Victoire Laporte, boardinghouse keeper, came to Charlottesville from Augusta County in 1819 with her husband, Peter Laporte, to run a French-language boardinghouse for students of Gerard E. Stack’s Charlottesville Academy. When the school closed in 1820, Peter Laporte left Charlottesville to obtain patents for his inventions in Washington, D.C. During her husband’s absence TJ supplied Victoire Laporte with one hundred dollars to buy groceries and other necessities for herself and her family. By 1830 Peter Laporte was living alone in Georgetown, D.C., and Victoire Laporte had moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. From at least 1836 until 1846 she operated a boardinghouse there (MB description begins James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1355, 1370, 1375; DNA: RG 29, CS, D.C., Georgetown, 1830, Ohio, Cincinnati, 1830, 1840; J. H. Woodruff, The Cincinnati Directory Advertiser for the years 1836–7 [1836], 101; Robinson & Jones’ Cincinnati Directory, for 1846 [1846], 240).

A letter from Laporte to TJ of 28 Oct. 1820, the address cover only of which has been found, is recorded in SJL as received from Charlottesville the day it was written (RC in DLC; with PoC of TJ to Lafayette, 12 Apr. 1821, on verso; addressed: “Thomas Gafferson eqr Monntaello Albamorl Va.”