INTRODUCTION
THOMAS JEFFERSON, while Secretary of State in Washington's cabinet, spent the month of November, 1793, in Germantown. In August of that year the first great epidemic of yellow fever visited Philadelphia, and the President, the members of his cabinet and nearly every government official sought safety outside the stricken city. Washington and his household set out for Mount Vernon on September 9th. Jefferson in the spring had taken a house on the east bank of the Schuylkill, within sight of Bartram's and Gray's gardens. Here he spent the heated days with his daughter Maria as companion, living in the open air and enjoying the broad prospect, and particularly the shade of the high plane trees which entirely embosomed the house. Under them he breakfasted, dined, wrote, read and received his company. Situated as he was, there was little
