INFORMATION FOR
“Thomas Jefferson’s Two Families,” a look at how the former president managed to care for the members of his two disparate families in the same house, is the topic of an address by Jan Lewis, a professor of history at Rutgers University, who will present the 26th annual Annual Abram Kartch/Thomas Jefferson Lecture at William Paterson University in Wayne on Wednesday, May 5.
More than 400 students from area high schools are expected to attend Lewis’s address, a lecture which will include a discussion of what it meant for Jefferson to house his two, separate families under one roof. One family was privileged and acknowledged, and the other was a hidden, slave family. Lewis will connect the history of private life and family with the history of race.
The program will begin at 10 a.m. in Shea Center on campus. A limited number of seats for the free program will be available to the public.
Lewis is one of the foremost Jeffersonian scholars in the country. She is the author of several books including The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson’s Virginia, and The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic.
The program will include an essay contest for students attending the lecture. Two students whose essays best represent an understanding of the lecturer’s remarks will each be awarded a $500 savings bond.
The Abram Kartch/Thomas Jefferson Lecture Series began in 1985 after Abram Kartch, a retired Paterson businessman and Jefferson scholar, provided William Paterson with an endowment to establish and continue the series. Designed to provoke discussion about the relationship of Jefferson’s words and thoughts to modern society, the series has presented lectures by many of the country’s leading Jefferson scholars, including Henry Steele Commager, James B. Shenton, and Pauline Maier. Kartch, who in later years resided in Wayne, died in 1997 at age 93.
For additional information about the event, contact George Robb, William Paterson University professor of history, at 973-720-3058 or via email at robbg@wpunj.edu.
