Covering the years from 1781 into the 1820s, these valuable accounts remain the chief source of information about Thomas Jefferson's domestic and personal life, interests, habits, appearance, and day-to-day activities at Monticello.

Isaac Jefferson and Edmund Bacon were each sixty-five years old when their recollections were recorded. What they remember best, of course, are scenes from the past made vivid and immediate by details involving their own experience. Although their recollections of Jefferson differ in a number of ways, apparent in both accounts is a concern for the master whose involvement in national affairs made his life so different from their own.