Episode 3.3 The Death of Mrs. Jefferson

[Transcript]

Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.

Episode 3.3 The Death of Mrs. Jefferson

We left off last week in 1779. Thomas Jefferson had been selected as governor of Virginia, and he and Patty had moved into the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg with 7-year-old Patsy and 1-year-old Polly.

The governor’s term was only one year, and during Thomas’s first term, there were no major military engagements within Virginia. Patsy was able to enjoy her first experience of living in an actual town with actual society and a lot of things to do, unlike her sequestered life at Monticello. She was enrolled in dancing lessons at a local school, and undoubtedly was also learning to play various musical instruments, given how much both of her parents enjoyed music.

In the spring of 1780, the capital of Virginia was moved to Richmond, which was much less cosmopolitan than Williamsburg. The entire Jefferson family, including the Monticello slaves that had accompanied them to Williamsburg, relocated to a rented house in Richmond. 

Joining them were Thomas’s widowed sister Martha and her six children. So for those keeping track, that makes three Marthas living under the same roof: Martha “Patty” Jefferson, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson, and Martha Jefferson Carr. Good thing they had nicknames!

In June 1780, the Virginia legislature once again called on Thomas to serve another year-long term as governor, and he reluctantly agreed. Unfortunately, the war very much came to Virginia in his second term as governor.

On November 30, 1780, Patty gave birth in Richmond to another daughter, named Lucy Elizabeth. It seems that both Patty and the baby were in decent health reasonably soon after the birth, which was a good thing.

In January 1781, the British launched an attack on Richmond, prompting Thomas to send his wife and children to Tuckahoe, a nearby plantation owned by a friend of his, Thomas Mann Randolph. They didn’t stay there long though, removing themselves even further the next day to a place called Fine Creek, which was a property Thomas had inherited from his father.

In a decision that he would later be heartily criticized for, Thomas delayed calling in the militia to defend the capital until it was too late. The British entered Richmond on January 5, burning buildings, destroying records, and looting ships. The British troops also searched the Jefferson home, stealing wine, food, and grain, and taking 10 of the Jefferson slaves with them when they left. Interestingly, all 10 slaves ended up with the British in Yorktown, and they were captured by the Continental Army after their victory there in October 1781 and returned to enslavement at Monticello.

It’s not clear when, exactly, the family returned to Richmond, but they were probably there in April 1781 when baby Lucy Elizabeth died. Virginia was the hotspot of the war in 1781. The traitor Benedict Arnold and General Cornwallis were commanding large numbers of British troops. The Marquis de Lafayette had arrived with 1200 Continental and French troops to prevent the British from taking Richmond. The Virginia government decided to relocate to Charlottesville, which was further west and deeper into the interior of Virginia, which meant it was further away from the British fleet.

The Jefferson family was on the move throughout May and June 1781, trying to stay ahead of the British army. At various times they were at Tuckahoe, Monticello, Blenheim, Enniscorthy, and Poplar Forest.

On May 28, the Jeffersons were at Monticello and the legislature had reconvened in Charlottesville. Thomas’s term as governor was set to expire on June 2, but that date fell on a Saturday, so the legislature extended it to the following Monday when they planned to select his successor. 

On Sunday morning, they received word that British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton was moving toward Charlottesville, hoping to capture Thomas and the leaders of the Virginia legislature. Tarleton had a reputation as a blood-thirsty savage.

Receiving word of Tarleton’s approach just in the nick of time, the legislature decided to remove themselves to Staunton, which was another 30 miles west. Thomas loaded Patty and the children into a carriage and sent them away from Monticello, while giving instructions to the house slaves to hide the silver and any other valuables. After securing a number of his papers, Thomas jumped on a horse and escaped.

According to family lore, two slaves, Martin Hemings and one named Caesar, lowered the silver into a recess below the steps of one of the covered front porches. Caesar was below, and Martin was handing the silver down to him. The British rode up just as they were finishing, so Martin hastily put the planks of the steps back into place, sealing Caesar in with the silver. 

The British threatened to shoot Martin if he didn’t tell them where Thomas was, but he refused, and inexplicably, they didn’t shoot him. They didn’t even burn down Monticello, which is what everyone feared would happen. They left Monticello intact, and Caesar was rescued from his hiding place beneath the stairs the following day.

As an example of just how sanguine people could be about life-threatening events, Thomas’s notation in his diary for June 4 said merely, “British horse came to Monticello.” Understatement of the year.

The family plantation at Elk Hill was not as fortunate as Monticello. Cornwallis’s troops burned all the barns there, destroyed the crops of corn and tobacco, stole all the horses that were fit for military service, and slit the throats of the baby horses. They also stole all the sheep, cattle, and hogs, and buried the fences, leaving the entire farm a wasteland.

The Jefferson family reconnected at Poplar Forest, which was the most remote of the plantations they owned. They hadn’t been there in eight years, and there was no real house on the property, just some barns, slave cabins, and a two-room building where the overseer lived. Despite the lack of amenities, the family stayed here for the next five to six weeks, knowing it was exceedingly unlikely that the British would follow them there. 

On June 7, 1781, the scattered legislators reconvened and selected a new governor, at the same time resolving that an official inquiry be made into Thomas’s conduct as governor, specifically his failure to call in the militia to defend Richmond. In the end, he was never officially censured, but it was a public embarrassment, nonetheless.

While at Poplar Forest, Thomas began making plans for a house on the property and also worked on what would be the only book he published, Notes on the State of Virginia.

The drama of 1781 came to an end in October when the British were soundly defeated at Yorktown. Although the war would drag on for another two years, that was the last major engagement. Presumably the family had returned to Monticello by then. There’s no specific mention of when they returned or whether they went directly from Poplar Forest back to Monticello or if they stopped at other places along the way.

Congress wanted Thomas to join the commission to negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain, but he declined, writing to Edmond Randolph, “I have retired to my farm, my family and books from which I think nothing will ever more separate me.”

By the spring of 1782, construction on the grand house at Monticello was mostly complete, at least for the moment. Patty gave birth to her final child on May 8, 1782. It was another girl, and they named her Lucy Elizabeth, just like their previous child who had died the year before. It was not uncommon at this time for parents to re-use the names of deceased children, as morbid as that sounds to the modern listener.

Patty Jefferson never recovered from the birth of this child. It was her seventh childbirth in 15 years. Four of those children had died. The previous year and a half had been extremely stressful, what with the war, the attacks on Richmond, the constant fleeing from the British, and the fairly recent death of the first Lucy Elizabeth. 

To top all that off, the second Lucy Elizabeth was an astounding 16 pounds at birth. That’s an absolutely enormous baby, and has been taken by later historians as evidence that Patty may have had diabetes, one symptom of which is progressively larger babies. Patty may also have been suffering from tuberculosis, because she was spitting up blood as she got closer to death.

Twelve days after the birth, Thomas wrote to James Monroe, “Mrs. Jefferson has added another daughter to our family. She has ever since and still continues very dangerously ill.” It seems that Patty possibly never left her bed after the birth of the second Lucy Elizabeth, turning over the management of Monticello to the trusted slaves.

Thomas remained at Patty’s side throughout the summer. He had been elected against his wishes as a delegate to the Virginia legislature, but he refused to serve and refused to even travel to Richmond to formally request to be excused.

He had a small study adjacent to Patty’s bedroom, and he confined himself to that room whenever Patty was sleeping. He continued to work on his Notes on the State of Virginia. When Patty was awake, he was at her bedside, reading to her from her favorite books. Thomas’s sister Martha Carr was there to help him nurse Patty, as was Patty’s sister Elizabeth Eppes.

Betty Hemings, who had been taking care of Patty since she was born and her own mother died in the process, was also omnipresent throughout Patty’s illness. By September 6, it was clear that the end was near for Patty. 

Betty brought baby Lucy in so that Patty could hold her one last time. Four-year-old Polly and ten-year-old Patsy each came in to see their mother. Presumably Patty had some parting words for both of them, but we have no idea what they could have been. Patty also had some instructions related to the girls that she relayed to Thomas, and she asked him to promise that he would never remarry. 

This was an unusual request, because Thomas was only 39, and we know it was common for both widows and widowers to remarry, sometimes multiple times. Most historians take this deathbed request as evidence that Patty did not have a good relationship with either of her two stepmothers.

Shortly before noon on Friday, September 6, 1782, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson died at Monticello at the age of 33. Years later, her eldest daughter, Patsy, wrote this account of her mother’s death and her father’s reaction:

“As a nurse no female ever had more tenderness nor anxiety. He nursed my poor mother in turn with aunt Carr and her own sister—sitting up with her and administering her medicines and drink to the last. For four months that she lingered he was never out of calling; when not at her bedside, he was writing in a small room which opened immediately at the head of her bed. 

A moment before the closing scene, he was led from the room in a state of insensibility by his sister, Mrs. Carr, who, with great difficulty, got him into the library, where he fainted, and remained so long insensible that they feared he would never revive. The scene that followed I did not witness, but the violence of his emotion, when, almost by stealth, I entered his room by night, to this day I dare not describe to myself.

He kept his room three weeks, and I was never a moment from his side. He walked almost incessantly night and day, only lying down occasionally, when nature was completely exhausted, on a pallet that had been brought in during his long fainting-fit. My aunts remained constantly with him for some weeks. I do not remember how many. 

When at last he left his room, he rode out, and from that time he was incessantly on horseback, rambling about the mountain, in the least frequented roads, and just as often through the woods. In those melancholy rambles I was his constant companion—a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief, the remembrance of which has consecrated particular scenes of that lost home beyond the power of time to obliterate.”

Patty was buried at Monticello, probably the day after she died. Thomas wrote the epitaph for her gravestone, “To the memory of Martha Jefferson, daughter of John Wayles: born October 19th 1748 intermarried with Thomas Jefferson January 1st 1772: torn from him by death September 6, 1782. This monument of his love is inscribed, If in the house of Hades men forget their dead yet will I even there remember you, dear companion.”

That last sentence is a quote from the Iliad, and it was inscribed in the original Greek. In his diary, Thomas merely wrote, “On September 6, 1782, My dear wife died this day at 11:45 a.m.”

And that brings us to the end of Martha Jefferson, the elder. If I ended season 3 here, it would have been a short season, indeed. But we’re not ending here. Now we pick up the thread with Martha Jefferson, the younger. She lives on for many more years, so we still have a lot of ground to cover.

Before we move on though, I feel like we should try to recap Patty Jefferson’s life. We certainly didn’t learn as much about her as we did Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. Some of that is a function of Thomas destroying almost every single letter she ever wrote, but some of it is just the fact that she wasn’t as well known as Martha Washington and Abigail Adams.

Patty Jefferson never got to serve as America’s First Lady. The “people” never got to see her or know her. She never left Virginia and didn’t leave an imprint on history the way the first two First Ladies did.

I think it’s reasonably safe to conclude that Patty Jefferson must have been an intelligent woman. We know Thomas Jefferson was an intelligent man, and it’s hard to imagine that he could have been so deeply in love with someone who wasn’t intelligent and well read.

We can probably also assume that she would have made a gracious First Lady. She was brought up in Virginia society to be a lady, just like Martha Washington. She would have been familiar with the requirements of the role of First Lady—dining and conversing with members of Congress and foreign dignitaries and their wives, hosting receptions and holiday celebrations, being a sounding board and source of comfort for her husband. Patty could have done all those things without trying too hard.

Whether she would have enjoyed being First Lady is a different question. Obviously Thomas valued Patty’s privacy; otherwise, he wouldn’t have burned all her correspondence. But whether Patty valued her privacy to the same extent is impossible to know. She did serve as the First Lady of Virginia for two years, and the first year was one of the rare times when she traveled to the location where Thomas was working and serving the public.

But there’s no comprehensive record of her service as First Lady of Virginia. No detailed recaps of the social events she hosted or the causes she supported. We can only assume that there would have been more of a record of Patty Jefferson if she had lived long enough to be First Lady of America.

But then there’s the flip side: what if Patty Jefferson hadn’t died and Thomas had never become president at all? What if he really had retired to Monticello with his family and his books? My best guess is that never would have happened, even if Patty hadn’t died. 

Think about how many times George Washington and John Adams wrote that they wanted nothing more than to retire to a private life and return to their farms. Practically every time they wrote it, they turned around and decided to remain in public service. Even though he didn’t fight in the Revolutionary War and barely served in Congress, Jefferson was as much of a patriot as Washington and Adams. He was as dedicated to public service as they were, even if he didn’t quite admit it to himself.

I really do think that things would have played out much the same way even if Patty had lived. Abigail Adams never in a million years thought she would live in France and England, but she did. Maybe Patty Jefferson would have lived in Paris with Thomas while he was serving as minister there. It seems preposterous that a woman who had never left Virginia would move to Paris, but then again Abigail had never left Massachusetts before she sailed for England. 

There’s no doubt that the ten years Thomas was married to Patty were his most prolific as a writer. In those ten years he wrote A Summary View of the Rights of British America, the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia legal code, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the legislation that created the University of Virginia, and Notes on the State of Virginia. Every notable thing Thomas Jefferson ever wrote was written during his marriage to Patty. If she had lived, who knows what else he would have written?

But she didn’t live. We can’t go back and re-write history. And despite the lack of detailed information about Patty Jefferson’s life, I think we learned a few things, and I hope you feel like you know her better than you did before we started. And with that, we move on to Patty’s eldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson.

As Cynthia Kierner put it in her book, Martha Jefferson Randolph: Daughter of Monticello, “The death of Martha Jefferson marked a turning point in the life of ten-year-old Patsy, who purposefully became her father’s sole companion, while her aunts cared for Polly and the infant Lucy Elizabeth and attended to domestic matters at Monticello.”

One of the first things Thomas did after recovering from the immediate shock of Patty’s death was to have his children inoculated against smallpox. He had been inoculated in 1766, but the rest of the family never had been. I don’t think we need yet another description of smallpox inoculation. We’ve been through this several times now.

In November 1782, about two months after Patty’s death and while the girls were recovering from inoculation, Thomas finally accepted Congress’s appointment to the peace commission negotiating with the British from Paris. You’ll recall from season 2 that the commission also consisted of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, both of whom were in Paris already, as well as John Jay, who was minister to Spain, and Henry Laurens, who had recently been released from imprisonment in the Tower of London.

Just a year prior, Thomas had written that he intended to retire to Monticello to his family, farm, and books. But now he wrote “the catastrophe [has] wiped away all my plans. I shall lose no time…preparing for my departure.” He told an acquaintance that the death of his wife was “the only circumstance which could have brought me to Europe.”

He expected to travel first to Philadelphia and then on to Paris. And he planned to take Patsy with him. Polly and Lucy were too young to travel, especially overseas, so Thomas left them in the care of Patty’s sister Elizabeth Eppes and her husband Francis Eppes at their plantation called Eppington.

As Cynthia Kiener writes, “Leaving behind her sisters, aunts, and other relatives in Virginia, Patsy went off with her father to begin what would be the most unusual phase of her life. At a time when families were large and children grew up surrounded by siblings and legions of nearby cousins, Patsy left familiar people and places to accompany Jefferson when his public business took him away from the Old Dominion. She would experience life in the wider world, first in Philadelphia and then in Paris, though most of her contemporaries, even among the gentry, never ventured beyond Virginia.”

Thomas and Patsy set out for Philadelphia on December 19, 1782, accompanied by Bob Hemings, one of Betty Hemings’s sons supposedly fathered by John Wayles. Once again, Thomas Jefferson, captain of the understatement, failed to capture the significance of this by noting in his diary merely, “Set out from Monticello for Philadelphia, France, etc.”

They traveled in a borrowed four-wheeled carriage over poor roads that were full of ruts and holes. They had to cross four rivers to get to Philadelphia—the Potomac, Patapsco, Susquehanna, and Schuylkill—relying on ferries to get them to the other side. In all, it took them eight days to reach Philadelphia, which wasn’t too bad, considering that it was December.

When they arrived in Philadelphia on December 27, they stayed at the Indian Queen, which was the largest public house in the city. The next day they took rooms in a private boardinghouse on the corner of Fifth and Market Streets. James Madison had stayed there during his time in Congress, and he likely recommended it to Thomas.

Thomas and Patsy expected to be in Philadelphia only for a short stay before leaving for Paris, but their departure was delayed, and they ended up being there for months. We don’t have a lot of information about what they did, other than shopping. Thomas kept detailed records of his purchases, which included a chess board and men, boots, shoes, shoe buckles, gloves, and books. He also bought various unspecified “sundries for Patsy.” His sister Lucy had also given him money to purchase items that were more easily obtained in Philadelphia than in Virginia, which had no large cities.

Patsy became friends with a woman named Elizabeth House Trist, who was 20 years older than her, but became a lifelong friend and maternal figure. Mrs. Trist also knew James Madison, who was a close friend of Thomas’s. Thomas and Elizabeth Trist corresponded throughout their lives, and she was a valuable resource in their early days in Philadelphia. She helped arrange lessons for Patsy when it became clear that they would be in the city longer than anticipated.

In late January 1783, Thomas and Patsy left Philadelphia for Baltimore where they planned to board a ship for Paris, but after waiting a month, they gave up and returned to Philadelphia. In April, Congress informed Thomas that he was no longer needed in Paris. The preliminary peace treaty had been signed in November the previous year without his involvement. So Thomas and Patsy settled their bill at the boardinghouse and headed home to Virginia.

They stopped at Tuckahoe along the way to see Thomas’s friend, Thomas Mann Randolph, then they stopped home at Monticello before going to Eppington to reunite with Polly and Lucy, who was just about to turn one.

They weren’t in Virginia long though, because in August, Thomas received word that the Virginia legislature had named him as a delegate to Congress. He and Patsy prepared to return to Philadelphia, and he relied on Elizabeth Trist to help him find a suitable private home where Patsy could live and be educated. 

They arrived in Philadelphia in November 1783 and stayed at the same boardinghouse for a few weeks before Patsy went to live with a Mrs. Hopkinson. Mary Johnson Hopkinson was a widow with several interesting connections. Her husband had collaborated with Benjamin Franklin on his famous electrical experiments, and her eldest son Francis had been a member of the Continental Congress when the Declaration of Independence was approved.

Thomas hired a French dancing master to instruct Patsy, as well as an English organist and harpsichordist to be her music tutor. Her drawing teacher was a Swiss-born artist and engraver, and her French tutor was a native Frenchman. Philadelphia was a very cosmopolitan city, indeed.

Thomas did not stay long in Philadelphia because Congress was meeting in Annapolis at that time. You may recall from season 1 that after the final peace treaty with Britain was signed, George Washington resigned his military commission and delivered his farewell address to Congress in Annapolis before returning to Mount Vernon.

While Thomas was in Annapolis, he relied on Mrs. Hopkinson and other various friends in Philadelphia to look after Patsy. She didn’t see him for nearly six months, but he instructed her to write to him weekly and let him know of her progress. In his own words, her improvement in music, dancing, and the rest would “render you more worthy of my love.” Not exactly the picture of a doting father.

Thomas also drew up a daily schedule for Patsy to follow:

“From 8 to 10 o’clock practice music

From 10 to 1 dance one day and draw another

From 1 to 2 draw on the day you dance, write a letter the next day

From 3 to 4 read French

From 4 to 5 exercise yourself in music

From 5 till bedtime read English, write, etc.”

You’ll notice there’s no time in there specifically for meals, socializing, or doing anything remotely fun. I’ll remind you that Patsy was 11 years old. He also didn’t specify any time for sewing or needlework, which most girls would have spent time on, nor did he allow time for prayer or reading the Bible.

Thomas also instructed Patsy to “let your clothes be clean, whole, and properly put on…nothing is so disgusting to our sex as a want of cleanliness and delicacy in yours.” Furthermore, she was to write regularly to her aunts in Virginia and “take care that you never spell a word wrong [because] it produces great praise to a lady to spell well.” The man had high standards, especially considering that spelling had yet to be standardized.

Thomas also provided a list of books he thought she should read. He wrote to a friend, “The plan of reading I have prepared for her is considerably different from what I think would be most proper for her sex in any other country than America. … [T]he chance that in marriage she will draw a blockhead I calculate at about fourteen to one.” This meant that Patsy’s future children would depend on her for their education, so she better have a good education as a foundation. He also wanted Patsy to read scientific works, but decided that it could wait until they were together again.

Patsy seems to have done well in dancing, music, and French, but not so much in drawing. Her drawing instructor eventually quit, citing “the Drudgery of teaching those who have no Capacity.”

Patsy also did not heed her father’s instruction to write to him every week. He only managed to send her eight letters in the six months they were apart, and it appears that she sent him an equal number. I say “it appears” because we don’t actually have the letters, just notations in Thomas’s diary that he received a letter from Patsy on a given date. It’s unclear whether the letters were lost or misplaced or Thomas purposely destroyed them because they didn’t fit with the narrative of his family life that he wanted to craft.

Thomas returned to Philadelphia in May 1784. Congress had appointed him to the commission charged with negotiating a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. He and Patsy were finally going to Paris.

Next week, we’ll travel with the two Jeffersons from Philadelphia to Boston, and then on to Paris.

Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me, and the music is by Matthew Dull. Please remember to share the podcast with anyone you know who would be interested in learning more about American history. Thanks!