The best way to combine the sentences is: Thomas Jefferson, who was a brilliant writer, was chosen to write the Declaration of Independence.
When sentences are closely related in meaning and belong together, we can combine two or more into one sentence. There are five ways of combining a sentence:
- Punctuation: Sentences are combined using punctuation marks.
- Coordination: Coordinating conjunctions are used to combine sentences (and, or, but, so)
- Subordination: It is a way of combining sentences that makes one sentence more important than the other.
- Reduction: Reducing a sentence into a phrase.
- Apposition: In apposition, we take a word or a phrase and place it in a parallel position to a noun in the sentence.
In this particular case, the way of combining the sentences was apposition. Another example of this combining way would be: "Sarah, who was a remarkable student, always did her homework".