Jefferson wrote almost 20,000 letters in his lifetime, corresponding with friends and family, but also with admiring strangers curious to know more about him.

Using a machine called a polygraph (shown at right) at both Poplar Forest and Monticello , he made a copy of every letter. He called it, “the finest invention of the present age.” The polygraph at Poplar Forest had been a gift from the inventor, John Isaac Hawkins.

He wrote many letters from and about Poplar Forest.

I continue in the enjoyment of good health, take much exercise, and make frequent journeys to Bedford, the only journies I now take, or ever expect to take.
To John Barnes, January 10, 1811 [Age 67]

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of a garden…Under a total want of demand except for our family table, I am still devoted to the garden, but tho an old man, I am but a young gardener.
1811 [Age 68]

I have fixed myself comfortably, keep some books here, bring others occasionally, am in the solitude of a hermit, and quite at leisure to attend to my absent friends.
To Benjamin Rush, August 17, 1811 [Age 68]

When finished it will be the best dwelling house in the state, except that of Monticello , perhaps preferable to that, as more proportioned to the faculties of a private citizen.
To John Wayles Eppes, September 18, 1812 [Age 69]

I have engaged a workman to build offices, have laid off a handsome curtilage connecting the house to the Tomahawk, have inclosed and divided it into suitable appendages to a Dwelling house, and have begun its improvement by planting trees of use and ornament.
To John Wayles Eppes, April 18, 1813 [Age 69]

I amused myself with reading seriously Plato’s Republic. I am wrong however in calling it amusement, for it was the heaviest task-work I ever went through.
To John Adams, July 5, 1814 [Age 71]

I shall be engaged in Bedford in making a geometrical measurement of the Peaks of Otter which has never been done yet, altho deemed the highest mountains of our Ranges.
To Joseph Milligan, October 27, 1815 [Age 72]

I give to my grandson Frances Eppes, son of my dear deceased daughter Mary Eppes, in fee simple…part of my lands at Poplar Forest….I subject all my other property to the payment of my debts.
Will, dated March 16, 1826 [Age 83]