Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello by Cynthia A. Kierner

Author:Cynthia A. Kierner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2012-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

Governor’s Mansion. Thomas Mann Randolph was the fourth Virginia governor to live in this splendid house, which was completed in 1813. Martha lived here with her husband during the winter of 1820–21. The governor’s house, shown here in an 1865 photo, is situated on Richmond’s Capitol Square, within sight of the neoclassical state capitol that Jefferson designed. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

A season in Richmond or Washington was supposed to give young people—and especially marriageable young women—opportunities to acquire and master social graces and, in the process, find prospective spouses. Whatever progress the Randolph sisters made toward that first objective, the time they spent at balls, parties, and other genteel social gatherings brought them no lasting romantic attachments. The fact that neither their father nor their grandfather could provide them with property must have deterred at least some potential suitors. Maybe, as Peggy Nicholas suggested, the many years they spent cloistered with their family and books at Monticello made them less adept in social situations than some of their competitors.

As it turned out, two of Martha’s middle daughters married men they met at Monticello. In the spring of 1824, Joseph Coolidge, a Harvard graduate who had recently completed a grand tour of Europe, visited Monticello to meet Jefferson and fell in love with his granddaughter Ellen. They were married a year later. By then, Virginia and Nicholas Trist, who had remained steadfastly devoted to each other, had also wed. Both marriages pleased Martha. Although Nicholas had little property and could not support a wife and family, Martha loved him like a son. Nicholas’s decision to study law with Jefferson and serve as the old man’s private secretary ensured Virginia’s continuing residence at Monticello. Ellen, by contrast, took the more traditional path, relocating to her husband’s home state of Massachusetts once she married. Martha admired Joseph’s intelligence and his good manners. She rejoiced that Ellen, at age twenty-nine, had found such a loving and prosperous husband.24

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