Wash Custis 1781–1857—[George Washington Parke Custis] Only son of Jacky and Eleanor Custis. Semiadopted by Martha and George at Jacky’s death. Married Mary Ann Fitzhugh; their daughter, Mary, married Robert E. Lee. (Thus most of the Washington family mementos ended up at Arlington.) Three of their sons were also generals in the Confederate Army.
Nan Dandridge—Daughter of Martha Dandridge Washington’s father, John Dandridge, by one of his slaves. She was employed in the Washington household at Mount Vernon and in 1780 gave birth to a child, William, by Jacky Custis.
“Citizen” Édouard Genêt 1763–1834—First minister sent by Revolutionary France to the U.S., he attempted to meddle in U.S. policy, commissioned American privateers to prey on British shipping, and tried to field, from the U.S., expeditions against France’s enemies. When, at Washington’s request, he was recalled, he defected to the U.S., married the daughter of the Governor of New York, and lived happily ever after.
Alexander Hamilton 1757–1804—[Hammy, Alec] Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury and much-loved surrogate son. Known for his financial brilliance, military and political ambition, wide-ranging amours, and verbal viciousness about his political opponents, a trait which eventually got him shot.
Uncle Hercules—The Washington family cook, trusted and much-favored slave who took the opportunity of being in the North to escape to freedom, waiting to do so until the Washingtons were on their way back to Mount Vernon for the final time in 1796.
Ona Judge b. 1778 (?)—[Oney] Martha’s beloved and trusted slave maidservant who escaped in Philadelphia to freedom in the North, to Martha’s speechless indignation.
Thomas Law—Married Eliza Custis in 1796. Was about twenty years older than she, an English India merchant who had at least three illegitimate sons by Indian women, one of whom he brought with him and sent to Harvard. He and Eliza were divorced in 1810.
Tobias Lear 1762 (?)–1816—George’s secretary and tutor to the Custis children. A New Hampshire man and Harvard graduate, he was introduced to Washington at the end of the Revolution. After the death of his first wife Pollie, he married Martha’s favorite niece Fanny (Bassett); upon Fanny’s death, he married another of Martha’s nieces, Fanny Henley. After Washington’s death, he organized the Presidential papers (and, it was rumored, selectively destroyed some that reflected badly on a quarrel between Washington and Thomas Jefferson): Jefferson appointed him First Consul to Saint-Domingue, and then Consul General to the Barbary States (where he made a great deal of money in bribes). Returning to the United States at the outbreak of the War of 1812, Lear, who suffered from headaches and depression, shot himself in 1816.
Pollie Lear 1770–1793—Tobias Lear’s childhood sweetheart from New Hampshire. After their marriage she acted as Martha’s secretary. She was one of the first casualties of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in the summer of 1793.
General Charles Lee 1731–1782—Continental general and soldier of fortune, he was one of Washington’s rivals for the position of Commander in Chief.
Lawrence Lewis—Son of George’s sister Betty; married Nelly Custis in 1799. A hypochondriac who later in life became dependent upon opiates.
James Monroe 1758–1831—Virginia planter, officer in the Continental Army, U.S. Senator, Governor of Virginia, fifth President of the United States. Was the third U.S. President to die on the Fourth of July.
Thomas Peter—Married Pattie Custis in 1795. Their house in Georgetown still stands.
Dr. David Stuart—Second husband of Jacky Custis’s widow Eleanor; father, by her, of many, many children.
George Washington 1732–1799—Virginia planter, Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the Revolution, and first President of the United States.
Martha (Dandridge) (Custis) Washington 1731–1802—[Patsie] First First Lady. Formerly married to Daniel Custis.
George Augustine Washington 1763–1793—[Augustine] Son of George’s brother Charles, George’s secretary and overseer of Mount Vernon, first husband of Martha’s niece Fanny. Died of tuberculosis.
George Steptoe Washington 1771–1809—[Steptoe] Son of George’s brother Sam, of Harewood Plantation. Married Lucy Payne, sister of Dolley Madison.
Harriot Washington b. 1777—Steptoe’s younger sister. At their father’s death, she was taken to live at Mount Vernon for a time, while her brothers were placed in boarding-school.
ABIGAIL
Abigail (Smith) Adams 1744–1818—Second First Lady, and mother of the sixth President of the U.S. Middle daughter of the minister of Weymouth, Massachusetts.
John Adams 1735–1826—Lawyer, member of the Continental Congress, Minister to France, and first U.S. Minister to England, second President of the United States.
Nabby (Adams) Smith 1765–1813—[Abigail] Daughter of John and Abigail Adams, married Colonel William Smith in England in 1786.
John Quincy Adams 1767–1848—[Johnny, Hercules] Oldest son of John and Abigail Adams, U.S. Minister to Berlin, helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent (which ended the War of 1812), sixth President of the United States, afterwards Representative from Massachusetts, and lawyer who defended the mutinous slaves of the slave-ship Amistad. In 1848 he suffered a stroke on the floor of the House of Representatives, and died in the Speaker’s Chamber shortly thereafter.
Charley Adams 1770–1800—Second son of John and Abigail Adams. He married the sister of his sister Nabby’s husband; died of acute alcoholism at the age of thirty.
Thomas Adams 1772–1832—Third son of John and Abigail Adams.
Jack Briesler—[John] Adams family servant. Married Abigail’s faithful maid, Esther Field.
Granny Susie (Susanna Boylston Adams) Hall 1709–1797—Married John Hall after the death of John Adams’s father in 1761. Lived long enough to see her son elected President; died about a month after his inauguration. Abigail described her as the mainstay of the entire family.
Peter Adams—John’s brother and next-door neighbor in Braintree. A third brother, Elihu, joined the Continental militia at the siege of Boston and died in camp.
Samuel Adams 1722–1803—John’s second cousin (both were great-grandsons of Joseph Adams of Braintree, Mass.); master propagandist, radical revolutionary, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and eventually, first Lieutenant-Governor and then Governor of Massachusetts.
Michael Boyne*—Sam Adams’s law clerk, Irish, anti-Federalist, and courted Abigail’s niece Louisa Smith.
Mary (Smith) Cranch 1741–1811—Older sister of Abigail Adams.
Esther Field—Abigail’s faithful maid. Became pregnant by Jack Briesler while in England, married him there, but bore and lost the baby on the voyage home. Briesler and Esther remained in the Adams family’s service throughout their lives.
Elbridge Gerry 1744–1814—John’s erratic and independent fellow delegate to the Continental Congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a lifelong supporter of John Adams. It was the Republican redistricting of Massachusetts, while Gerry was Governor, in 1812, to rearrange the state so as to have more Republican senators, that gave rise to the term “gerrymandering.”
John Hancock 1737–1793—Merchant, tea smuggler, patriot, first signer of the Declaration of Independence, president of the first Continental Congress, and later Governor of Massachusetts.
Jamey Prince—Free colored servant of the Adamses.
Betsey (Smith) Shaw (Peabody) 1750–1815—Younger sister of Abigail Adams. Her parson first husband ran a school in Haverhill, where the younger two Adams boys (Charley and Tommy) were boarded for the four years Abigail was with John in France and England.
Colonel William Smith 1755–1816—John’s secretary in the American Ministry in London, married John’s daughter Nabby in 1786.
Sarah Smith 1769–1828—Colonel Smith’s younger sister, who married Charley Adams in 1794.
William Smith 1746–1787—Abigail’s good-for-nothing younger brother.
Louisa Smith 1773–1857—Daug
hter of Abigail’s brother William, taken into the Adams household when John and Abigail returned from England, shortly after brother William’s death. She remained unmarried, as Abigail’s companion, until Abigail’s death in 1818.
SALLY
Aunt Martha Carr 1746–1811—Thomas Jefferson’s youngest sister, who married his best friend Dabney Carr in 1765. Carr died in 1773 leaving Martha with six children under the age of ten. Jefferson gave them all a home at Monticello, where Aunt Carr remained.
Peter Carr 1770 (?)–1815—One of Aunt Carr’s children, raised at Monticello. Much later in life, Patsy Jefferson claimed that Peter Carr was the father of Sally Hemings’s children, a claim disproved by DNA tests in 1998. He was, apparently, the father of a son by Sally’s sister Critta.
Sam Carr 1766 (?)–1855 (?)—Another of Aunt Carr’s sons, raised at Monticello.
Aunt Elizabeth Eppes—Younger half-sister of Jefferson’s wife Martha (Patty). She assumed care of Jefferson’s daughters Maria (Polly) and Lucie Elizabeth on the death of Patty Jefferson.
Jack (John Wayles) Eppes 1773–1823—Son of Aunt Eppes and Maria Jefferson’s childhood sweetheart and eventual husband; lived for a time with the Jefferson household and acted as Jefferson’s secretary. U.S. Representative for Virginia, U.S. Senator. After Maria’s death in 1804, Jack married Martha Jones; he also kept as a concubine Sally Hemings’s niece Betsie Hemings, who is buried beside him at Millbrook in Virginia. Martha Jones Eppes reportedly asked to be buried someplace else, and was.
Betty Hemings d. 1807—Mother of Sally Hemings by John Wayles, the father of Jefferson’s wife. Prior to becoming John Wayles’s concubine, she had three children by a fellow slave—Martin, Bett, and Mary (Mary was the mother of Jack Eppes’s concubine Betsie Hemings). She had six children by John Wayles: Robert, Jimmy, Peter (Pip), Critta, Sally, and Thenia. Later, at Monticello, she had a son (John) by one of the white carpenters there, and a daughter (Lucy) by a fellow slave. All the slaves manumitted by Thomas Jefferson were either Betty’s children or her grandchildren.
Sally Hemings 1773–1836—Daughter of Betty Hemings by John Wayles, the father of Jefferson’s wife; nursemaid to Jefferson’s daughter Maria (Polly) on her journey to join her father in France; maid to both the Jefferson daughters and later the servant in charge of Jefferson’s private quarters; Thomas Jefferson’s concubine for forty-two years and the mother of eight of his children including his only surviving sons. One of her grandsons fought as a Union soldier in the Civil War and died in the Confederate prison at Andersonville.
Jimmy Hemings 1765 (?)–1801—Son of Betty Hemings by John Wayles, taken to France with Jefferson in 1784 to be trained as a cook, returned with him to Virginia and was given his freedom, later traveled in Europe but died “tragically” (Jefferson’s word)—possibly from the effects of alcoholism, in 1801.
Peter Hemings—[Pip] Son of Betty Hemings by John Wayles, trained by Jimmy as his replacement as Monticello cook.
Critta Hemings—Daughter of Betty Hemings by John Wayles; housemaid at Monticello and mother of a son (Jamey) by Jefferson’s nephew Peter Carr.
Young Tom Hemings 1789–(?)—[Little Tom] Oldest son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
Beverly Hemings 1798–(?)—Second son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Reported to have gone to Washington, D.C., and “passed” for white.
Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826—Virginia planter, philosopher, architect, gardener, author (in committee with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin) of the Declaration of Independence, Minister to France, Secretary of State to George Washington, Vice President, and later third President of the United States.
Martha (Wayles) (Skelton) Jefferson 1748–1783—[Miss Patty] Formerly married (for twenty-two months) to Jefferson’s friend Bathurst Skelton, by whom she had a son, John, who died at age four. Jefferson loved her desperately and promised her on her deathbed that he would never marry again.
Patsy (Jefferson) Randolph 1772–1836—[Martha] Oldest daughter of Thomas Jefferson, and his lifelong companion. Married Thomas Randolph, Jr., by whom she had twelve children, and left him shortly after Jefferson’s death. Her youngest son was the first Secretary of War of the Confederate States of America.
Maria (Jefferson) Eppes 1778–1804—[Mary, Polly] Youngest surviving daughter of Thomas Jefferson. Married Jack Eppes by whom she had three children, died two months after the birth of the third.
Lamentation Hawkin*—Free black carter from Charlottesville; one of Sally’s admirers.
Lacey*—Patsy Jefferson Randolph’s maid.
Adrien Petit—Thomas Jefferson’s French valet. Originally employed by John Adams, he went to work for Jefferson when Adams went to England. He remained in France at the beginning of the French Revolution, but rejoined Jefferson at Monticello in 1791. I have been unable to ascertain whether the Monticello overseer from 1794 to 1797, Hugh Petit, was any relation.
Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. 1768–1828—Virginia planter, U.S. Representative of Virginia, twice elected Governor of Virginia despite severe depression and intermittent mental instability. Son of Jefferson’s old friend Thomas Mann Randolph, Sr., with whom Jefferson grew up. Randolph junior was Patsy Jefferson’s childhood friend, reencountered her in Paris in 1788, and married her in 1790, three months after her return to Virginia. He spent much of his life in debt. Even after he and Patsy were reconciled and he returned to Monticello to live, he had separate quarters from hers.
Anne Carey Randolph b. 1791—[Annie] First child of Patsy and Tom Randolph.
Thomas Jefferson Randolph b. 1793—[Jeff] Second child of Patsy and Tom Randolph. In 1795, when their father had a breakdown, Jeff and Annie were taken to Monticello to live for almost two years.
Ellen Wayles Randolph b. 1796—Second daughter of that name born to Patsy and Tom Randolph; the first, born in 1794, died in infancy.
Cornelia Jefferson Randolph b. 1799—Fourth child (third surviving) of Patsy and Tom Randolph.
DOLLEY
Lizzie (Collins) Lee b. 1768 (?)—Dolley’s best friend from the Quaker Meeting in Philadelphia; like Dolley, ejected from the Meeting for marrying out of her faith (to Congressman Richard Lee of Virginia). Remained Dolley’s best friend for life.
Andrew Jackson 1767–1845—First Congressman and later Senator from Tennessee, Judge of the Tennessee Supreme Court, and General of the United States forces defending New Orleans against an invading British force in January of 1815. Seventh President of the United States.
Rachel Jackson 1767–1828—Daughter of Virginia planter and politician John Donelson; later married to Lewis Robards (who seems to have been something of a nutcase), who initiated—but did not complete—divorce proceedings in 1790. Rachel married Andrew Jackson in 1791, in Spanish territory, under the impression that she was a free woman, which turned out not to be the case until 1793. Jackson and Rachel remarried in 1794—as soon as they legally could—and Jackson subsequently shot several people in duels for calling Rachel an adultress. This became a major target for mudslinging in the Presidential elections of 1824 and 1828.
Paul Jennings b. 1799—James Madison’s slave valet and writer of the first “behind-the-scenes” account of White House life. When in desperate financial straits in later life, Dolley sold Paul to Daniel Webster for a ridiculously low sum so that Paul would have the opportunity to easily work his way out of slavery.
Dolley (Payne) (Todd) Madison 1768–1849—Third and fourth First Lady of the United States, she acted as Thomas Jefferson’s hostess through much of his administration (except for one season when Patsy Jefferson Randolph was able to come to Washington). Formerly married to Philadelphia lawyer John Todd, Jr., by whom she had two sons, Payne and Willie.
James Madison, Jr. 1751–1836—[Jemmy] Virginia planter, father of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Representative of Virginia, Secretary of State for Thomas Jefferson, fourth President of the United States.
Old Colonel Madison 1723–1801—[James Madison, Sr.] Virginia planter
, father of President James Madison.
Mother Madison 1731–1829—[Nelly (Conway) Madison] President James Madison’s mother. She and the “Old Colonel” shared the house at Montpelier Plantation with James and Dolley.
John Payne 1740–1792—Dolley Madison’s father, formerly a small planter in Virginia, then a starch-maker in Philadelphia.
Molly (Coles) Payne 1745–1807—[Mary] Dolley Madison’s mother, a devout Quaker.
Anna (Payne) Cutts 1780–1832—Dolley’s favorite sister and lifelong companion. Her granddaughter Adele married Stephen Douglas.
Lucy (Payne) (Washington) Todd 1778–1846—Dolley’s younger sister, who married George Washington’s nephew (George) Steptoe Washington in 1793. After Steptoe’s death in 1809, she married Judge Thomas Todd.
“French John” (Jean-Pierre) Sioussat—Steward at the White House during Madison’s administration. Formerly steward to British Minister Anthony Merry; had studied for the priesthood, then been a sailor for a time.
Jamie Smith—James Madison’s free colored valet.
Sophie (Sparling) Hallam* b. 1765—Childhood friend of Dolley’s, daughter of a Virginia doctor and granddaughter of a Virginia planter, both Loyalists. During the final year of the Revolution she worked as a nurse, then fled with her mother to England and, later, France. Returned to Philadelphia, then to the newly built Federal City, as a dressmaker.
Sukey—Dolley’s enslaved maidservant.
John Todd, Jr. 1765–1793—Philadelphia lawyer and Quaker, first husband of Dolley Madison.
Payne Todd 1792–1852—Dolley Madison’s aptly named oldest son by John Todd: handsome, charming, much beloved, an alcoholic and a gambler.
Willie Todd 1793—Dolley Madison’s second child by John Todd, born during the yellow fever epidemic and died within a few weeks, on the same day as her husband.
James Todd—John Todd’s brother, who seems to have tried to push Dolley out of some or all of her inheritance from her husband and father-in-law. He eventually embezzled three thousand dollars from a Philadelphia bank and ran off to Georgia, never to be heard from again.
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