Was Thomas Jefferson the inspiration for the colon lunatics?

[.]

In an article about fake vintage wines, there is this interesting tidbit:

The biggest doubts, however, are over the letters “Th.J” — supposedly Jefferson’s initials — engraved on each of the bottles. Jefferson’s estate says he never engraved his wine bottles and whenever he did use his initials he wrote them as “Th:J”.

I'll bet Demo knows.

[Demosthenes]

Oooh. That's good.

Here's what the bottle looked like:

[Demosthenes]

[Demosthenes]

And while I feel it would be fun to pass this trivia on to the TPs with no explanation and let them make further asses of themselves, a colon in the 18th and 19th centuries simply signified an abbreviation.

http://www.usgennet.org/family/smoot/oldhand/names.html

[.]

So ol' Tom was just following convention.

I'm sure the idiots would love to claim "Tom was one of us!" while ignoring the fact that they aren't abbreviating anything with their goofy punctuation.