Papers of Thomas Jefferson / Library of Congress
The collection of papers of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress contains approximately 25,000 items. It is the largest single collection of Jefferson’s original documents. The Library of Congress acquired the manuscripts in several installments in the 19th and early 20th centuries and photographed the entire collection to create this microfilm in 1944. The film served a preservation function, retaining images in the event of loss or damage to the originals, but a primary reason for its creation was dissemination of the collection’s content, by making the microfilm available to subscribing libraries to facilitate research. This set has been largely supplanted by a second microfilm of the Jefferson collection made by the Library of Congress in the 1970s.
This collection comprises 238 bound volumes including the two volumes of Jefferson's "Epistolary record”.
The papers appears on the reels in chronological order.
The reels are numbered 1-96 and Index 1-4. One unnumbered reel, labed Index 1779-1826, is the epistolary ledger.
The catalog entry for each document has been filmed with the document. These entries, with revisions, and with additional entries, have also been filmed as an alphabetical index.
