Jefferson's Daughters

by Catherine Kerrison

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  ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES

  AA Abigail Adams

  ACR Ann Cary Randolph

  EWE Elizabeth Wayles Eppes

  EWR Ellen Wayles Randolph

  EWRC Ellen Wayles (Randolph) Coolidge

  Family Letters The Family Letters of Thomas Jefferson, Edwin Morris Betts and James Adam Bear, Jr., eds. (Thomas Jefferson Foundation: University Press of Virginia, 1965)

  Farm Book Edwin Morris Betts, ed., Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book (Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1999)

  FB Farm Book, facsimile

  FLDA Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc., tjrs.monticello.org, 2017, Family Letters, Digital Archive

  ICJS International Center for Jefferson Studies

  JWE John Wayles Eppes

  MJE Maria Jefferson Eppes

  MJR Martha Jefferson Randolph

  NARA National Archives and Records Administration

  PGWDE Papers of George Washington, Digital Edition, Theodore J. Crackel, ed. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008)

  PTJDE J. Jefferson Looney and Barbara B. Oberg, eds. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Digital Edition (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008)

  SHC Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina

  TJ Thomas Jefferson

  TJMB James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)

  TJR Thomas Jefferson Randolph

  TMR Thomas Mann Randolph

  ViU Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections, University of Virginia

  VJRT Virginia Jefferson Randolph Trist

  INTRODUCTION

  “news of this change” Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, Autobiography (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904–1905), 135. Jefferson also reported this incident to John Jay, TJ to John Jay, 19 July 1789, PTJDE.

  CHAPTER 1: FIRST MONTICELLO

  Although petite, Martha carried Isaac Granger Jefferson, Memoirs of a Monticello Slave As Dictated to Charles Campbell In the 1840’s by Isaac, one of Thomas Jefferson’s Slaves (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1951), 19–20; Sarah Nicholas Randolph, The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), 43.

  “intelligence, with benevolence” Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1858), 1:33–34.

  Forced to abandon both their carriage “Reminiscences of Th[omas]. J[efferson]. by M[artha] R[andolph],” Burke, Randolph, and Trist Family Papers, Acc. 10487, University of Virginia (ViU).

  “They arrived late” Ibid.

  They broke out a bottle Randall, Jefferson, 1:45.

  “unchequered happiness” Thomas Jefferson, “Au
tobiography,” 27 July 1821, Thomas Jefferson Papers, LOC.

  He and Carr made a pact Randall, Jefferson, 1:82–83; Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1948) 1:161; Randolph, Domestic Life, 45.

  He named the new tract Malone, Jefferson, 1:17, 19.

  By the time he died Malone, Jefferson, 1:31.

  “first map of Virginia” Jefferson, Memoirs, quoted in Randolph, Domestic Life, 19.

  He later returned to Virginia Susan Kern, The Jeffersons at Shadwell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 44.

  “whose name associated itself” Randolph, Domestic Life, 21.

  Jane Randolph was proud Ibid., 18.

  From her, Thomas gained his appreciation Kern, Jeffersons at Shadwell, 19–20, 29–40, 54–68, 80.

  “To the south” Randolph, Domestic Life, 17–18.

  “the Atlantic might be seen” François La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels Through North America, Canada (London: R. Phillips, 1799).

  Slaves, many of them hired Malone, Jefferson, 1:143.

  The following year, the dining room Notes compiled for Monticello Foundation. 2/27/84 “Monticello Building Chronology,” copy at International Center for Jefferson Studies, Charlottesville, Virginia (ICJS).

  The completion of the dining room TJ to James Ogilvie, 20 February 1771, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Digital Edition, Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney, eds. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008), PTJDE.

  It is unlikely that these rooms “Monticello Building Chronology,” ICJS.

  “good breast of milk” TJ to Thomas Mann Randolph (TMR), 19 October 1792, PTJDE.

  Shortly thereafter, he bought Ursula’s husband Lucia Stanton, “Free Some Day: The African American Families of Monticello,” in “Those Who Labor for My Happiness”: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 118; FB, 8; Malone, Jefferson, 1:81.

  Well nourished, little Martha Stanton, “Free Some Day,” in Stanton, “Those Who Labor,” 118; Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 124.

  To meet their insatiable appetite See Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975); Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: Published for OIEAHC by University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

  The representatives, called burgesses William Waller Hening, Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws in Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in 1619, vols. 1 and 2. Transcribed for the Internet by Freddie L. Spradlin.

  “act on the casual killing of slaves” Hening, Statutes.

  Of course, many of the lawbreakers Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, Anxious Patriarchs, chapters 4 and 6.

  With the exception of a handful Virginia Scharff, The Women Jefferson Loved (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 104–5.

  Ursula was even worth Scharff, Women Jefferson Loved, 96.

  Her nursing efforts notwithstanding TJMB, 1:341.

  Instead the market crashed Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 57–76.

  To Martha he left eleven Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 72.

  “A Roll of the proper Slaves” FB, 5–19.

  “substitute for a wife” John Hartwell Cocke, Diaries, 23 April 1859, Cocke Family Papers, Acc. 640, ViU.

  Elizabeth Hemings was light-skinned Jefferson, Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, 10.

  In the relationship that would last This story is recounted in Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, chapter 2.

  White Virginia women Scharff, Women Jefferson Loved, 264.

  In his will John Wayle’s will, 15 April 1760, in Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine 6 (1924–1925): 269.

  She may have been relieved At her deathbed, Martha extracted a promise from Jefferson that he would never remarry, telling him that she “could not die happy if she thought her four children were ever to have a stepmother brought in over them.” Hamilton W. Pierson, Jefferson at Monticello: The Private Life of Thomas Jefferson from Entirely New Materials (1862; repr., Stratford, N.H.: Ayer Company, 1971), 107.

  Less than a year after Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: Bantam Books, 1974), 149–50.

  “I have never received” TJ to Francis Eppes, 7 November 1775, PTJDE.

  “is perfectly recover’d” Francis Eppes to TJ, 3 July 1776, PTJDE.

  The despairing parents never Jack McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder (New York: Henry Holt, 1988), 196–97.

  Martha endured far worse Darcy R. Fryer, “Mortality in the Colonial Period,” in Encyclopedia of American History: Colonization and Settlement, 1608 to 1760, eds. Billy G. Smith and Gary B. Nash, rev. ed., vol. 2 (New York: Facts on File, 2009).

  But her final pregnancy Scharff, Women Jefferson Loved, 145.

  Jefferson’s account book records Scharff, Women Jefferson Loved, 93–94; 108; 113; 116–17; 124–26; 144–45.

  But it is unclear who Scharff, Women Jefferson Loved, 130–31.

  Another period of silence follows TJMB, 1:513.

  “in ten minutes not a white man” Jefferson, Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, 7.

  Reunited with his family Scharff, Women Jefferson Loved, 138.

  “all my barns” TJ to Dr. William Gordon, 16 July 1788, PTJDE. Jefferson exaggerated; only eighteen slaves fled to the British, hoping for freedom. Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 48–49.

  Perhaps that omission indicates Cynthia A. Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 23, 28.

  “mild and amiable wife” Marquis de Chastellux, Travels in North America, in the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782 (Dublin: Colles, Moncrieffe, White, 1787), 2:45.

  Indeed, extended visits among Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, 23.

  Certainly it did not harbor It is also possible that Martha Jefferson suffered her 1776 miscarriage at Monticello, although I think it more likely that, since she was experiencing problems with that pregnancy, she would have relied on her sister’s care at The Forest and gone to Elk Hill for her recuperation the next week. Francis Eppes to TJ, 3 July 1776, PTJDE.

  Scholars have missed this point Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, 26–27; Scharff, Women Jefferson Loved, 284, 315.

  In any event, in this period Thomas Anburey, Travels through the Interior Parts of America vol. 2, (1789; repr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1923), 184; Catherine Kerrison, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).

  “in all respects” Jacob Rubseman, 1 December 1780, PTJDE.

  girls were taught Kerrison, Claiming the Pen, 14–15.

  “considerable powers of conversation” Quoted in Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, 27.

  “worth and abilities” TJ to James Madison, 26 November 1782, PTJDE.

  For his part, the Marquis Randolph, Domestic Life, 59.

  “during my Mother’s life” MJR, “Reminiscences of Th. J.,” Acc. 10487, ViU.

  “a plan of female education” TJ to Nathaniel Burwell, Monticello, 14 March 1818, Thomas Jefferson Papers, LOC.

  In other words, Jefferson described Jon Kukla, Mr. Jefferson’s Women (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 172–77.

  But it is also clear James Bear, “Jefferson’s Advice to His Children and Grandchildren on Their Reading” (pamphlet: Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia Tracy W. McGregor Library, 1967), 1.

  Martha Jefferson Carr Malone, Jefferson, 1:431.

  The arrival of Martha Jefferson Carr’s Cynthia Kierner emphasized Jefferson’s influence in this period. Cynthia Kierner, “Martha Jefferson and the American Revolution in Virgini
a,” in Children and Youth in a New Nation, ed. James Marten (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 30.

  “taken my final leave” TJ to Edmund Randolph, 16 September 1781, PTJDE.

  Ten-year-old Sam Carr TJ to Overton Carr, 16 March 1782. Overton Carr was the brother of the deceased Dabney Carr. PTJDE.

  Martha may well have sat Hunter Dickinson Farish, ed., Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773–1774, 5th ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993).

  “For the last four months” MJR, “Reminiscences of Th. J.,” Acc. 10487, ViU.

  “Mrs. Jefferson had been too ill” Sarah Nicholas Randolph, “Mrs. Thomas Mann Randolph,” in Worthy Women of Our First Century, eds. Agnes Irwin and Sarah Butler Wister (Philadelphia: Lippincott,1877), 10.

  “A moment before the closing scene” MJR, “Reminiscences of Th. J.,” Acc. 10487, ViU.

  “He kept to his room” Ibid.

  CHAPTER 2: TO PARIS

  Determined to remain in Virginia TJ to George Nicholas, 28 July 1781, PTJDE; TJ to Thomas McKean, 4 August 1781, PTJDE; TJ to Edmund Randolph, 16 September 1781, PTJDE.

  “All the reasons” Editors’ note, From Robert Livingston, Enclosing Jefferson’s Appointment as Peace Commissioner, 13 November 1782, PTJDE.

  Just as faithfully Randall, Jefferson, 1:384; Kierner, Martha Jefferson Randolph, 36–37; Jefferson, Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, 11; Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 137.

  After visiting them there TJMB, 1:523, 30 October 1782, “Pd. A guide to Eppington 6/8.”

  Familiar with the Suttons’ methods Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 215–21.

  “From the calculations” TJ to James Madison, 26 November 1782, PTJDE.

  “My only object now” TJ to Marquis de Chastellux, 26 November 1782, PTJDE.

  On December 2 TJMB, 1:524.

  It was not Robert’s first trip Gordon-Reed, Hemingses, 214.

  Jefferson and Martha then made TJ to [Anne-César] Chevalier de LaLuzerne, 7 February 1783, PTJDE; TJ to John Jay, 11 April 1783, PTJDE; Malone, Jefferson, 1:399.