Martha Jefferson Randolph
Martha "Patsy" Randolph was the eldest daughter of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, and his wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson. She was born at Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia.
Randolph's mother died when she was nearly 10 years old, when only two out of her five siblings were alive. Her father saw that she had a good education. She spoke four languages and was greatly influenced by the education she received in a Paris convent school with daughters of the French elite. By 1804, she was the lone surviving child of Martha and Thomas Jefferson, the only one of the couple's children to survive past the age of 25.
Martha Jefferson married Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., who was a politician at the federal and state levels and was elected as governor of Virginia, which made her the first lady of Virginia. They had twelve children together.
Randolph oversaw the operation of Varina and Edge Hill with her husband, and Monticello with her father. She was in regular correspondence with her father when they were not together. She provided emotional stability for Jefferson, which helped him weather his tumultuous political career. Besides overseeing Monticello, she lived with Jefferson at the White House, serving as an informal First Lady.
After the White House, Randolph and her children lived at Monticello and cared for her father. Due to debt, the Randolphs sold Varina and lost Edge Hill plantation to foreclosure in 1825. Randolph inherited Monticello and Jefferson's debts when her father died in 1826. Many of the enslaved people at Monticello were sold to cover some of the debt.
Early life and education (1772–1790)
Virginia
Martha Jefferson was born on September 27, 1772, at Monticello, her father's estate in Virginia. Her parents were Thomas Jefferson and Martha Wayles Skelton. During her parents' ten-year marriage, they had six children. Randolph was their first born. She was followed by Jane Randolph ; a son who lived for only a few weeks in 1777; Mary "Polly" ; Lucy Elizabeth ; and another Lucy Elizabeth. Only Randolph and Mary survived more than a few years. As a young child, Randolph saw her mother suffer during difficult pregnancies and both parents mourn the deaths of four infant children.The family lived a genteel lifestyle and Randolph was initially schooled at home. Her studies included dance lessons. When she was seven years of age, her father became the governor of Virginia. He was elected on June 1, 1779, and the family first lived in Williamsburg. They relocated to Richmond when the government moved there in 1780. British troops advanced to Richmond in May 1781 and, due to advance warning, the Jeffersons escaped to their country home, Poplar Forest.
Randolph was almost 10 years of age when her mother died on September 6, 1782, four months after the birth of the Jeffersons' last child. Randolph later wrote about this period and her father's grief, stating "in those melancholy rambles I was his constant companion, a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief."
Philadelphia
Randolph went to Philadelphia with her father in 1782 and again in the fall of 1783 when he represented Virginia at the Congress of the Confederation. The largest city in America at the time, Philadelphia was the center of American Enlightenment.Randolph's father did not believe in public education for girls, but arranged for his daughter to receive a private education. Between December 1782 and May 1784, she boarded with a family and studied French, dancing, drawing, and music with private tutors, who received prescribed, strict daily schedules and instructions regarding how her education should be conducted from Thomas Jefferson. His intention was to make her an esteemed, well-read lady. He was particularly focused on cleanliness and spelling, both of which were important to create the image of a proper lady with moral behavior and diction. In the meantime, her father worked in Philadelphia and awaited Congressional orders to go to France.
Paris
Her younger sisters, Mary and Lucy Elizabeth, remained in Virginia with family members as Randolph and her father traveled to Boston with James Hemings. They set sail for Paris on the ship Ceres on July 5, 1784, and arrived in France on August 6, 1784. Randolph lived in Paris from age 12 to 17 while her father served as U.S. Minister to France. In October 1784, her youngest sister, Lucy, died of whooping cough.Jefferson enrolled her at the Pentemont Abbey, an exclusive convent school, after receiving assurances that Protestant students were exempt from religious instruction. At this boarding school Randolph learned arithmetic, geography, world history, and Latin, as well as music and drawing. She was deeply influenced by the four years at the convent school. Her peers were the French elite who provide a model of "female intelligence, capacity, and energy" and experienced the "rich pageantry of Roman Catholic liturgies". It gave her the ability to conduct witty, intelligent conversation and thought about how she would manage the education of her future children.
When she socialized at the Abbey, she learned about women's role in political affairs, the dissension leading to the French Revolution, and palace intrique. Her father had influenced the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man in France. Randolph said of her time in France was "the brightest part of a life much shaded & saddened by care & sorrows."
Mary traveled with Sally Hemings to Paris and joined her sister at the convent school in July 1787. Randolph and her sister Mary contracted typhus during the winter of 1788 and lived with their father until they regained their health. They returned to the convent in spring of 1789. After Randolph expressed a desire to convert to Catholicism and said she was considering religious orders, Jefferson quickly withdrew her and her younger sister Polly from the school. Over the course of her studies, Randolph learned to speak four languages.
Randolph socialized with "free thinking" European women and accomplished women of the French Enlightenment, like Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Germaine de Staël. She also met world leaders while in France. She enjoyed a social life that included balls and concerts during the summer. Wayson says that she was able "to observe firsthand the collective power of French women as they marched to the king's palace at Versailles and forced the royal couple's return to Paris under the escort of the Marquis de Lafayette, a Jefferson family friend." In September 1789, after the beginning of the French Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, his daughters, and James and Sally Hemings sailed for America, arriving in 1790.
Marriage and family (1790–1818)
On February 23, 1790, at the age of 17, she married Thomas Mann Randolph Jr., a planter, at Monticello. He was her third cousin, and a descendant of Pocahontas. Her husband, the son of Thomas Jefferson's friend Thomas Mann Randolph Sr., was in many ways a good candidate as her husband, but his family was subject to scandal. Some of the Randolphs were accused but later acquitted of killing a child believed to have been fathered by Richard Randolph. Randolph was a witness in the case of Commonwealth v. Richard Randolph on April 22, 1793. In addition, her father-in-law created a scandal when he married a teenager.Soon after their marriage, her father, Thomas Jefferson, deeded eight slaves from Monticello as a wedding gift, including Molly Hemings, the eldest daughter of Mary Hemings. Critta Hemings, sister of Sally Hemings, helped Randolph care for the children for many years at Monticello and Edge Hill.
The couple first lived at Randolph's estate, Varina, in Henrico County and Martha had twelve children. She had more children than any daughter of a president. In contrast to her parents and sister, each of whom had most of their children die in childhood, eleven of the Randolphs' children survived to adulthood:
- Ann Cary Randolph, who married Charles Lewis Bankhead.
- Thomas Jefferson Randolph, who married Jane Hollins Nicholas daughter of Wilson Cary Nicholas.
- Ellen Wayles Randolph, died young during a trip that Randolph and her husband took July 1795 to October 1795 to improve his health.
- Ellen Wayles Randolph, who was named after deceased sister, and was married to Joseph Coolidge and was then known as Ellen Randolph Coolidge.
- Cornelia Jefferson Randolph. In the 1830s, she established a school at Edge Hill, then her brother's estate, where she taught painting, sculpture, and drawing. She translated and published, The Parlor Gardener: A Treatise on the House Culture of Ornamental Plants. Translated from the French and Adapted to American Use. Cornelia never married.
- Virginia Jefferson Randolph, who married Nicholas Trist.
- Mary Jefferson Randolph. She lived at Edge Hill and helped her sister-in-law, Jane, supervise the household of her brother Thomas Jefferson Randolph. She and her sister Cornelia also visited the houses of their siblings during times of sickness. She never married.
- James Madison Randolph was born at the President's House, now called the White House, on January 17, 1806.
- Benjamin Franklin Randolph, who married Sarah Champe "Sally" Carter a member of the Carter family of Virginia.
- Meriwether Lewis Randolph, who married Elizabeth Anderson Martin. After his death, Martin married Andrew Jackson Donelson, a nephew of President Andrew Jackson.
- Septimia Anne Randolph, who married Dr. David Scott Meikleham, becoming Septimia Randolph Meikleham.
- George Wythe Randolph, who briefly in 1862 was Secretary of War of the Confederate States of America, and who married Mary Elizabeth Adams Pope.
Life at Varina, Monticello, and Edge Hill (1790?–1800)
For ten years, she was the mistress of Monticello, building a social life that supported Jefferson's political life. Described as a "cosmopolitan salon in the rural Virginia Piedmont", father and daughter entertained visitors. She knew the most influential women in America, like Dolley Madison, and eight of the first nine presidents of country, excluding George Washington who she never met. She was an adept conversationalist, reading and writing in four languages. John Randolph of Roanoke said that she was "the sweetest woman of Virginia". Randolph was a rare southern woman who had significant authority in managing plantation as well as domestic activities. It was at Monticello that Jefferson found "that society where all is peace and harmony". Her role as hostess and mistress of the plantation helped to prepare Randolph for her role at the White House.
Thomas Jefferson sold the couple land for the Edge Hill plantation so that they could be nearer to him at Monticello in Albemarle County. The Randolphs built a house and resided there beginning in January 1800.