In honor of our Founding Fathers and especially their mothers, with Mothers Day coming up this weekend, I chose to tell you about one of them. Thomas Jefferson’s Mother.

Thomas Jefferson was serving in Congress in August of 1775. At their break he was happy to return to his home at Monticello. His happiness soon turned to grief. A month after he arrived home, his second child, one year old Jane Randolph Jefferson, died. Jane had been born April 3, 1774, only 3 ½ months after the Boston Tea Party had taken place.

Jefferson was reappointed to Congress and returned to Philadelphia by the end of September. His mother, Jane Randolph, after whom his deceased baby daughter had been named, became seriously ill. Tom received permission to return to Virginia to be with her. She passed away on March 31, 1776. This doubled the sorrow of losing his daughter a few months earlier. Jefferson became incapacitated by severe migraine headaches for the next five weeks.

Because of these tragedies, Jefferson nearly missed his appointment with destiny. It is a sad twist of fate that Jefferson’s mother died in March of 1776. Had she lived only 4 months longer, she could have witnessed and enjoyed it when her son created the inspired, immortal document that gave birth to the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776!