The death of his father had left him an estate of 1900 acres, the income from which (about £400) gave him the position of an independent country gentleman; and while engaged in the law he had added to his farms after the ambitious Virginia fashion, until, when he married in his thirtieth year, there were 5000 acres all paid for; and almost as much more[1] came to him in 1773 on the death of his father-in-law. On the 1st of January 1772, Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton (1749-1782), a childless widow of twenty-three, very handsome, accomplished, and very fond of music. Their married life was exceedingly happy, and Jefferson never remarried after her early death. Of six children born from their union, two daughters alone survived infancy. Jefferson was emotional and very affectionate in his home, and his generous and devoted relations with his children and grandchildren are among the finest features of his character. Jefferson began his public service as a justice of the peace and parish vestryman; he was chosen a member of the Virginia house of burgesses in 1769 and of every succeeding assembly and convention of the colony until he entered the Continental Congress in 1775. His forceful, facile pen gave him great influence from the first; but though a foremost member of several great deliberative bodies, he can fairly be said never to have made a speech. He hated the "morbid rage of debate" because he believed that men were never convinced by argument, but only by reflection, through reading or unprovocative conversation; and this belief guided him through life. Moreover it is very improbable that he could ever have shone as a public speaker, and to this fact unfriendly critics have attributed, at least in part, his abstention from debate. The house of burgesses of 1769, and its successors in 1773 and 1774, were dissolved by the governor (see VIRGINIA) for their action on the subject of colonial grievances and inter-colonial co-operation. Jefferson was prominent in all; was a signer of the Virginia agreement of non-importation and economy (1769); and was elected in 1774 to the first Virginia convention, called to consider the state of the colony and advance inter-colonial union. Prevented by illness from attending, Jefferson sent to the convention elaborate resolutions, which he proposed as instructions to the Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress that was to meet at Philadelphia in September. In the direct language of reproach and advice, with no disingenuous loading of the Crown's policy upon its agents, these resolutions attacked the errors of the king, and maintained that "the relation between Great Britain and these colonies was exactly the same as that of England and Scotland after the accession of James and until the Union; and that our emigration to this country gave England no more rights over us than the emigration of the Danes and Saxons gave to the present authorities of