Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was born into one of Virginia’s most prominent families on April 13, 1743. He showed his intellectual curiosity at the College of William and Mary, where he studied Greek, the classics, philosophy, and science, practiced the violin, and perfected his French. From 1767 to 1773 he practiced law, and in 1769 he was elected as a representative to the Virginia House of Burgesses. He became involved in the movement for American independence in 1774 when he wrote “A Summary View of the Rights of British America” in opposition to Parliament’s Coercive Acts, sometimes called the Intolerable Acts. He was elected as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where he was assigned to a five-member committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, though Jefferson was the principal author.