PERSONAL LETTERS FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON TO FAMOUS BEAUTY 
ARE PART OF NEW COLLECTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., April 26 -- The University of Virginia
has acquired an important, 18th century collection of personal
letters, which includes correspondence from Thomas Jefferson and
Alexander Hamilton.
	Angelica Schuyler Church, Hamilton's sister-in-law,
corresponded with many of the young country's most prominent
figures, among them, George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette,
General Van Renssalaer and the Baron von Steuben.  The collection of
77 letters and documents, which has been in private hands until now,
includes 13 letters from Jefferson and 11 from Hamilton.
	"This archive offers a rare glimpse of Mr. Jefferson at his
most personal and candid," said John T. Casteen III, U.Va.
president.  "At the same time, it enriches Alderman Library's
collection of rare, printed materials and manuscripts related to the
nation's founders." 

		The morning you left us, all was wrong. even the sun
shine was provoking with which I never quarelled before. I took it
into my head he shone only to throw light on our loss: to present a
chearfulness not at all in unison with my mind. I mounted my horse
earlier than common. I took by instinct the road you had taken.

							Jefferson to
Church, Feb. 17, 1788, from Paris



	Church's family kept the papers together throughout the
years, but last February contacted an antiquarian book dealer in
Hadley, Mass., about selling them.  The dealer offered them first to
U.Va.'s Alderman Library, one of the few institutions actively
collecting original Jefferson documents, said Michael Plunkett,
director of special collections for the university library system.
	U.Va. was able to purchase the collection through the
generosity of an anonymous donor who paid the lion's share of the
papers' $275,000 cost.  Had the family decided to sell the letters
one by one, the collection would have brought the family
"considerably more," said Karin Wittenborg, university librarian.
	"It is a rare opportunity for a research library to acquire
such an important collection of letters, kept intact by a family for
nearly two centuries," said Wittenborg.  "We are delighted that we
will be able to make these letters widely accessible to scholars."
	Wittenborg said the Church letters strengthen an "already
very strong Jefferson collection" at the university.  With more than
3,650 items, most of them original documents, U.Va. houses one of
the primary research collections on Jefferson in the United States,
third in importance behind the Library of Congress and the
Massachusetts Historical Society, according to John Catanzariti,
editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University in
Princeton, N.J.
	Finding Jefferson letters for sale is rare, said Plunkett,
who says he generally sees only one to three a year.  "There's not
that many around anymore," he said, "so adding 13 in one fell swoop
is quite an accomplishment for us."

		I learn through the newspapers [of] your arrival at
New York and hasten to welcome you to the bosom of your friends &
native country. I feel one anxiety the less for the fate of the
rotten bark from which you have escaped, & sincerely congratulate
you on that escape. I wish I could have welcomed you to a state of
perfect calm: but you will find that the agitations of Europe have
reached even us, and that here, as there, they are permitted to
disturb social life: that we have not yet learnt to give every thing
to it's proper place; discord to our senates, love and friendship to
society. 

						Jefferson to Church,
May 24, 1797, from Philadelphia


	Church was the daughter of Philip John Schuyler, a member of
the Continental Congress and later, one of the first two U.S.
Senators from New York.  Her sister, Elizabeth, married Hamilton.
Her husband, John Church, was a British-born adventurer who fled
England after a duel and later, using the name John Carter, eloped
with Angelica Schuyler, much to her parents dismay.  Later, Church
became a successful entrepreneur and he and his wife, a famous
beauty, socialized with many of the young country's leaders.
	Plunkett said the university hopes to receive the letters
within a few weeks. They will be housed with the library's special
collections in the basement of Alderman Library and moved to the new
special collections library planned for construction at the turn of
the century.
	Wittenborg said Alderman Library plans to mount a public
exhibit of the letters this fall.
###
April 25, 1996
	For more information, call Michael Plunkett at (804)
924-3998.  Television reporters should contact our TV News Office at
(804) 924-7550.