Part one of term paper
Third U.S. president; born in Albermarle County, Va. Son of a surveyor-landowner and a mother who was a member of the distinguished Randolph family of Virginia, he graduated from the College of William and Mary (1762) and read law under George Wythe. After several years of law practice, Jefferson was elected to the Virginia House of Burges ...

Part two of term paper
... only two of whom survived into maturity; she herself died in 1782. Jefferson was among those who called the First Continental Congress in 1774; as a delegate to the Second Congress (1775--77), he was the principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, which embodied some of his ideas on the natural rights of certain people. Jefferson then returned to Virginia, where as a member of its legislature (1776--79), he took the lead in creating a state constitution an ...