This graveyard had its beginning in an agreement between two young men, Thomas Jefferson and Dabney Carr, who were school-mates and friends. They agreed that they would be buried under a great oak which stood here.
Carr, who married Jefferson's sister, died in 1773. His was the first grave on this site, which Jefferson laid out as a family burying ground. Jefferson was buried here in 1826.
The present monument in not the original, designed by Jefferson, but a large one erected by the United States in 1883. Its base covers the graves of Jefferson, his wife, his two daughters, and of Governor Thomas Mann Randolph, his son-in-law.
The graveyard remains the property of Jefferson's descendants, and continues to be a family burying ground.
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