Our Founding Dogs

When Thomas Jefferson crossed the Atlantic in November 1789, he brought to Virginia a small band of foreign emigrants. On board the Clermont with Jefferson, his two daughters, and the slaves James and Sally Hemings, were over sixty European trees and three French dogs.

The day before he left the French port of Le Havre Jefferson had been "roving thro the neighborhood of this place to try to get a pair of shepherd's dogs. We walked 10. miles, clambering the cliffs in quest of the shepherds, during the most furious tempest of wind and rain I was ever in." He had stumbled on a suicide in his ramblings, but found no dogs. The next day, however, the mission was accomplished, for Jefferson recorded in his Memorandum Book the payment of thirty-six livres (the equivalent of six dollars) for "a chienne bergere big with pup."

Bergère, as she was thereafter known, whelped on the transatlantic passage, and she and her two puppies were installed at Monticello early in 1790.

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Media Thomas Jefferson Dog T-Shirt

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be. ... When the press is free and every man can read, all is safe." (Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826)

$19.99