Courthouse Trivia

Perhaps it's time for a little more courthouse trivia?  In honor of President Sullivan, I thought that I'd post a little this week on things related to Virginia.  So this is a courthouse in Virginia.  Where is it?  

Comments

[Owen]

I believe it's the Old Albemarle County Courthouse in Charlottesville. In 1822, Thomas Jefferson apparently wrote of it "[In Charlottesville] there is a good degree of religion, with a small spice of fanaticism. We have four sects, but without either church or meeting house. The courthouse is the common temple, one Sunday in the month to each. Here Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist meet together... listen with attention and devotion to each others preachers, and all mix in society in perfect harmony."

[Alfred Brophy]

Owen! You got it exactly.

And I might add that Jefferson appeared there -- I think it was that building -- to renounce his appointment as executor of Thaddeus Kosciuszko's will. The will "authorize[d] my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from among his own or any others and giving them Liberty in my name, in giving them an education in trades or otherwise and in having them instructed for their new condition in the duties of morality which may make them good neighbors, good fathers or mothers, husbands or wives, in their duties as citizens, teaching them to be defenders of their Liberty and Country and of the good order of society, and in whatsoever may make them happy and useful...."

Edmund Morgan wrote about this in a New York Review of Books essay back in 2008: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/jun/26/jefferson-betrayal/