Reds In History: Redheaded Founding Father Thomas Jefferson Was An Extraordinary Man Of His Time

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and one of the most influential Founding Fathers was a redhead and may have been quite a looker for his day and time. Major events during his presidency included the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

As a political philosopher, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment and knew many intellectual leaders in Britain and France. He idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of virtue, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a strictly limited federal government. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state.

He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the co-founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated American politics for a quarter-century. Jefferson also served as the wartime Governor of Virginia, first United States Secretary of State and second Vice President.

Most images of Jefferson portray him in his older years with gray hair. A few however show a younger man with his red hair fashioned in the style of the day. Jefferson achieved distinction as an horticulturist, statesman, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, author, inventor, and the founder of the University of Virginia, among other roles.

When President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."