Continental Army

Continental Army general; key to winning the war in the South; 1742—86.
Washington’s aide-de-camp, lawyer, contributor to the Federalist Papers, Secretary of the Treasury; 1755/1757—1804.
Continental Army general, chief artillery officer, first Secretary of War; 1750—1806.
Continental Army officer, aide-de-camp to Washington, son of Henry Laurens; 1754—82.
Continental Army general, formerly a British officer; 1732—82.
”Light Horse Harry”; Continental Army officer, Virginia governor; 1756—1818.
Irish-born Continental Army general, formerly a British officer; 1738—75.
Aide-de-camp to Washington throughout the Revolutionary War; 1744—1786.
Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army; first President; 1732—99.
Continental Army general, defeated the British at Stony Point; 1745—96.

Visitors to Monticello often wonder at its practical accessories. Jefferson labored a month to save a minute. His home was impractical from the start — by reason of its very site (on a mountain), by the height given the first version of the building (later disguised in a way that left useless spaces in and around its dome), by the perpetual course of its dismantling and reassembly. To make the house more convenient, he made his daughter and her children live for years in a chaos of artistic second thoughts, sometimes sheltered only by canvas as the roof rose, fell, and assumed new shapes in his mind.

Garry Wills
Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1978)