‘Tired and dusty’ book by Thomas Jefferson found in a donation box at Virginia library
It was a typical Friday for Bob Gilson: elbow-deep in donation boxes for the Virginia Beach Public Library, hands coated in a layer of dust from some of the older giveaways.
On one particular Friday, though, a certain book caught his eye.
“The cover was tired and dusty,” Gilson, a board member for the Friends of Virginia Beach Public Library nonprofit, said in a July 18 news release. “But I had a feeling it was special.”
It was one of 82 estimated copies of Thomas Jefferson’s book “Reports of Cases Determined in the General Court of Virginia from 1730 to 1740 and from 1769 to 1772,” the release said. It was published by Jefferson’s grandson in 1829.
Gilson told The Virginian-Pilot the book was worth about $9,800.
“We’ve had some other valuable books come in over the years, but $9,800 is a gem,” Gilson told The Virginian-Pilot.
Instead of selling the rare book in the library bookstore, the nonprofit chose to donate it to the Jefferson Library at Monticello in Charlottesville.
The Jefferson Library had a reprint of the book, but this was its first 1829 edition, which was exciting, the library told The Virginian-Pilot.
“As these colonial court decisions do not survive elsewhere, this compilation by Jefferson is essentially the first such volume of court reports for the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Leslie G. Bowman, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, said in the release. “In particular, 23 of the 42 cases involve slavery in one way or another, usually in disputes over property.”
The book is available to view online, frayed pages and all. In his preface, Jefferson explained why he felt that records of court cases should be saved.
“As precedents, they established authoritatively the construction of our own enactments, and gave them the shape and meaning, under which our property has been ever since transmitted, and is regulated and held to this day,” Jefferson wrote. “These decisions, therefore, were worthy of preservation.”
