From the Ipswich Tribune

April 5, 1928 edition

JEFFERSON FOUND HIS LETTER WRITING A BURDEN

Thomas Jefferson liked to write letters and to receive them, but the burden became almost unendurable. He wrote John Adams in 1817 that from dinner to dark he was “drudging at the writing table.”

“All this,” he continued “to answer letters into which neither interest nor inclination on my part enters; and often from persons whose names I have never before heard. Yet, writing civilly, it is hard to refuse them civil answers. This is the burden of my life, a very grievous one indeed and on...