2010: scooped

Looks like the (official) Monticello folks have the same idea I had.

This showed up yesterday on Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Facebook page and is also mentioned on Monticello's Twitter feed.

"... next week we're planning on starting a Twitter account that we can use to tweet 'as' Thomas Jefferson, writing each day about what he was doing 200 years prior (e.g. things he bought, letters he wrote, places he was visiting, etc.) ... "

It sounds like they're planning on using the same sources I do, too: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Vol. 2 (and later, 3, etc.) and Jefferson's Memorandum Books, Vol.II.

Of course, there will be differences. For one thing, they're real historians at the real Monticello and have access to every kind of documentation that survives. I'm a private individual who has been studying Thomas Jefferson for thirty-seven years, using materials available to the general public (which in his case is quite a lot), but I have no official accreditation either as a Jefferson scholar or as a historian. The tweets will be in the first person. My blog's narrator is implied to be present at the time, but is nevertheless an observer, with the limitations and flexibilities that implies. Tweets are confined to 140 characters, but blog posts can explore (and sometimes bore) in more detail.

This should be interesting.