nterest was personal, not
national. In his so-called _Farm Book_, or plantation record, he often
mentions fish. A note on slave labor reads: "A barrel of fish costing
$7. goes as far with the laborers as 200 ponds of pork costing $14."
This was in all probability Virginia salt-herring, which had finally
reached the status of a staple during the latter half of the 18th
century. An 1806 memorandum to his overseer runs: "Fish is always to be
got in Richmond ... and to be dealt out to the hirelings, laborers,
workmen, and house servants of all sorts as has been usual." In 1812 a
bill for fish, which he terms "indeed very high and discouraging, but
the necessity of it is still stronger," lists the species no doubt in
chief demand: "Twelve barrels herrings, $75. and one barrel of shads,
$6.50." These were salted and shipped in from Tidewater fisheries like
George Washington's at Mt. Vernon.

For fresh fish Jefferson and his neighbors could look to their adjacent
rivers. In fact, so greatly did they rely on them that it was with
feelings akin to consternation that he wrote his friend William D.
Meriwether in 1809 that a neighbor, Mr. Ashlin, proposed to erect a dam
which was sure to inconvenience the watermen of the vicinity.
Furthermore, "to this then add the removal of our resort for fresh fish
... and the deprivation of all the intermediate inhabitants who now
catch them at their door." He was not on too firm ground in objecting,
however. He had a dam of his own across the Rivanna river which had
been there since 1757.

He decided to build a fish pond in his garden. As he described it in
1808 it was little larger than an aquarium, 40 cubic yards contents,
probably for water lilies and goldfish. It was the first of several
fish ponds, constructed, no doubt, with both beauty and utility in
mind. A note in his _Weather Memorandum Book_ under date April 1812
tells us: "The two fish ponds on the Colle branch were 40 days work to
grub, clean and make the dams."

A series of letters in 1812 to friends who he thought might supply him
with live fish, particularly carp, for stocking, all run very much on
the order of this one to Captain Mathew Wills:

I return you many thanks for the fish you have been so kind as to
send me, and still more for your aid in procuring the carp, and you
will further oblige me by presenting my thanks to Capt. Holman &
Mr. Ashlin. I have found too late, on enquiry that the cask sent