3rd President of the United States; chief drafter of the Declaration of Independence; made the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and sent out the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore it (1743-1826)

The county seat of Yoknapatawpha County, situated in almost the exact geographic center of the county. It is seventy-five miles southeast of Memphis and forty miles from Oxford, Mississippi. It originated around 1800 as a Chicksaw Agency trading post. A Doctor Samuel Habersham was the agent, and the place was originally called Habersham's or simply Habersham. After the doctor and the two others who had come with him died, the leaders of the community became Jason Lycurgus Compson, the post trader Ratcliffe, and Doctor Peabody. They were instrumental in getting the courthouse built. In 1833 the settlement was named Jefferson, after the mail rider Thomas Jefferson Pettigrew, to appease him for the so-called theft of a lock removed from the mailpouch to put on the jail door. Most of the early history of Jefferson is found in Requiem for a Nun.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States.

The American Elm U. americana cultivar Jefferson is a Dutch elm disease tolerant tree of unknown origin. Although early studies of this clone had indicated that it had triploid chromosome levels (suggesting it may be a hybrid between the tetraploid American Elm and a diploid species), a genetic study performed by the United States National Arboretum in 2004 (link below) appears to call this supposition strongly into question, suggesting that the cultivar is in fact tetraploid. Jefferson, introduced by the U.