Suing Mr. Jefferson

On a brisk November day in 1809 that foreshadowed an unusually cold winter in the Virginia Piedmont, a knot of men had assembled in a strand of old-growth oaks, cedars, and beeches along Campbell County’s Ivy Creek, four miles southwest of Lynchburg. First in rank among those gathered was Thomas Jefferson, fresh from the presidency. Now retired, Jefferson, 66, was settling into private life at his mountaintop home, Monticello, 80 miles northeast, while also building a residence at his 4,000-acre plantation Poplar Forest, which adjoined the land on which the group was standing. Jefferson had in mind to establish at Poplar Forest a tranquil retreat in which an ex-president might escape public life and rekindle his creativity. The other principal in the party was local landowner and planter Samuel Beverly Scott.

Jefferson and Scott were there to settle a dispute over the ownership of a small parcel attached to Poplar Forest and to which each claimed title. Jefferson’s surveyor had run a transect showing that the parcel Scott claimed to be clearly within Jefferson’s boundaries, which seemed to settle the matter. Jefferson later recalled, “It was understood by those present that Scott yielded to this evidence & expressed his conviction of my superior right & I thought it settled and sold the land.” Jefferson returned to Monticello, where within the month he learned that Scott instead had taken possession of the disputed parcel. Legal warfare began between