How tall was Thomas Jefferson?

How tall was Thomas Jefferson?

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, stood about 189 cm (6′2½″). That figure is not an estimate made by later biographers from portraits or clothing. It comes from people who lived and worked alongside him at Monticello, his plantation near Charlottesville, Virginia. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which runs the house as a museum and research center, gives the figure as described by his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph.

Converted precisely, 6′2½″ is 74.5 inches, or 189.2 cm, so the site's rounded value of 189 cm and the historical record agree. His overseer Edmund Bacon put it in the plain feet-and-inches language of the day: six feet two and a half inches.

The eyewitnesses behind the number

Because no official record of presidential height existed in the 18th century, everything we know comes from personal testimony. For Jefferson, that testimony is unusually consistent.

Edmund Bacon, the Monticello overseer

The most detailed source is Edmund Bacon, who managed the Monticello estate for many years, about twenty by his own account, including the years after Jefferson left the presidency. Late in life, Bacon gave a long series of reminiscences to the Reverend Hamilton W. Pierson, who published them in 1862 as The Private Life of Thomas Jefferson. In the chapter on Jefferson's appearance and habits, reprinted by Encyclopedia Virginia, Bacon gives the 6′2½″ figure and describes his employer as well proportioned and remarkably straight, with no surplus flesh, an iron constitution and great physical strength.

Bacon adds details that help us picture the man at that height: Jefferson was a fine horseman who rode almost every day, generally starting about nine o'clock, rose at or before daybreak, kept his own fire from a box of dry wood in his room, was never a great eater and dressed neatly in short breeches with bright shoe buckles.

Other people who measured themselves against him

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation's own summary of his height attributes the 6′2½″ figure to his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, so two people who saw him constantly, a family member and an employee, give the same number.

One of the most charming pieces of evidence is a reminiscence preserved by Monticello's Getting Word project, first printed in Harper's Weekly in 1904, in which a man who stood six feet two recalled comparing heights with Jefferson and finding that Jefferson topped him by half an inch. The same speaker remembered him as rather thin, standing perfectly solid and straight until his last illness. It is the kind of offhand, almost accidental measurement that historians trust, because nobody had a reason to embellish it.

Why the record is trustworthy

Three things make Jefferson's height more reliable than most pre-modern figures:

1. Multiple witnesses, his grandson, his overseer and a neighbor who measured himself against him, give consistent numbers.
2. The witnesses saw him daily, not once at a reception.
3. The figure is precise to the half inch, which suggests an actual measurement rather than an impression.

Tall for his time, but not because others were short

A common assumption is that people in the 1700s were dramatically shorter than today and that a man of 6′2″ would therefore have been a giant. The reality is more interesting.

Monticello's research summary draws on work by the economic historians Kenneth Sokoloff and Georgia Villaflor, who studied the recorded heights of soldiers in the Revolutionary era. They estimated that American recruits around 1779 reached an average final height of about 68.1 inches, or 173 cm. The same research put the modern average final height at between 69 and 70 inches, only a little over an inch above that colonial figure. Monticello works through the proportion and concludes that Jefferson would have seemed to his peers about as tall as a man of just over 6′4″ seems today: tall, clearly above the crowd, but not freakishly so.

Modern measured data support the comparison. In the CDC's NHANES survey for August 2021 to August 2023, the average American man aged 20 and over is 175.1 cm, and the 95th percentile is 187.2 cm. Jefferson's 189 cm would still put him above the 95th percentile of American men today. You can check where any height falls with the height percentile calculator, and the long-term trend for the country is charted on the United States average height page.

What 6′2½″ meant in Jefferson's world

Being well over six feet in colonial Virginia carried practical consequences that are easy to forget today.

Horses and carriages. Jefferson was a keen horseman. Bacon names the horses he generally rode after returning from Washington, Brimmer or Tecumseh, until Bacon bought Eagle for him, and praises how easily he sat a horse and how completely he kept it under control. Bacon adds that Jefferson planned his own carriage.

Daily routine. Bacon's portrait of Jefferson's habits shows a tall man who used his body constantly: up at dawn, walking the terraces, riding daily and tending his own fires. Bacon says he invented a plough that won premiums and medals and was nearly always busy on some plan or model. Nothing in these recollections suggests that his size slowed him down; Bacon presents it as part of an iron constitution, saying he did not think Jefferson was ever really sick until his last illness. The Getting Word reminiscence adds that in old age he rode to the University of Virginia construction site, sometimes daily.

Public life. In an age when leaders were judged partly by physical presence, height gave Jefferson authority he did not seek through speechmaking. Wikipedia's summary of his career runs from the Second Continental Congress and the Committee of Five that produced the Declaration of Independence to minister to France (from 1785), first U.S. secretary of state under Washington, vice president and then president.

Converting the old measurements

Jefferson's height was recorded in feet and inches, but the English inch of his day was effectively the same as the modern one, so no adjustment is needed. The arithmetic is simple:

• 6 feet × 12 = 72 inches, plus 2.5 inches = 74.5 inches
• 74.5 × 2.54 = 189.2 cm

For other conversions, the height converter handles feet, inches and centimeters in both directions.

Jefferson among the founders

The early republic was led by a group of men of very different statures, and the contrast between them is often noted. Jefferson and Washington, both Virginia planters, were the two tallest of the first presidents.

The gap between Jefferson and his successor James Madison is especially striking. At 163 cm, Madison is the shortest president in the site's data, and the two would have stood about 26 cm, or ten inches, apart.

Jefferson and John Adams were separated by about 19 cm. Both served on the Committee of Five that produced the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Washington and Jefferson, by contrast, were near twins in height. When Jefferson served as Washington's first secretary of state, the president and his chief diplomat would have stood almost eye to eye, separated by about a centimeter.

How Jefferson compares with modern presidents

Height has been a recurring theme in American presidential history, and Jefferson would hold his own among recent occupants of the White House.

• Bill Clinton, whose full name is William Jefferson Clinton, is listed at 189 cm, exactly Jefferson's height.
• Barack Obama is listed at 187 cm, about 2 cm shorter.
• Donald Trump is listed at 190.5 cm, about 1.5 cm taller.
• Abraham Lincoln, at 193 cm, remains the tallest president, about 4 cm above Jefferson, with Lyndon B. Johnson (192 cm) close behind.

Among all presidents in the site's data, only Lincoln, Johnson and Trump are taller than Jefferson, and only Clinton matches him exactly.

Build, posture and how he carried his height

The descriptions of Jefferson's build line up well. Bacon describes him as lean, strong and "straight as a gun-barrel," and recalls that on a machine for measuring strength he outdid his son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph, one of the strongest men Bacon had seen try it. No reliable weight was recorded, so this page does not give one.

Two habits help explain why witnesses stressed his straight posture:

• Daily riding. Bacon says Jefferson rode almost every day, weather permitting, even in old age. Riding well requires an upright seat, and Bacon specifically praises how easily he sat a horse.
• Walking his own land. Bacon often found him already walking on the terrace when he arrived early in the morning, and in old age a servant carried a camp stool for him as he went over the plantation.

Jefferson's height in monuments and art

Jefferson's height has been interpreted, and sometimes exaggerated, in public art.

• The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., dedicated by Franklin D. Roosevelt on 13 April 1943, houses a statue by Rudulph Evans. According to the National Park Service, the figure is 19 feet (5.8 m) tall and stands on a 6-foot pedestal of black Minnesota granite. The original plaster was replaced in bronze in 1947. At about three times life size, the statue keeps Jefferson's real proportions: a standing man of 189 cm scaled up by a factor of three is almost exactly 19 feet.
• Mount Rushmore in South Dakota shows his face alongside Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln. According to the National Park Service, carving ran from 4 October 1927 to 31 October 1941, and Wikipedia gives each head as about 18 m (60 ft) tall, roughly ten times Jefferson's entire standing height. The Mount Rushmore landmark page lets you compare the carving with a person of his real height.
• Portraits by Charles Willson Peale, Rembrandt Peale and Gilbert Stuart show his long face and high forehead, but painters of the period rarely indicated scale, so they cannot be used to measure him.

Putting 6′2½″ in perspective

To picture Jefferson standing beside you, enter 189 cm and your own height into the height comparison tool. A 5′9″ man (175 cm) would be 14 cm shorter, and a woman of average modern American height (161.2 cm in NHANES) about 28 cm shorter. If you would like to see him lined up with the other founders, add George Washington, John Adams and James Madison to the same comparison; the spread from Madison to Jefferson covers 26 cm.