Through social media, I
have reintroduced my fellow Americans to the founding fathers along with the
Presidents and Vice Presidents of the United States. Starting today, I would
like to introduce you to the unsung heroes of our country, the First Ladies of
America. The First Ladies of America were wives and daughters who were the
hostesses for their respective Presidents while serving this great nation. Many
of you don’t even know their names, much less the special qualities that made
them unique as First Ladies. Many never did anything political, while more
recent First Ladies used their position to create awareness of social issues. I
will give you a little information for each one every Friday through this blog
and then post it on social media. It’s time we learn about these amazing women
and their accomplishments while their President was in office. Let’s begin with
Martha Jefferson Randolph, daughter of President Thomas Jefferson was his
hostess in the President’s Mansion while in office.
Martha Jefferson Randolph was the oldest daughter of Thomas
Jefferson and wife of the Governor of Virginia. Before she was married, she
grew up in Virginia at her father’s home, Monticello, she spent a great amount
of time in Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and Richmond before she accompanied her
father to Paris, France. Her father wanted her to attend the Abbaye Royale De
Panthemont, a very prestigious school for girls run by the nun of the school.
When she returned to Virginia, she married Thomas M. Randolph and had twelve
children Although she was the daughter of the new President, the wife of the
governor or Virginia, and a very educated woman, She was widely admired for her
keen intelligence, social capabilities and a great conversationalist, she was
considered a very genteel woman who was said to possess a temperament that was
perfect for her position. She enjoyed plantation life along with motherhood and
her marriage. Although her husband owned a nearby plantation called Edgehill,
the Randolph family lived at Monticello. While her father lived in that
President’s mansion in Washington, she would occasionally when needed at a function
as his hostess while he was in office and when he retired too. Her being at
events gave the illusion of Jefferson being a family man, and having a stable
domestic life, although he was a widower and she wanted to be there for him to
show he was fulfilling is life as a father both in his home and for the
country, her presence in her father’s political life caused a serious strain in
her already strained marriage.
In the early years of Martha’s life, she lived a genteel
life at Monticello receiving her school from her parents. Her father became
Governor of Virginia in 1779 and the family moved to Williamsburg, the Capital.
Martha was offered dancing lessons all at this time as Polly which she took
with glee. When the government moved to Richmond I 1780. There was a war going
on at this time due to the American Revolution and as a result with advancing
armies biting at the heels of the government Jefferson and his family moved to
Poplar Forrest, an estate he owned in Bedford County.
Unfortunately, Patsy’s life abruptly changed when her mother
died in 1782 from complications of childbirth. At this point, she became her
father’s constant companion. She later wrote in her diary that she witnessed
violent outbursts of grief from her father. This belief was why her father
accepted the diplomatic post in Paris, so she accepted his offer to join him. But
before leaving for Paris, Jefferson had to attend to business in Philadelphia.
In December 1782 three months after his wife’s death, Jefferson and Patsy
traveled to Philadelphia to attend business. Patsy was boarded with a family
that was friends of Jefferson to continue her education so Jefferson could
attend to political business during their time in town. Her younger sisters
Mary and Lucy Elizabeth stayed with relatives in Virginia. While in
Philadelphia, Patsy was tutored in French, she studied music and dancing. She
also could enjoy cosmopolitan Philadelphia at the same time. She
enjoyed the city with all that it offered. Even though she was staying with
friends in town, Jefferson saw her every day and prescribed daily lessons in
reading and writing, his lessons in writing instructed her to take special care
that she spelled every word correctly because it would produce great praise that
a lady spelled well. She was also a slob, to say the least, and Jefferson
instructed her to have her clothes washed and learn to properly put on because
sartorial propriety signified moral character, and nothing was so disgusting to
our sex as a want of cleanliness and delicacy in yours.
It was time to leave for Paris where she continued her
studies at the Abbaye Royale De Panthemont, a very prestigious school for girls
run by the nun of the school. Jefferson thought school in Paris would help his
daughter eventually and it did. Her younger sisters Mary (known as Polly) and
Lucy Elizabeth stayed with relatives in Virginia while they were away. While in
Paris, Patsy homed in her French and spoke it beautifully and was learning four
other languages, but we only know of Spanish and Italian just before she
returned to America. In 1787, her youngest sister Lucy died of whooping cough
and arrangements were made for her other sister Polly (Mary) to accompany them
in Paris. Polly traveled with Sally Hemings, the family servant in July of that
year. Polly joined Patsy at Panthemont for the remaining years in Paris. At Panthemont she received a first-rate
education and studied geography, Latin, history, arithmetic, drawing, and music.
This would ultimately make her the most educated woman in Virginia when they
returned. During the winter of 1788-1789, they stayed in their father’s home
battling illness. In the spring they continued with their studies at the
Panthemont. During that summer she was invited to balls, soirees, and other
gatherings. She was now 17 and a proper young lady. That summer she also
witnessed the beginnings of the fall of the French Empire as the French
Revolution was beginning. By September of that year, the Jeffersons along with
their servants the Hemings left Paris for their home, Monticello, Virginia.
Along their journey back home they stopped to rest at
Jefferson’s friend Thomas Randolph, this is where Patsy again met Thomas
Randolph the son. The son attended the University at Edinburgh and was to inherit
his father’s vast fortune of estates and fortune. Tom was an ideal suitor for
his daughter and Jefferson was excited to accept the proffered offer of
marriage to his daughter Patsy. Patsy and Tom were married on February 23, 1790,
at Monticello, as I said, and had 12 children, but one died. As the
President’s daughter she became one of the “friends of Liberty” as they were
called in the new Jefferson Republican party. This gave her no special status,
but she spent most of her father’s presidency in Albemarle taking care of her
children and managing her husband’s plantation along with her fathers too. Tom
also became elected to Congress during this time and the two men were always
away in Washington, so Patsy would stay at the plantations and care for them.
She managed them beautifully and never complained about it. Her father
continually asked her and her sister Polly to join him in Washington to be his hosts
when required. This showed the public that he was not only a family person but
also could hold sway over all by having two beautiful daughters take the
positions of first ladies as hosts for his soirees.
Martha traveled with her two children and sister Polly to
Washington, DC in early November 1802 and stayed until January. During this time,
the sisters were the sought-after socialites of the city, as the new
influential woman in the city, they attended dinners with members of Congress
diplomats and attended religious services and gatherings. They also appeared at
her father’s New Year’s reception to host It with their father the President of
the United States. Martha Randolph impressed everyone with her intelligence,
good manners, and social skills. With her being present, Jefferson projected
the public image as a President with a family that squelched the rumors of him having
an affair with the enslaved woman of his household, Sally Hemings which the
newspapers were reporting at the time. Randolph most ardently protected her
father’s name for the remainder of her life as did her son, Thomas Jefferson
Randolph and so did her daughters Cornelia Jefferson Randolph and Mary
Jefferson Randolph as they worked hard to compile and edit the first collection
of Jefferson’s writings to be published. They were careful to take special care
to select certain manuscripts that presented him in the best lite.
Randolph’s unique political activities were intermittent and
circumspect. However, when Jefferson retired from politics, she and her family
moved into Monticello to care for him. The vastness of the house and its fine
library influenced the choice of where they would live, but her devotion to
her father was decisive. While at Monticello she oversaw various household and
plantation operations. When Britain stopped trade with the new Country of
cloth, she had the slaves at the plantations learn to make cloth during the War
of 1812. Monticello offered hospitality to many guests, some famous, some not
so famous, and visitors who just wanted to meet and speak to Jefferson.
By this time Patsy was entering middle age and having to
still take care of a crazily hectic household she worried about dwindling
finances, crop failures, needy relatives, investments that weren’t doing well, and the value of the land devaluing to the point that they were almost insolvent.
Although she supported the war effort and knew it was right, she still worried
about her family. Her husband was offered a commission in the military which would
worsen their finances. In her political way, she approached President James
Madison asking that he give her husband an appointment as a tax collector instead,
making it a safer and more lucrative posting. Tom Randolph then turned his
efforts to politics and in 1819 he became Governor of Virginia. She only attended
him in Richmond briefly, where she was popular in both society and the general
assembly.
No matter what she did, financial ruin was imminent. She was
forced to liquidate the Randolph estate and Tom Randolph senior was resentful
of the solvency. Tom Randolph’s own son was in a position due to his father’s legacy
provided to him upon his death bought the family estate at auction and made it
his own. Meanwhile, Martha and Tom Randolph moved to Monticello. Upon Thomas
Jefferson’s death, Monticello was in debt and the property had to be sold due
to serious debt.
No matter her position, by October 1826 Martha and her two youngest traveled to Boston to visit her daughter
Ellen Coolidge and her husband Boston Merchant Joseph Coolidge. Randolph’s two
older daughters were unmarried and decided to stay back in Virginia where they
planned to open a school in Albemarle to help generate income. Martha delayed
her return until May 1828. She visited Tom Randolph and his family when he got
sick and was by his bedside when he died in June. She stayed with his family at
Edgehill until November 1829, and then she joined her daughter Virginia Trist and
her husband, Nicholas Trist in Washington. At this point in her life, she was
virtually without a home and she’s spent her remaining years on this earth visiting
with her married children who lived in Virginia, Boston, and Washington, DC.
Martha Jefferson Randolph used her connection to President
Jackson to full value, as Jackson valued his connection and friendship with
Jefferson’s daughter for the legitimacy it gave him in his new position as President.
She was apparently willing to attention to his dinner parties that included the
shunned woman named Margaret O’Neal Timberlake Easton who was notorious in nature,
but with Margaret Randolph at his table at the same time as Mrs. Easton all was
proper. After all, Mrs. Martha Jefferson Randolph wouldn’t be seated at an improper
table now, would she? This gesture did not go unnoticed by the ladies at the
table, as well as Jackson and Martin Van Buren, the secretary of State at the
time. Nicholas Trist who had obtained his position under Henry Clay, Secretary
of State at the time, retained his position now under Van Buren and eventually
was appointed consul of Havana then under James Polk he became the commissioner
in charge of negotiating the end to the Mexican-American War.
Randolph’s youngest child George Wythe Randolph went on to become a lawyer, a
farmer, and a politician like his father and grandfather, he also went on to
become the lawyer who represented the city of Richmond during the Virginia Secession
Convention in 1861, he was also the Confederate States Secretary of War during
the American Civil War. After the war, he served in the Virginia Senate
representing the City of Richmond until the end of the war. Her other son
Thomas Jr went on to become a Virginia planter, soldier, and politician who
served multiple terms in the Virginia House of Delegates, as rector of the
University of Virginia, and as a colonel in the Confederate Army during the
American Civil War. The favorite grandson of President Thomas Jefferson, he
helped manage Monticello near the end of his grandfather's life and was the executor of his estate, and later also served in the Virginia Constitutional
Convention of 1850 and at the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861. Her other
sons became prominent people, one becoming the secretary to the governor of Arkansas.
She lived off a stipend provided by her father’s estate and from bank stocks that
were donated by the states of South Carolina and Louisiana in tribute to her
father Thomas Jefferson, but her most valuable assets were that of her remaining
slaves, she hired them out and lived off that income. Unlike her father who
wanted to free his slaves, and lived off them until she died.
Randolph left Boston in May of 1836 bound for Virginia. She
stopped along the way to visit friends to visit friends and rest. She arrived
at Edgehill two months later. She died suddenly on October 10, 1838, surrounded
by family. She was buried near her father in Monticello graveyard. By this time
she wasn’t really well known, so the newspaper only printed a two-line obituary
that said, ”Mrs. Martha Randolph, widow of the late Thomas Mann Randolph, and
daughter of Thomas Jefferson.” That was it.
Comments
Post a Comment