MS (DLC). At foot of page are rough notes on Emblements in the Case of A. B. and R. B., omitted here.

This is a rough memorandum, to which we have assigned an arbitrary but plausible date, on the earliest public cause in which TJ interested himself. In a statement made long afterwards summarizing the acts for clearing the Rivanna, or North Branch of the James, TJ wrote:

“In 1763 (I was not then quite of age) learning that a canoe, with a family in it, had passed and repassed several times between Buck island creek in Albemarle and the Byrd creek in Goochland, and that there were no serious obstacles below Adams’s falls (now Magruder’s) I went in a canoe from Mountain falls (now Milton falls) to Adams’s and found that that section of the river could be made navigable for loaded boats by removing loose rock only. I set on foot a subscription and obtained £200. Dr. Walker our representative, got inserted, in the act here cited, a nomination of 11 trustees, with authority to do what was necessary for effecting the navigation of this river, from the mouth upwards. Roger and George Thompson, then living on the river, undertook and executed the work, and on what was then done the river was navigated habitually for 35. years before any thing more was done to it” (“Notes on the several acts of assembly for clearing the Rivanna river,” DLC: TJ Papers, 211: 37587).

This is a somewhat simplified account, for though an act was passed in the 1765 session of the Assembly “for clearing the great falls of James River, the Chickahominy, and the north branch [i.e., the Rivanna] of James river” (Hening, description begins William W. Hening, The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia description ends viii, 148–50), the work was still to be done some years later. The present statement is in part a summary of the act of 1765, but changes in the list of trustees (e.g., the substitution of Richard Harvie for John Harvie, who died in 1767) show that it was later. In 1800 TJ listed this successful project first in order among the services he had rendered (second in the list is the Declaration of Independence); see DLC: TJ Papers, 219: 39161. From 1791, and especially from 1811 on, he was to be much concerned with enlargements of the early navigation scheme and the litigation that grew out of them. The documents relating to this litigation will be printed in the Legal Papers under the Rivanna Canal case. See Malone, Jefferson, i, 115–16; Woods, Albemarle County, p. 83–5.