Thomas Jefferson Randolph (1792–1875) was born at Monticello, the eldest son of Martha Jefferson Randolph and Thomas Mann Randolph. TJ supervised his grandson’s education at home and in Philadelphia and Richmond. Randolph studied botany, natural history, and anatomy before becoming a farmer. Soon after his marriage in 1815 to Jane Hollins Nicholas, the daughter of Governor Wilson Cary Nicholas, Randolph took over the management of his grandfather’s affairs and displayed an aptitude for finance. In 1817 the young couple moved from Monticello to nearby Tufton, where they raised twelve children. As chief executor of TJ’s estate, Randolph fought a long and ultimately successful battle to settle his grandfather’s debts, although it meant the sale of Monticello and the family’s removal to Edgehill. He published the first collection of TJ’s writings in four volumes in 1829. Randolph served the University of Virginia as a visitor, 1829–57, and rector, 1857–64. Six times between 1831 and 1843 he represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he supported the gradual emancipation and deportation of slaves. Randolph also sat in the state constitutional convention of 1850–51 and voted for secession at the Virginia convention of 1861 (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Shackelford, Descendants description begins George Green Shackelford, ed., Collected Papers to Commemorate Fifty Years of the Monticello Association of the Descendants of Thomas Jefferson, 1965 description ends , 1:76–88).

Randolph’s letter of the 28th ult., not found, is recorded in SJL as received from Peale’s Philadelphia Museum on 3 May 1809. Late in 1808 William Bentley sent botanical specimens assembled by TJ’s recently deceased friend Jacob Crowninshield (TJ to Bentley, 29 Dec. 1808 [NNGL]; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 1074). During its first session the Eleventh Congress passed a bill granting TJ the franking privilege on outgoing letters despite objections from Nathaniel Macon (Annals description begins Annals of the Congress of the United States: The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States . . . Compiled from Authentic Materials, Washington, D.C., Gales & Seaton, 1834–56, 42 vols. All editions are undependable and pagination varies from one printing to another. Citations given below are to the edition mounted on the American Memory website of the Library of Congress and give the date of the debate as well as page numbers. description ends , 11th Cong., 1st sess., 448 [27 June 1809]). TJ had purchased lamps and chains from caldcleugh & thomas in 1804 and 1807 (MB description begins James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1140, 1209). He may have wanted the vial-corks and phials to equip his new seed stand.