On July 11, members of the Jefferson Meteorological Records team from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson editorial project at Princeton University had an opportunity to visit the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia to meet with Bayard Miller and Cynthia Heider of the digital scholarship team of the APS library. The topic of discussion? Historic weather records, of course, and our mutual efforts to make this underutilized resource available for students, researchers, and the public. The two teams are in conversation to build complementary online digital resources based on Thomas Jefferson’s weather observation manuscripts and the unparalleled collection of American weather records at the APS.

Jefferson Papers undergraduate interns Victoria Dee (Villanova University) and Lauren Kennedy (Ohio State University) and research associate Alison Dolbier examine a notebook of daily weather conditions kept by James Madison.

As a bonus, APS Head of Digital Scholarship and Technology Bayard Miller showed us a copy of the Declaration of Independence that Jefferson made for Richard Henry Lee and a printed copy of the United States Constitution with Benjamin Franklin’s marginal notes. Thanks Bayard!

Thomas Jefferson’s meteorological observation records span from 1776 to 1826 and contain more than 18,000 readings of temperature readings and notations of weather conditions, barometric pressure, air moisture, wind, and seasonal information about plants, trees, birds, and animals. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton is teaming with the Center for Digital Editing at the University of Virginia to create a free-access digital resource from Jefferson’s weather records. The work receives support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The Jefferson Papers also benefits from the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities.