Day-by-Day / March 8, 1803

March 8, 1803

Jefferson heads home

Having secured funding for the Western Expedition, engaged tutors for Meriwether Lewis, and dispatched emissaries to France to obtain Louisiana, President Jefferson travels between Washington City and Monticello. He has dinner and lodges at the Red House ordinary in Haymarket, Virginia.

Barboursville Tollhouse

Log cabin style house with porch and brick chimney

By Carol M. Highsmith. Provided by U.S. Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015631797/.

The Barboursville Tollhouse, refurbished in 1950 by the Daughters of the American Revolution, is indicative of the Red House ordinary used by Thomas Jefferson on this day. An ordinary was typically a single house providing limited service, whereas a tavern was larger and provided more services.[1]“The Red House Tavern,” Historic Haymarket, www.townofhaymarket.org/museum/page/red-house-tavern accessed 25 May 2022.

Jefferson Heads Home

Mar 8. Centerville breakft. &c. 1.5. Red house Mrs. Hereford’s dinner, lodgg. &c. 5.09.[2]“Memorandum Books, 1803,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/02-02-02-0013 accessed 15 May 2022. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas … Continue reading

Thomas Jefferson left Washington City the previous day and arrived at Monticello on 11 March. Margaret Hereford’s small establishment sat at the intersection of the Carolina and Thoroughfare Gap roads in present Haymarket, Virginia. “Redhouse” earned a dot on Thomas Jefferson’s 1787 map “A map of the country between Albemarle Sound, and Lake Erie, comprehending the whole of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware . . .” available at www.loc.gov/resource/g3790.ar076200/[3]Ibid.

 

Notes

Notes
↑1 “The Red House Tavern,” Historic Haymarket, www.townofhaymarket.org/museum/page/red-house-tavern accessed 25 May 2022.
↑2 “Memorandum Books, 1803,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/02-02-02-0013 accessed 15 May 2022. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series, Jefferson’s Memorandum Books, vol. 2, ed. James A Bear, Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, pp. 1089–1117.]
↑3 Ibid.

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Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).