Yard sale held at Jefferson’s boyhood home

There are yard sales, and there are yard sales. And then there are yard sales at Thomas Jefferson's boyhood home in Goochland County.

Tuckahoe Plantation, where the founding father lived as a child, held a spring-cleaning sale yesterday, perhaps the first in the historic home's history.

Nothing from the sale dated to the time of Jefferson, who lived in the house when he was 2 to 9 years old, from 1745 to 1752. But iron fireplace inserts dated to when the house was heated with coal, and a sled had been left by the house's previous inhabitants, a family who lived in the house from 1898 to 1935.

More recent items for sale included at least two Rubik's Cubes, still in their packaging, which were going for $20 apiece.

For more than 70 years, the house and grounds have been owned by members of the Thompson family. Tad Thompson, who lives on the property with members of his family and staff, is co-owner with his brother, his sister and 14 other family members.

Thompson's wife, Sue, ran the sale. She said the idea for it came from their son, Daniel, who recently graduated from college. He saw that some of the historic outbuildings were cluttered. The family could declutter and open more buildings to public tours, he suggested.

Money from the sale, as well as from public tours, goes to the upkeep of the house and grounds, Tad Thompson said. The first part of the house was built around 1733, and additions were completed by 1745. Also on the grounds is the one-room schoolhouse Jefferson attended.

Items from the sale ranged from old croquet sets to a spinet piano, from farm tools to dainty small bottles to books -- lots and lots of books.

When one woman bought a well-loved copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic "A Child's Garden of Verses," Sue Thompson proved she could still recite the poem "The Swing" -- all of it, not just the first verse.

Perhaps the most valuable item for sale was seen by few, because it was in a separate building. A coal-burning Aga stove dating from the 1930s was available, complete with the original Aga cookbook.

Other items were just as unusual but in a different way: They were used on the set of the "John Adams" miniseries. Handmade 18th-century-like brooms, wood crates and a reproduction of a box for musket balls were all part of the sets for the Emmy Award-winning historical drama.

Sue Thompson said representatives from the show scouted the site as a possible location for filming but eventually decided not to shoot there, in part because the house did not look enough like an 18th-century New England farmhouse.

The items from the filming made their way to the sale because one of the people who decorated the set lives at Tuckahoe, said Daniel Thompson, the son of Tad and Sue.

Some of the family's more notable items were not available at this sale. They will be sold at an auction in May at Motley's Auction & Realty Group.

Maryland resident Monika Laws came to the sale with her mother, who lives in Richmond, and her two children.

"We were looking for something to do, something outdoorsy. We Googled children's events in Richmond," she said.

"It's history for the children. We always like to give them a little historical participation."

Laws left with treasures for her children: a kitten doorstop that once belonged to Tad Thompson's mother and a framed illustration from the book "Goodnight, Moon" for her daughter, and a stick-and-hoop game (minus the stick) from the set of "John Adams" and an old pocketknife for her son.