Martha Jefferson Randolph to Ann C. Morris, 27 May 1822
Martha Jefferson Randolph to Ann C. Morris
Poplar forest May 27th 1822
Dear Sister
I received Your last some weeks before I left Monticello, but I believe you are so much accustomed to my bad ways that you do not1 require a fresh apology for every letter—I have in vain tried to be punctual, but bad habits are not so easily conquered, particularly when the causes which first gave rise to them still exist, and strange to say we are as much interrupted by company here as at Monticello. the neighbourhood is really an excellent one, and it being known that my visits are short the neighbours all croud in to see us and entertain us before we return. the roads are so good and the country is so thickly setled around us that I can pay as many morning visits here as in town, and even drink tea with some of them and return without danger or difficulty.2 there are no less than three great establishments upon what was my land. so much for securityships, how we shall get through with them remains yet to be seen. the neighbours are very kind good people one of them told My father he had sewed a patch of early peas on purpose for him, in addition to what his own family would require, another gave him an asparagus bed in his garden, and fruits, fresh meats, and all the delicacies of the season they supply us with in profusion, knowing as they do, that this not being our principal home those things must be neglected in our absence. it is a beautiful and flourishing part of the country and their devotion to My dear father makes me very partial to it. you would be astonished to see the number of large brick houses many of them in a style of city refinement and luxury, the furniture equipages and grounds in a style uncommon in the country in this state. it is very agreable to see such appearances of prosperity and content in any part of our dear native state, which generaly speaking to my infinite sorrow I must acknowledge it, has been sinking in the scale of importance for many years back.3 the deplorable state of education is I have no doubt the cause of it. it is impossible to get a boy educated in the plainest way in Virginia at present. if the University prospers, as the Proffessors will all be brought from Europe and none but men of high science employed it may produce a change, but the effects will not be perceptible in our time I am afraid. the ensuing generations will profit by it. but most of my boys George excepted, and perhaps Lewis (who is thought to be a boy of better parts than common, & may derive some benefit from it) will be too old to go to school by the time it goes into operation the buildings would have been all finished this year but for the folly of the last assembly who actually stopped short at the last building the Library, and the workmen will be obliged to be discharged to be recalled after the next session, for there has been such a clamour about it that no doubt the next assembly will do every thing possible to repair as much as possible the mischief done by the folly and ignorance of the last. but reassembling workmen who must be brought from a distance; and in fact reorganising the whole business will occasion a great deal more loss of time than the year.4 you can have no conception of the beauty of the village. the two ranges of buildings on each side of a lawn flanked by the 10 large pavillions with their intermediate dormitories comunicating from one end to the other by an arcade in front of the dormitories and passing through the portico’s of the pavillions with their gardens offices yds & back, extending to a street on which the boarding houses with their gardens & & are built making 4 rows of buildings in the finest style of Ancient architecture. the Lawn between the two middle rows will have a Rotunda at one end in which the Library will be commanding the whole and this last building alone in[complete?] and after spending so much, as the finishing hand was about to be pu[t to it?] stopped short and refused to permit the library to be built in which a[ll the?] large lecturing rooms and the library will be. however next year I hope we shall retrieve our character. looking over this hurried scrawl I would really throw it in the fire if I knew when I should have time to write another but we set off home tomorrow and after our arrival collecting the family who are all dispersed, and as Papa terms it “opening shop” will ocupy my time pretty closely. adieu dear Nancy Ellen and Virginia who are with me join in love to you and dear Gouverneur, to whom Tim sends her remembrances5 Yours sincerely and affectionately
M Randolph
RC (PPAmP: Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family Papers); dateline at foot of text; damaged at seal; addressed: “Mrs Gouverneur Morris Morrisania Harlaem Post Office New York”; stamped; postmarked Lynchburg, 3 June.
Ann “Nancy” Cary Randolph Morris (1774–1837), Thomas Mann Randolph’s sister and Martha Jefferson Randolph’s sister-in-law, was born at Tuckahoe plantation in Goochland County. In 1791 she moved in with her sister Judith and the latter’s husband, Richard Randolph (1770–96), at Bizarre, their Cumberland County estate. Shortly thereafter rumors began to circulate that she had had an adulterous relationship with her brother-in-law, become pregnant, and given birth to an illegitimate child, who had then been murdered. Richard Randolph was tried for the alleged infanticide in Cumberland County in April 1793, with Martha Jefferson Randolph serving as a witness, and acquitted of all charges. Morris later claimed that the father was actually Richard Randolph’s brother Theodorick Bland Randolph (1771–92), to whom she had secretly become engaged before his death, and implied that the child had perished as a result of a miscarriage. Having moved north about 1807, she became acquainted with an old family friend, the statesman and diplomat Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816), and worked for him as a housekeeper at his Morrisania estate in Westchester County, New York. The couple married there on Christmas Day in 1809, and they had a son, also named Gouverneur, in 1813. Morris continued to live at Morrisania until her death (Jefferson Randolph Anderson, “Tuckahoe and the Tuckahoe Randolphs,” Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson’s America [2004]; New-York Evening Post, 27 Dec. 1809; DNA: RG 29, CS, N.Y., Westchester, 1820, 1830; New York Morning Herald, 30 May 1837).
45 [1937]: 72; , 25:621–2, 632–3; , 2:161–78; Cynthia A. Kierner,what was my land: the Randolphs had sold the roughly one thousand acres they owned adjacent to Poplar Forest in 1810 (Thomas Mann Randolph and Martha Jefferson Randolph’s Conveyance of Bedford County Land, [before 19 Feb. 1810], and note). By securityships Randolph presumably meant “suretyships.” tim: Septimia A. Randolph (Meikleham).
It had rained “morning till night or in showers” during a good bit of TJ’s May 1822 visit to Poplar Forest (Randolph to Nicholas P. Trist, 21 May 1822 [RC in NcU: NPT]). Just after his return to Monticello, TJ was still suffering “from a violent cold taken in Bedford,” although “his sore throat” had by this time “left him, and his hoarseness diminished a good deal” (Virginia J. Randolph [Trist] and Martha Jefferson Randolph to Nicholas P. Trist, 31 May 1822 [RC in DLC: NPT];
, 2:1386). With the assistance of Dr. Thomas G. Watkins, TJ had largely recovered by mid-June (Ellen W. Randolph [Coolidge] to Nicholas P. Trist, 16 June 1822 [RC in ViU: Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and the Jefferson Family]; Elizabeth Trist to Nicholas P. Trist, 9 July 1822 [RC in DLC: NPT]).On 1 Sept. 1822 Randolph wrote Nicholas P. Trist from Monticello that TJ’s role in restoring his native state, through the University of Virginia, “to her lost glory, is a cordial to my heart, and I hope will be a solace to his declining years. his old age as yet has few of the infirmities, and none of the decrepitude incident to his advanced years and I hope as his affairs become more prosperous, the natural chearfulness of his temper so important to health, and life even at his age, will return” (RC in NcU: NPT).
1. Manuscript: “no.”
2. Manuscript: “difficuty.”
3. Omitted period at right margin editorially supplied.
4. Omitted period at right margin editorially supplied.
5. Manuscript: “remembances.”
Index Entries
- asparagus search
- Coolidge, Ellen Wayles Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); visits Poplar Forest search
- education; in Va. search
- food; asparagus search
- food; peas search
- Jefferson, Thomas; Health; good health of search
- Jefferson, Thomas; Health; illness of search
- Meikleham, Septimia Anne Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); sends greetings search
- Morris, Ann Cary Randolph (Martha Jefferson Randolph’s sister-in-law; Gouverneur Morris’s wife); friendship with M. J. Randolph search
- Morris, Ann Cary Randolph (Martha Jefferson Randolph’s sister-in-law; Gouverneur Morris’s wife); identified search
- Morris, Ann Cary Randolph (Martha Jefferson Randolph’s sister-in-law; Gouverneur Morris’s wife); letter to, from M. J. Randolph search
- Morris, Gouverneur (1813–88) search
- peas; grown for TJ search
- Poplar Forest (TJ’s Bedford Co. estate); M. J. Randolph visits search
- Poplar Forest (TJ’s Bedford Co. estate); neighbors provide food to search
- Poplar Forest (TJ’s Bedford Co. estate); TJ returns from search
- Poplar Forest (TJ’s Bedford Co. estate); TJ’s grandchildren visit search
- Poplar Forest (TJ’s Bedford Co. estate); visitors to search
- Randolph, George Wythe (TJ’s grandson); education of search
- Randolph, Martha Jefferson (Patsy; TJ’s daughter; Thomas Mann Randolph’s wife); and N. P. Trist search
- Randolph, Martha Jefferson (Patsy; TJ’s daughter; Thomas Mann Randolph’s wife); and Poplar Forest neighborhood search
- Randolph, Martha Jefferson (Patsy; TJ’s daughter; Thomas Mann Randolph’s wife); and TJ’s health search
- Randolph, Martha Jefferson (Patsy; TJ’s daughter; Thomas Mann Randolph’s wife); and University of Virginia search
- Randolph, Martha Jefferson (Patsy; TJ’s daughter; Thomas Mann Randolph’s wife); children of search
- Randolph, Martha Jefferson (Patsy; TJ’s daughter; Thomas Mann Randolph’s wife); letter from, to A. C. Morris search
- Randolph, Martha Jefferson (Patsy; TJ’s daughter; Thomas Mann Randolph’s wife); visits Poplar Forest search
- Randolph, Meriwether Lewis (TJ’s grandson); education of search
- roads; in Va. search
- tea; drinking of search
- Trist, Nicholas Philip; correspondence with M. J. Randolph search
- Trist, Virginia Jefferson Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); visits Poplar Forest search
- Virginia, University of; Construction and Grounds; dormitory rooms search
- Virginia, University of; Construction and Grounds; gardens search
- Virginia, University of; Construction and Grounds; hotels search
- Virginia, University of; Construction and Grounds; pavilions search
- Virginia, University of; Construction and Grounds; Rotunda (library) search
- Virginia, University of; Construction and Grounds; workmen search
- Virginia, University of; Establishment; and General Assembly search
- Virginia; and education search
- Virginia; roads in search
- Watkins, Thomas G.; as physician search
- weather; rain search
- women; letters from; M. J. Randolph to A. C. Morris search
- women; letters to; A. C. Morris from M. J. Randolph search