Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - András Tarnóc: "Jefferson Still Survives".

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I. Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 in Shadwell, Virginia. His father Peter was a wealthy surveyor and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and his mother Jane Randolph was a noble woman. The young Thomas learned several things from his father including responsibility, dilligence and a respect for books and learning. Jefferson began to study the classics at age nine and by age seventeen he became an expert in ancient Greeco-Roman thought. At age eighteen he enrolled in the University of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Having met his mentor, the only non-denominational teacher at the college, Dr. William Small of Scotland, he wrote: "I got my first views of the expansion of science and the system of things in which we are placed and it was this influence that probably fixed the destiny of my life".

1 Upon graduation in 1762 he began to read law and in 1764 he inherited an estate of 2,750 acres from his father. In 1767 Jefferson was admitted to the Virginia Bar and in 1769 he became a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. In 1772 he married a 23 year old widow, named Martha Wayles Skelton. By the time Jefferson reached adulthood in 1764 he had encountered several life forming experiences. His father taught him the value of education, self-reliance and political participation, his teachers introduced him to the Enlightenment, his classical studies presented him with the model of the ideal statesman: the philosopher king, and the estate got him acquainted with the institution of slavery. In 1774 Thomas Jefferson participated in his state's first revolutionary convention and his instructions for Virginia's delegates to the First Continental Congress were published under the title "A Summary View of the Rights of British America". In this pamphlet he asserted the colonists' natural rights to self-government but stopped short of declaring independence.

2 1 Merill D. Peterson, "Thomas Jefferson: A Brief Life," in Thomas Jefferson. The Man. His World. His Influence, ed. Lally Weymouth (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1973), p. 14. 2 Thomas Jefferson, Writings (The Library of America, 1984), p. 1520. 116