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Thomas Jefferson is born in Shadwell, Virginia, the eldest son of Peter Jefferson, a farmer/surveyor, and Jane Randolph, the wealthy scion of an aristocratic family.
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Peter Jefferson dies, leaving his fourteen-year-old son Thomas his slaves and lands. Thomas becomes head of the Jefferson household, but is able to continue his studies thanks to the guardianship of his family's friends.
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Jefferson marries Martha Wayles Skelton, the recently widowed daughter of the wealthy planter John Wayles Sketlon.
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The first child, a daughter named Martha Jefferson, is born at Monticello.
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The First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia to coordinate colonial response to the Intolerable Acts.
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The Battles of Lexington and Concord mark the start of the American Revolutionary War.
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The Second Continental Congress begins meeting in Philadelphia.
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Jefferson, along with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and two others, is assigned to the committee charged with drafting what will become the Declaration of Independence.
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The Second Continental Congress adopts Richard Henry Lee's independence resolutions. Jefferson's declaration is received by the Congress, which engages in two days of line-by-line edits.
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Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is approved by Congress. It is immediately published and circulated throughout the colonies and in Europe.
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A son is born and then dies three weeks later.
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Jefferson is elected the second governor of Virginia.
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The fourth child of Thomas Jefferson and Martha Skelton Jefferson, a daughter named Mary Jefferson, is born.
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Jefferson finishes his second term as governor and immediately steps down, leaving Virginia without an executive until his successor is elected eight days later.
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Weeks after giving birth to her sixth and last child, Martha Skelton dies. Before dying, she makes Jefferson promise never to remarry. Her death leaves Jefferson shattered, wandering around Monticello babbling incoherently with his eldest daughter.
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Jefferson travels to Europe with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin in order to negotiate commercial treaties with European nations and service the United States' wartime debt. Jefferson brings his twelve-year-old daughter Patsy with him.
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Benjamin Franklin retires, leaving Jefferson as America's minister plenipotentiary in France.
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Jefferson breaks his wrist while trying to vault a fence to impress the young, married Maria Cosway, with whom he is infatuated. Their relationship will only end after Jefferson sends her a long "Dialogue Between My Heart and My Head" explaining why they cannot be together.
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Jefferson supports a moderate, aristocratic faction, lending a hand to the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, issued on 26 August 1789.
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After Patsy threatens to convert to Catholicism and become a nun, Jefferson returns to the United States to put his daughters into a more wholesome environment. He fully expects to return to France. However, when Jefferson arrives in Norfolk, Virginia he finds a letter from President Washington congratulating him on his appointment as secretary of state.
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Jefferson moves to New York, the nation's temporary capital, to take up his job as the United States' first secretary of state.
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France begins mass conscription as the European wars escalate in scale. Back in the United States, France's decision fans the flames of the fight between the Federalists and the Republicans, to new heights, as Hamilton, a Federalist, supports Britain, while Jefferson, the leader of the Republicans, supports France. Increasingly frustrated with Hamilton and the divided cabinet, Thomas Jefferson pressures President Washington to let him resign.
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Jefferson resigns as secretary of state and goes home to Monticello to tend to his fields. Unbeknownst to him, Madison begins to plan Jefferson's presidential campaign for 1796.
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George Washington's farewell address marks the start of the first contested presidential campaign in American history, pitting Federalist John Adams against Republican Thomas Jefferson. Adams will win the election by 3 votes in the Electoral College.
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As the runner-up in the presidential election, Jefferson becomes John Adams' vice president. Jefferson authors A Manual of Parliamentary Procedure to keep order in the Senate and keeps aloof from the administration while sponsoring attacks against Federalist politicians.
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Jefferson is sworn in as the third president of the United States in the new capital city of Washington, D.C., becoming the first president to take office there. Historians believe that his inaugural address is the first speech he has ever delivered in public.
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Supreme Court Justice John Marshall establishes the principle of Judicial Review with his landmark ruling in Marbury v. Madison. Jefferson, not a fan of the Federalist Marshall, finds the ruling undemocratic.
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Jefferson purchases the 800,000-square-mile Louisiana Territory from French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte for $15 Million, or roughly 4 cents an acre, effectively doubling the size of the United States overnight.
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Jefferson charters the Lewis and Clark expedition—led by his personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis—to survey the new Louisiana Territory, establish friendly relations with the American Indian tribes living inland, and search for a Northwest Passage allowing easy travel to the Pacific.
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Jefferson is inaugurated into a second term in the presidency, following a landslide victory in the election of 1804. His second inaugural address is, as far as we know, the last public speech of his life.
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Responding to increasingly fraught relations with Britain, Congress enacts Jefferson's embargo act, halting all trade between the United States and Great Britain. The act does little to change relations with Britain, but nearly destroys the American economy.
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The Virginia Legislature charters the University of Virginia. Jefferson convinces the state to locate it in Charlottesville, within walking distance of Monticello (indeed, on a clear day, Jefferson can see the campus from his home).
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Jefferson finishes his second term as president and heads back to Monticello.
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The University of Virginia accepts its first class of students. Thomas Jefferson, who has designed the campus, hired the faculty, and even written the syllabi, is elated.
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Thomas Jefferson dies in his bed in Monticello, on the same day as John Adams, fifty years to the day after the publication of the Declaration of Independence. On his deathbed, John Adams famously declares, "Thomas Jefferson survives." Adams is, alas, wrong: Jefferson passes away five hours or so before Adams, at roughly 12:50 in the afternoon.
