1From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 11 April 1790 (Jefferson Papers)
Where are you, my dear Maria? How do you do? How are you occupied? Write me a letter by the first post and answer me all these questions. Tell me whether you see the sun rise every day? How many pages a-day you read in Don Quixot ? How far you are advanced in him? Whether you repeat a Grammar lesson every day? What else you read? How many hours a day you sew? Whether you have an opportunity of...
2From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 2 May 1790 (Jefferson Papers)
I wrote to you three weeks ago, and have not yet received an answer. I hope however that one is on the way and that I shall receive it by the first post. I think it very long to have been absent from Virginia two months and not to have received a line either from yourself, your sister or Mr. Randolph, and I am very uneasy at it. As I write once a week to one or the other of you in turn, if you...
3From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 23 May 1790 (Jefferson Papers)
I was glad to receive your letter of April 25. because I had been near two months without hearing from any of you. I hope you will now always write immediately on receiving a letter from me. Your last told me what you were not doing: that you were not reading Don Quixot, not applying to your music. I hope your next will tell me what you are doing. Tell your Uncle that the President after...
4From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 13 June 1790 (Jefferson Papers)
I have recieved your letter of May 23. which was in answer to mine of May 2. but I wrote you also on the 23d. of May, so that you still owe me an answer to that, which I hope is now on the road. In matters of correspondence as well as of money you must never be in debt. I am much pleased with the account you give me of your occupations, and the making the pudding is as good an article of them...
5From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 4 July 1790 (Jefferson Papers)
I have written you, my dear Maria, four letters since I have been here, and I have received from you only two. You owe me two then, and the present will make three. This is a kind of debt I will not give up. You may ask how I will help myself? By petitioning your aunt, as soon as you receive a letter to make you go without your dinner till you have answered it. How goes on the Spanish? How...
6From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 25 July 1790 (Jefferson Papers)
No letter from you yet, my dear Maria. You now owe me four, and I insist on you writing me one every week till you shall have paid the debt. I write to you every three weeks, and I think you have quite as little to do as I have, so that I may expect letter for letter. The account stands at present as follows. Maria Jefferson Dr. to Th: Jefferson Cr. April 11. To letter of this date 1 April 25....
7From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 7 December 1790 (Jefferson Papers)
This week I write to you, and if you answer my letter as soon as you recieve it, and send it to Colo. Bell at Charlottesville I shall recieve it the day before I write to you again, which will be three weeks hence: and this I shall expect you to do always so that by the correspondence of Mr. Randolph, your sister and yourself I may hear from home once a week. Mr. Randolph’s letter from...
8From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 5 January 179[1] (Jefferson Papers)
I did not write to you, my dear Poll, the last week, because I was really angry at recieving no letter. I have now been near nine weeks from home, and have never had a scrip of a pen, when by the regularity of the post, I might recieve your letters as frequently and as exactly as if I were at Charlottesville. I ascribed it at first to indolence, but the affection must be weak which is so long...
9From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 16 February 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
At length I have recieved, a letter from you. As the spell is now broke, I hope you will continue to write every three weeks. Observe I do not admit the excuse you make of not writing because your sister had not written the week before: let each write their own week without regard to what others do, or do not do.—I congratulate you my dear aunt on your new title. I hope you pay a great deal of...
10From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 9 March 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
I am happy to have at length a letter of yours to answer, for that which you wrote to me Feb. 13. came to hand Feb. 28. I hope our correspondence will now be more regular, that you will be no more lazy, and I no more in the growls on that account. On the 27th. of February I saw blackbirds and Robinredbreasts and on the 7th. of this month I heard frogs for the first time this year. Have you...
11From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 31 March 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
I am happy to have a letter of yours to answer. That of Mar. 6. came to my hands on the 24th. By the bye you never acknowlege the receipt of my letters, nor tell me on what day they came to hand. I presume that by this time you have received the two dressing tables with marble tops. I give one of them to your sister and the other to you. Mine is here with the top broke in two. Mr. Randolph’s...
12From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 24 April 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
I have received my dear Maria, your letter of Mar. 26. I find I have counted too much on you as a Botanical and zoological correspondent: for I undertook to affirm here that the fruit was not killed in Virginia, because I had a young daughter there who was in that kind of correspondence with me, and who I was sure would have mentioned it if it had been so. However I shall go on communicating...
13From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 8 May 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
Your letter of Apr. 18. came to hand on the 30th. That of May 1. I recieved last night. By the stage which carries this letter I send you 12. yards of striped nankeen of the pattern inclosed. It is addressed to the care of Mr. Brown merchant in Richmond, and will arrive there with this letter. There are no stuffs here of the kind you sent. April 30. the lilac blossomed. May 4. the gelder rose,...
14IV. Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 30 May 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
I did not expect to write to you again till my return to Philada., but as I think always of you, so I avail myself of every moment to tell you so which a life of business will permit. Such a moment is now offered while passing this lake and it’s border, on which we have just landed, has furnished the means which the want of paper would otherwise have denied me. I write to you on the bark of...
15From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 26 June 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
I hope you have recieved the letter I wrote you from lake George, and that you have well fixed in your own mind the geography of that lake, and of the whole of my tour, so as to be able to give me a good account of it when I shall see you. On my return here, I found your letter of May 29. giving me the information it is always so pleasing to me to recieve that you are all well. Would to god I...
16From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 31 July 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
The last letter I have from you, my dear Maria, was of the 29th. of May. which is 9 weeks ago. Those which you ought to have written the 19th. of June and 10th. of July would have reached me before this if they had been written.—I mentioned in my letter of the last week to your sister that I had sent off some stores to Richmond which I should be glad to have carried to Monticello in the course...
17From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 21 August 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
Your letter of July 10. is the last news I have from Monticello. The time of my setting out for that place is now fixed to some time in the first week of September, so that I hope to be there between the 10th. and 15th. My horse is still in such a condition as to give little hopes of his living: so that I expect to be under a necessity of buying one when I come to Virginia as I informed Mr....
18From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 18 October 1791 (Jefferson Papers)
Mr. Giles carries your trunk to Baltimore where he will see you tonight. Take out of it whatever you may want before you get to Philadelphia and leave the trunk with Mr. Grant and I will call on him for it. The weather is so bad that perhaps I may not be able to overtake you in the morning as I had hoped: but I shall if possible. Adieu my dear Maria. Yours affectionately, RC ( ViU );...
19From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, [30 May 1792] (Jefferson Papers)
Ask, my dear, of Mrs. Pine, what would be the price of Mr. Madison’s picture, and let me know when you come over to-day. RC (Florence P. Kennedy, Washington, D.C., 1962); addressed: “Miss Maria Jefferson.” On 2 June TJ “Pd. Mrs. Pine for Mr. Madison’s picture 37.33,” painted by her late husband, Robert Edge Pine ( Bear and Stanton, Memorandum Books James A. Bear, Jr., and Lucia C. Stanton,...
20From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 17 November 1793 (Jefferson Papers)
No letter yet from my dear Maria, who is so fond of writing, so punctual in her correspondencies! I enjoin as a penalty that the next be written in French.—Now for news. The fever is entirely vanished from Philadelphia. Not a single person has taken infection since the great rains about the 1st. of the month, and those who had it before are either dead or recovered. All the inhabitants who had...
21From Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson, 15 December 1793 (Jefferson Papers)
I should have written to you the last Sunday in turn, but business required my allotting your turn to Mr. Randolph, and putting off writing to you till this day. I have now received yours and your sister’s letters of Nov. 27. and 28. I agree that Watson shall make the writing desk for you.—I called the other day on Mrs. Fullerton, and there saw your friend Sally Cropper. She went up to Trenton...