Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President

by Warren Throckmorton

He may have completed this work sometime in 1820; Jefferson does not say when it was done. What is known is that Jefferson had the book bound by Richmond book binder, Frederick A. Mayo. Although the date of binding is not known for certain, correspondence between Jefferson and Mayo gives a clue. According to Hannah French, who has reviewed the correspondence of Jefferson and Mayo, Jefferson wrote Mayo on October 13, 1824 with a request to bind “a volume...to be bound with as much dispatch as good pressure will admit. Do it in red morocco with gilt leaves, and two or three leaves of good writing paper at the beginning and end blank which will permit writing on.”