James and Dolley Madison

by Bruce Chadwick

  A small village of slave homes stretched away from the home to the south, along with farm sheds, a building for the outdoor kitchen, smokehouses, and fruit orchards. To the southeast was a formal garden, designed by Frenchman Monsieur Charles Bizet, where the Madisons and visitors often strolled. The garden was started just after Madison's first inauguration and was completed shortly afterward.

  Inside, visitors found numerous changes to the home from before Madison's elevation to the highest office in the land. In his first-floor parlor, where guests were greeted once they entered the mansion through an interior lobby, the president had installed a number of white, marble busts of famous people and had hung large portraits of Napoleon and other people, which were purchased by Payne Todd in 1816 on a trip to Europe. More large portraits hung in a second parlor behind the main parlor that was often turned into a bedroom for guests. The floors of the hallways were continually washed and waxed by servants. Visitors were surprised at Madison's collection of busts and portraits. The walls of one entire first-floor hallway were lined with portraits of famous people. Anna Thornton thanked him for “displaying a taste for the arts which is rarely to be found in such retired and remote situations.”4

  Several new fireplaces had been built in the home to provide more heat for the expanded structure. The new, wooden dining-room table was large enough for a dozen people to sit around it, and more tables were set up in the room and in the hall when more guests were there. There were splashes of red included in the color scheme to reflect Dolley's favorite hue.5

  Upstairs, Madison turned the flat rooftops of each of his two new wings into outdoor terraces. Jefferson designed the Chinese railings, painted white, that stood on the perimeters of the terraces. Both rooftop terraces were used for parties in spring and summer, and guests were urged to spend time there. Anyone standing or sitting on the terrace had a view of the tobacco fields and the mountains in the distance.

  The south terrace also overlooked a second street of new slaves homes, built around the time that Madison was first inaugurated. The large, rectangular houses were designed by Madison as duplexes, with living space upstairs and downstairs. All of the twenty-three domestic slaves who worked with Dolley in the house lived there because it was close by. Madison had architectural suggestions from Thomas Jefferson in the renovations of the main house in both 1797 and 1808–1809. He used some of his ideas and discarded others because he wanted a presidential home, but not a second Monticello. Madison employed two design and construction chiefs, James Dinsmore and John Nielson, to complete the renovations in 1808 and 1809; and he paid for them both with his $25,000 salary as president and out of his own funds.

  The home was the centerpiece of his farm. Montpelier sat in the Piedmont area of western Virginia and was on Davidson soil, special, rich, natural dirt that was considered to be among the best in America for raising crops.

  Getting to Montpelier had always been a chore. It was a tiring and tedious three-day trip from Washington by wagon, carriage, or horseback. All of that ended when Madison was elected president, though. Many families in Virginia invited the Madisons to stay at their houses on the way to Montpelier, and there were festivals for them from the capital all the way to Orange Court House. In the summer of 1811, for example, the First Couple left Washington, accompanied by militia troops, to the bridge that led to Alexandria. Virginia troops met them and escorted them over the bridge in a parade attended by hundreds of well-wishers. That night there was a dinner and a ball in Alexandria to honor them. Then, on the way to Montpelier, they stayed two nights at the homes of a wealthy friend and were lavishly entertained on both evenings. The Madisons always traveled in style; it was good to be the president.6

  Visitors to Montpelier found the president and his wife far more relaxed there than in Washington. “It was five o'clock when we arrived and met at the door by Mr. M who led us into the dining room where some gentlemen were still smoking cigars and drinking wine. The [stress of each day was] dispelled by the cheering smile of Mr. Madison. Then Mrs. Madison entered the moment afterwards and after embracing took my hand,” wrote Margaret Bayard Smith.

  Later, Mrs. Madison took Smith to her room upstairs. She sat on the sofa. Dolley pulled her up by her hands and placed her on the wide, comfortable bed, then jumped up in the air and landed on the bed next to her, laughing heartily. “Wine, ice, punch and delightful pineapples were immediately brought [to us]. No restraint, no ceremony. Hospitality is the presiding genius of this house and Mrs. M is kindness personified,” Smith added.7

  Friends could not wait to get there. Anna Thornton thought that on all her visits to Montpelier. “We shall turn our backs on this dull tho’ great city [Washington] and greet with joy our beloved friends beyond the mountains,” she wrote.8

  Montpelier was always filled to capacity with relatives and visitors. The average number of people staying in the home when the Madisons were in residence ranged from twenty to twenty-six, and sometimes more. Madison was one of seven remaining children, and each of them had large families. Most of the children were old enough to travel by the time he was president, and Madison welcomed them whenever they arrived. James Madison's nieces and nephews stayed with him for days and weeks on end. He supported many of them with gifts of horses and clothing, gave them loans, and even paid for the college tuitions of some. One was nephew Robert Madison. The president paid his way through Dickinson College, in Pennsylvania. Madison's favorite was niece Nelly Conway Willis, who continued to live at her plantation just a few miles from Montpelier after her husband died. She had fifteen slaves whom her father gave her in his will and brought some of them to Montpelier when she visited. She was often at the Madison estate, and the president rode to her home frequently. Neighbors nicknamed a large tree in front of her home “the president's tree” because Madison always tied his horse up there when he visited. Also, his sister Sarah gave birth to nine children and visited Montpelier frequently, bringing all of them with her.

  Dolley had three sisters and three brothers. The two older brothers drifted away from her, but her three sisters and John Payne remained close. Anna, her husband, and their children visited often, and so did Lucy after her husband, Judge Todd, died in 1826. The Madison and Todd relatives always brought their children to Montpelier; there were often more than a dozen kids in the house at any one time. Madison's marriage gave him a stepson, Payne, and a fourteen-year-old sister-in-law, Anna, who had lived with them until her wedding. Dolley's other sisters lived with them at Montpelier for long periods of time, too. In addition to this, they all lived in his private home in Washington, and in the White House, for years, bringing their own children back with them to stay for weeks and months at a time. When those children became adults, they then brought their own kids to the Madisons’ homes. The president also had the company of the children of his friends and relatives in Orange County.

  Dolley loved the children and never complained of the noise they made. “I should not have known that they were here,” she said to a friend. “At this moment, we have only [twenty-three] in the house. We have house rooms aplenty.” She always encouraged friends and relatives to bring their children with them on visits.9

  As a child, President Madison had been part of a very large family with twelve children. Montpelier was a small home then, with only a few bedrooms. They were quite crowded with the twelve noisy children. The dozen siblings played together, rode horses together, and visited friends and relatives with their family. It was a large and happy family.10 He had always wanted a family like that when he became an adult. Madison was a man who, until the age of forty-three, had no prospects of a family, and then a limited one due to his apparent sterility. But through circumstance, and to his joy, he wound up with one of the largest and most boisterous families in the country. The president's Montpelier was a home teeming with loud and energetic children racing through the halls and across the lawns. They loved their uncle, who, with his wife, did everything he could for them. The
ones who gave him grief, such as Payne and brother-in-law John, the president put up with and assisted whenever he could, never complaining about them to outsiders.

  Dolley's brother John, who remained an alcoholic all of his life, lived a few miles away with his eight children on a farm that Madison helped him purchase. His meager income from farming was augmented by a salary the president paid him to help with paperwork. Even though he lived nearby, John was often late in arriving at Montpelier and often disappeared for weeks, as he had done over the years. In the late summer of 1811, Dolley complained to her sister that “John was to follow us directly but three weeks gone by & he has not come. You may guess at my anxiety. He set out from Washington several days ago for Orange but he lingers, I know not where.”11

  After John died, three of his children moved to Montpelier permanently, and the other five lived there much of the year. They were all at Montpelier often during Madison's presidency. Dolley's youngest sister, Mary, married John Jackson, a Republican congressman. She died in 1808, and her daughter, Mary, began to spend a lot of time at Montpelier. She practically lived there permanently after 1825. Sister Anna and her children were usually at Montpelier each summer, as her husband, Richard Cutts, struggled through one financial crisis after another throughout the war and afterward. He lost his investments in a shipping company in the war, along with $5,000 Madison had loaned him. He owed a significant amount of money, went bankrupt, and even spent time in debtors’ prison. He nearly lost his home in Washington, but the Madisons, with a loan, saved it for him.

  The Madisons were constantly visited at Montpelier by senators, congressmen, governors, and other officials while he was president. That's why he expanded the house. Ironically, during some years as president, he spent only a week on Montpelier because presidential business was so pressing. When he did travel to his plantation, he used it as the “summer White House,” working from his office, his bedroom, the front porch, the backyard, or the library, which grew even larger with books that visitors gave him as gifts. Dolley hosted parties for all, whether relatives, friends, or politicians. The most important people in the country dined side by side with her nieces and nephews and friends from Orange Court House. One summer, she had ninety guests for dinner; extra tables were set up in different rooms of the home. In another summer, the Madisons had nearly fifty unexpected visitors one night and had to feed and entertain them. Sometimes at large barbecues or parties the president and his wife had so many guests, and so few cots in the house, that they set up tents in the fields in front of the mansion, where the guests stayed overnight.

  “At these feasts, the woods were alive with carriages, horses, servants and children—all went—often more than one hundred guests…happy at the prospect of…pleasure and hilarity; the laugh with hearty good will, the jest after the crops, farm topics and politics…. If not too late, these meetings were terminated by a dance,” wrote one guest.12

  People did not enjoy visiting Montpelier just because of all the people there whom they would meet. They liked to go because Montpelier was one of the most opulently decorated homes in America. Madison's father had seen to that. Colonel Madison was convinced that a person's station in life was determined not only by business success but also by how he lived. He purchased expensive dishes and glasses for his home, laid imported Turkish rugs down on the floors, and hung expensive paintings on the walls. The house that President Madison grew up in was a well-appointed home already. When his father died and Dolley took over the interior decoration of Montpelier, it became an even classier abode. Madison left the interior work to his wife and concentrated on the physical renovations and expansion of the building. He did such a good job that friend James Monroe and other Virginians asked him for architectural advice in the construction of their own homes.13

  Renovating the home, whether in the 1790s or in 1809, took up a considerable portion of Madison's time. In 1798, he wrote James Monroe that he was “in the vortex of house building in its most hurried stage” and that “I have met with some mortifying delays in finishing off the last shaft of the chimneys and in setting about the plastering job. The prospect is at present flattering, and I shall have no time in letting you know that we are ready to welcome Mrs. M and yourself to our habitation.”14

  The house was always full of people and loud with noise. The Madisons did not have enough bedrooms for everybody, so, like many Virginians, they put cotlike beds and bunk beds in the main hallways upstairs and downstairs, and in many other rooms, so guests could sleep. On oppressively hot nights, they kept all the doors and windows open to allow fresh air to drift through the mansion. Servants would remove the beds, quickly, in the morning when everyone rose for the day, and the house would return to its normal look.

  The relatives and guests kept Dolley busy. “The house is now full of family,” she wrote in the summer of 1811. “William Madison, his wife and children & [others]. I have scarcely a moment to breath [sic]. They are here for some days…. We have Mr. & Mrs. Bassett two days, expect Mr. & Mrs. Eustis, Mrs. Page & family every day & all those people, with Miss Hornerzill of Richmond, are here but Mitchell is with us. We have four additional chambers. My head is turned.”15

  During Madison's presidency, Montpelier was the place to be, socially, when the Madisons were in residence there, and everybody who visited the Madisons told friends back in Washington what they discussed and did for activities. Madison's friends in the capital all knew what was going on at Montpelier and how busy it was. Mrs. Anna Thornton wrote Dolley in the summer of 1809, for instance, that “I understand that you are overwhelmed with company.”16

  Dolley received all of the Washington news from guests who visited her, and she sent out dozens of letters each summer to relatives and friends apprising them on the events of her life. She let friends in one state know what their mutual friends in another were doing, who was courting and marrying whom, and, from 1812 to 1815, how hard her husband was working on the problems of the war.

  Their social life at Montpelier was less elegant than it was in Washington, but the parties were just as frequent and the dinners just as crowded. The isolation of Montpelier did not bother James and Dolley; they visited Jefferson at Monticello, spent time in Richmond, and visited friends in Orange Court House and other villages.17 One thing they insisted on was the continuation of their impressive dinner parties. Dinner at Montpelier was more casual than at the White House, but servants brought endless trays of food that included cakes, bread, cold meat, and pastries. After dinner, the men smoked cigars on the porch and the women chatted in the parlor. Servants carrying lamps through the hallways took guests to their rooms around nine or ten in the evening, and the house quieted down. Servants and maids acted as quasi hosts for the Madisons when guests were there, taking them to their bedrooms, waking them in the morning, and bringing them downstairs for a lavish breakfast.18

  During their summers at Montpelier, the Madisons caught up on local news that they did not get during the ten months they spent in Washington and discussed mutual topics, such as oppressive heat and snow-filled winters. In the summer of 1812, the Madisons exchanged stories with friends in Orange County about the series of earthquakes that had rolled through Washington, DC, and central Virginia the previous winter and shook houses and scared residents.19

  By the time Madison's second term ended, the home, with its gorgeous new wings, was as complete as it would ever be. Now, by 1816, it was a finished estate with many stables, slave quarters, outbuildings, gardens, and lawns. When Anna Thornton visited in 1802, she wrote in her diary that “the grounds are susceptible to great improvements and when those he contemplated are executed, it will be a handsome place and approach very much in similarity to some of the elegant seats in England.”20

  By 1816, it was.

  The Montpelier that Madison returned to during his two terms as president had grown into one of the most successful plantations in Virginia, and all of that success was due to Madison's skills as a farmer.
By the early 1790s, he had taken over the administration of the farm from his father, who was then in his eighties. Madison read all the books on farming he could and solicited advice from Jefferson. Throughout the 1790s, Montpelier bloomed as a plantation. Madison, who oversaw an average of forty to fifty slaves a year then, had his “hands” (as he called the men and women in bondage) plow long, straight rows for planting and brought in water from nearby creeks that was run into and out of his field with small dams. Slaves built new outbuildings, tobacco warehouses, corn houses, and stables. Each year or two, they worked with Madison in opening up new fields for cultivation. He grew fruit orchards wherever he could. With the help of his overseers, Madison studied the different parcels of land and knew which were in the “Davidson soil” tract and which were not. The president knew how to irrigate the fields from streams that ran down from the mountains around his farms. And he had maps on which he wrote where underground limestone deposits were located. Showing all the skills of an accomplished farmer, Madison wrote Jefferson with satisfaction in the 1790s, “On one of two little farms I own, which I have just surveyed, the crop is not sensibly injured by either the rot or the rust and will yield 30 or 40 per cent more than would be a good crop in ordinary years.”21

  He not only kept accurate notes on farm business and plantings while at Montpelier but also remembered everything when he was away in Philadelphia as a congressman. For example, he and his father had planned an orchard they would start with some nuts Jefferson had brought to Montpelier on one of his visits. “It does not seem necessary to decide now on the spot for the Pecan trees…. They can be easily removed at any time. I have not fixed on any particular no. of apple trees. I would choose a pretty large orchard if to be had and of the sort you think best. If a sufficient number cannot be got for Black Meadow [a farm] and Sawney's [another farm], I would be glad to have them divided.”22