Thomas Jefferson Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-22-02-0419

From Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, 25 December 1791

To Martha Jefferson Randolph

Philadelphia Dec. 25. 1791.

My Dear Daughter

Your’s of Nov. 29. and Mr. Randolph’s of Nov. 28. came to hand five days ago. They brought us the first news we had received from Monticello since we left it. A day or two after, Mr. Millar of Charlottesville arrived here and gave us information of a little later date, and particularly of Colo. Lewis and Mrs. Gilmer’s illness. His account of Mrs. Gilmer was alarming, and I am anxious to hear it’s issue. Our feelings on little Anne’s danger as well as her escape were greatly excited on all your accounts. These alarms and losses are the price parents pay for the pleasure they recieve from their children. I hope her future good health will spare you any more of them.—We are likely to get a post established through Columbia, Charlottesville, and Staunton, on a permanent footing, and consequently a more regular one. This I hope will remove all precariousness in the transportation of our letters. Tho I am afraid there is one kind of precariousness it will not remove; that in the writing of them, for you do not mention having written before the 29th. of Nov. tho’ we had then left Monticello near seven weeks: I have written every week regularly. Present me affectionately to Mr. Randolph. Kiss dear Anne for me, and believe me to be your’s with tender love.

Th: Jefferson

RC (NNP). PrC (CSmH). Accompanying this letter was one from Maria Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., saying: “You nor my sister niether mention’d what had become of the box that had our things in it. I am in great want of them particularly my music. I am to stay with Papa as long as the holydays last which is a week” (Maria Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., 25 Dec. 1791; RC in DLC). Neither Martha Jefferson Randolph’s letter of 29 Nov. 1791 nor her husband’s of 28 Nov. 1791, both recorded in SJL as received 22 Dec. 1791, has been found.

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