Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Robert Mills (1781-1855) designed numerous public buildings throughout the United States, including the Washington Monument, and promoted various civic projects and internal improvements. TJ first came into contact with Mills when the young man studied under James Hoban, the architect overseeing the construction of the President’s House. TJ granted Mills access to his library and introduced him to Benjamin Henry Latrobe, under whom Mills subsequently studied. In 1808, Mills formed his own architectural firm in Philadelphia. He relocated to Charleston during the Panic of 1819. Mills’s last major design, constructed in the early 1850s, was an addition to TJ’s Rotunda at the University of Virginia (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, New York and Oxford, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, New York, 1928-36, 20 vols. description ends ; Rhodri Windsor Liscombe, Altogether American: Robert Mills, Architect and Engineer, 1781-1855 [New York, 1994]; John M. Bryan, Robert Mills: America’s First Architect [New York, 2001]; RS description begins J. Jefferson Looney and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Princeton, 2004–  description ends , 2:437–8; Vol. 38:4; Vol. 41:460–2).

very ill: Latrobe suffered from a “violent bilious intermitting fever” in October (Latrobe, Correspondence description begins John C. Van Horne and Lee W. Formwalt, eds., The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, New Haven, 1984-88, 3 vols. description ends , 2:153n).