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Thomas Jefferson

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:28,000.00 - 32,000.00 USD
Thomas Jefferson

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Auction Date:2017 Jun 14 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
ALS signed “Th: Jefferson,” one page, 7 x 8.75, April 17, 1767. Letter to his peer and collegiate friend John Page, in part: "Your welfare that of Mrs. Page, and your heir apparent give me great joy: but much was disappointed at not seeing you here today. Surely you will visit the city some time…do not let family attachments totally extricate you, in answer to the interrogatories…I left my wife and family well; I have been in constant health myself and still continue…I left well, but brought nothing from him except assurance of his friendship; I have never…from you. You further ask me if I propose to practice in the General Court? Yes…year and…as I speak it!…resolution has occasioned my deferring an…less hitherto and might perhaps have done it perpetually, had not the opening made by its many…retiring from the bar have made this time peculiarly proper. I do not however propose to do…in court till October; yet the attention to business now become necessary renders it impossible to my friends in Glocester before I return, which will be about the 3rd of May, nor am I comforted with any certain prospect of doing it at any future time; since the same obstructions are likely to continue and even to increase. I shall be here again at the…court but that will be only for a day. I have a great…to you from Carr, Walker and myself of which yourself, Fontaine and Warner Lewis are torn apart what this is I shall leave to your own surmises till I see you, only assuring you that we have been taking the necessary measures for success on our part and have a tolerable prospect of not being disappointed. Make my compliments to…and endeavor to bring him over at least for a day or two if he has made himself adept in the arts of elocution I would be glad by Sheridan for the service of some other friends who have asked it of me. I wish much to hear something of your domestic affairs but Nil mihi rescribas attamen ipse veni [trans: Come if you can before your letter]. Willis I am told is on the brink of matrimony: a comfortable prospect, twin infants of…If your debt is not called for soon I am afraid we shall be barred by the act of limitations make my compl. to Mrs. Page, to Mann, to the family at North River, and to your sisters with an assurance that their and your happiness is principally conducive to that of." In good to very good condition, permanently affixed to a slightly larger sheet, with paper loss along intersecting folds and more substantial loss along edges affecting some of the text; Jefferson's remarkable diminutive signature is clear, clean, and unaffected.

After graduating from the College of William and Mary in 1762, an 18-year-old Jefferson began work as a law clerk in the office of esteemed Professor George Wythe, the future mentor of John Marshall and Henry Clay. Under Wythe’s tutelage, Jefferson emerged as one of the nation’s best young lawyers upon his admission to the Virginia bar in April 1767, the very month this letter was written. He attended his first session in October 1767, and by the time Edmund Randolph took over his practice eight years later, Jefferson had handled more than 900 matters, the majority of which relating to the country’s burgeoning land business. Written a decade before his drafting of the Declaration of Independence, this casual and neatly penned letter finds the 24-year-old attorney at the start of his legal career, a position that enabled Jefferson to scrutinize the many aspects of an aspiring sovereignty. By a wide margin—nearly 25 years—this represents the earliest Jefferson letter we have offered.