 
dwelling. But he had made a start, his very own 
from the ground up. 
The original form of the mountain which he had 
selected from all his vast holdings for the site of his 
Mansion House, was what is commonly called a sugar 
loaf. The very top of this elevation he cleared suffi¬ 
ciently, and levelled to a magnificent space; and here he 
placed the house. This he designed himself, and later 
