Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Martha Jefferson and the Women of Monticello

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Thomas Jefferson’s wife Martha died nearly twenty years before he took office, yet history still lists her as an official First Lady. Jefferson never remarried, but two very important women supported him through his years as a widower in ways few people know. Their stories were already intertwined long before Jefferson entered the picture, and their influence would leave a mark on the presidency itself. Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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No matter how you say it. Start your day with freshly cracked scrambled eggs loaded on a buttery, flaky croissant. Try it with maple brown butter today at Tim's, at participating restaurants in Canada for limited time. Hello, friends, welcome. We've been talking about America's First Ladies and the people and events that defied their times. Today we're going to learn just a little about the women who were an indispensable part of Thomas Jefferson's life, his political career, and eventually his presidency. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.

The first part of today's story may feel eerily familiar if you've already listened to my episode on Martha Washington, because not so surprisingly, the last lives and customs of young women from wealthy families in colonial America didn't differ all that much from each other, nor did their names, just to make sure things stay extra super confusing for another couple of podcast episodes, because Thomas Jefferson's wife was also named Martha. In 1720, Martha Wales Skelton was 22 years old, though no portraits of her were painted during her lifetime, she was said by acquaintances to be a natural beauty with large hazel eyes, a slender build, and rich aubbered hair.

She was a widow. Four years earlier at age 18, she had married another man, another man who was a young and promising lawyer, but he died after an accident when he was only 24. Martha was a mother. At the time of her husband's death, Martha had to be a woman. had given birth to a son who she named John. But sadly, the boy died a few years after his father around the age of three. She was also a very wealthy woman. Martha was born into wealth. She was born at The Forest, which was a large plantation near Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1748. Her parents were

John Wales and his first of three wives, also named, you guessed it, Mark. Martha, although she wasn't called Patsy. Patsy's mother was from an extremely prominent family in Virginia at the time. But she died when Martha was only three weeks old. Martha's father, John, remarried two more times, though. And in the end, he outlived all of his wives and eventually took on a mistress, an enslaved woman in the household whose name was Elizabeth Hemings, with whom he father. six more children.

Because Martha grew up with wealth and prominence, she was likely educated at home by traveling tutors in literature, poetry, French, and religion. It's also probable that she received training in music because we know that she was an accomplished pianist. When she was old enough, Martha probably took on a managerial role at The Forest. She was the oldest of her siblings and she outlived her stepmothers. She would have been entrusted with learning how to run a plantation and its many enslaved workers making household staples like soap and candles and butter and overseeing social events at the main house.

Which means that by the time Martha was a 22-year-old widow, beautiful, fabulously wealthy from birth, and also from inheriting her husband's plantation and land, she would have been a total catch for anyone who came courting. Enter Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was Martha's third cousin, and the two may have bonded over their shared love of music and literature. They were married on New Year's Day in 1772 at the forest plantation, and Jefferson took Martha straight away to his new home in Charlottesville, Virginia, some 130 miles away. The home was called Monticello, which means little mountain. in Italian. Jefferson would spend most of his adult life designing, changing, and working on Monticello, his grand home that sat at the top of a little Virginia mountain. He was quoted as saying architecture is my delight and putting up and pulling down one of my favorite amusements. When he had Martha reached Monticello in a January snowstorm, the house was silent. There was no fire in the hearth, no food prepared, and everyone was asleep. At the late hour, they toasted to their new, only partially furnished home with a bit of wine they had left from their journey, and had song and merriment and laughter.

At Monticello in the couple's early years, they would often make music together. Jefferson played the violin and Martha accompanied him on a beautiful piano forte. that her husband had ordered for her. An officer who visited the Jeffersons at Monticello noted, you will find in the house an elegant harpsichord piano forte and some violence. The latter, he performs well upon himself. The former, his lady, touches very skillfully, and who is, in all respects, a very agreeable, sensible, and accomplished lady.

As part of Martha's dowry, Thomas received, much of her inherited property, including the Elk Hill plantation that she had lived at when she was previously married, plus the estates enslaved people, many of whom moved to Monticello to complete the construction of their residence, landscaping the estate's several thousand acres. They would also go on to cultivate Thomas Jefferson's land into a successful tobacco and wheat plantation. When Martha's father died, Martha and Thomas Jefferson also inherited the Wales's land and enslaved people. Betty Hemmings, John Wales's mistress and the mother of Martha Jefferson's half-siblings,

was moved to Monticello with her children. So Martha had inherited land from her previous husband, and now she had inherited land from her father, and she also was part of the Monticello estate. This is a very, very wealthy family. Not only did they inherit land, they also inherited many, many enslaved people to work the land. One biographer described Thomas Jefferson's marriage to Martha

as the happiest time of his life. Over their 10 years of marriage, Martha gave birth to six children. Of the six that were born, only two daughters, Patsy and Polly, lived past their early years. Two more daughters, Jane and Lucy, as well as an unnamed son, died as babies. And her last child, another daughter named Lucy, died at the age of two from Wupinkoff. I mentioned her death in my episode about Abigail Adams. And yes, Thomas Jefferson and Martha Jefferson had two daughters named Lucy Elizabeth. It wasn't that uncommon of a practice.

Martha had very difficult pregnancies, though. Each one left her in poorer health, as did about with smallpox and untreated diabetes. The physical strain of being pregnant weakened Martha so much that Thomas Jefferson put a hold on many of his political aspirations. While he served in the Virginia House of Delegates and then as the governor of Virginia, he traveled to and from Philadelphia to help draft the Declaration of Independence, he declined an appointment by the Continental Congress as a commissioner to France. Shortly before her death, in September of 1782, Martha copied the following lines from a novel writing, Time weighs too fast every letter.

I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of windy day, never to return more. Everything presses on. You know, therapy can be life-changing, but honestly, finding the right thing. therapist has always felt like a full-time job. Scheduling, insurance, availability, it can be exhausting. But not with Rula. Rula makes mental health care easy, affordable, and genuinely supportive. They partner with over 10,000 licensed therapists and psychiatrists across the country, helping you find someone who really fits your needs. And the best part, they stick with you

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Follow and listen to the Hot Bench podcast on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Pumpkin is here at Starbucks and we're making it just the way you like. crafted with real ingredients like our real pumpkin sauce and rich espresso sprinkled with pumpkin spice. It's full of real flavors you'll keep coming back for. Made just for you at Starbucks. This transcribed verse is one of just four documents in Martha's own handwriting that we have today. After her death, Jefferson burned all of the correspondence he had between himself and Martha. The incomplete question, quotation on Martha's paper was finished by Jefferson himself, transforming the page into a

bittersweet love letter between husband and wife. He added, and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, every absence which follows it are preludes to that eternal separation, which we are shortly to make. The exact cause of Martha's death is not recorded, but Jefferson wrote a letter to his friend, and mentioned that she had never recovered from the birth of her last child. Lucy Elizabeth was born on May 8th, and Martha died in September. Jefferson wrote about his grief and said, A single event wiped away all my plans and left me a blank, which I have not the spirits to fill up.

While she was alive, Martha, perhaps remembering her own childhood with stepmothers, asked Jefferson to never remarry because she could not bear the thought of someone else raising her children. It was a wish he would honor. Shortly after Martha's death, the Continental Congress again asked Jefferson to go to France to assist the work being done by John Adams and Ben Franklin. This time, Jefferson agreed. He set sail in the summer of 1784, and I referenced Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's voyage to France in my previous episode about Abigail Adams. But while he was in Paris, Jefferson met a woman named Maria Cosway. Maria was an accomplished Italian-English musician, and she was also married. They spent time in each other's company every day over a period of six weeks, and Jefferson was in love.

We're not sure just how romantic their relationship got. Jefferson was a fair bit more discreet than Benjamin Franklin was. But eventually Maria returned to London with her husband. And after that, back to Italy, the pair exchanged letters for the rest of their lives. It was to Maria that Jefferson wrote one of his most famous letters, a 4,000-word love letter called the Dialogue, of the head versus the heart. It was mailed off to Maria in October of 1786.

In it, Jefferson describes his head, the practical, struggling with his heart, the romantic. For reference, the Declaration of Independence, of which Jefferson was the primary writer, is under 1,500 words. That is how much he enjoyed the company of Married Maria. Fun fact, though, it was through Maria Causeway that Thomas Jefferson met Angelica Schuyler while she was in Paris. Of course, Angelica Schuyler married. Her married last name was Church. And while Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were rivals, Thomas Jefferson took a liking to Angelica. And they remained friends, also writing letters to each other for many years. Thomas Jefferson often signed them.

Your affectionate friend, Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson had set sail for Paris, he brought his oldest daughter, Patsy, with him. And then as I mentioned in my previous episode, he left his two remaining daughters, Polly and Lucy, back with family. And it was during that time that his second daughter, Lucy, passed away. And while Jefferson was pining after Maria, he decided to send for his younger daughter, Polly. An accompanying Polly on the voyage across the sea was Sally Hemmings, the enslaved maid who was the youngest half-sister of his late wife, Martha. Like Martha, Sally spent her childhood at her father's estate,

the forest. She was born in 1773, the youngest child of John Wales, who was Martha's father, and Elizabeth Hemmings, the woman he enslaved. She, like her mother and siblings before her, was born into enslavement. And so, of course, while Martha and Sally were raised in the same homestead, their upbringings were completely different. Sally was not educated by European tutors. She was doing domestic work in the home, even as a child. Sally's mother, Elizabeth, who went by Betty,

was the daughter of an African-born enslaved woman and a British sea captain, which made Betty half-African and half-white, and Sally, who had a white father, was a quarter African. But regardless of their white paternity, children who were born to enslaved women inherited their mother's status as slaves. By the time Jefferson sent for his daughter, Polly, Sally Hemings, was a team. teenager. She was somewhere between the ages of 14 and 16 years old. Letters between Jefferson and Abigail Adams showed that Jefferson originally arranged for Polly to be accompanied by her nurse, who was an older enslaved woman. But Adams wrote to Jefferson saying, the old nurse whom you expected to have attended her was sick and unable to come. Sally Hemming spent two years in Paris with the Jefferson family.

In France, she was a free person because slavery was illegal. She earned a wage for her services to the family. Jefferson paid her $2 a month. In contrast, his French servants were paid a wage of around $8 to $12 a month. Most historians agree that it was while in France that Jefferson and Sally Hemings began a sexual relationship. But sexual relationship is a tricky term to use when we're talking about consent between a 44-year-old white master and a 15-year-old enslaved girl. Even if Sally did consent to the relationship, their age difference and the power dynamics

between them would have influenced that consent. Sally didn't have the liberty to assert or vocalize her non-consent. And in 1789, Sally agreed to return to enslavement at Monticello only after negotiating with Jefferson. Her son Madison Hemings later said this. In France, she was free. Well, if she returned to Virginia, she would be re-enslaved. So she refused to return with him. To induce her to do so, he promised her extraordinary privileges and made a solemn pledge. that her children should be freed at the age of 21 years. Consequence of his promises on which she implicitly relied, she returned with him to Virginia.

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Mitsubishi Motors. Drive your ambition. So Sally Hemings had her freedom in France, and Thomas Jefferson made her extraordinary promises in an effort to get her to be re-enslaved in Virginia. Over the next 32 years, Sally had six children, raising four of them to adulthood, a son named Beverly, a daughter named Harriet, a son named Madison, and a son named Estin, all believed to have been fathered by Thomas. Jefferson. And while Sally never accompanied Jefferson to the White House, three of their children were born during his eight years as president. At that time, it was accepted that wealthy plantation owners often had sexual relationships with their enslaved women, although white society expected that these relationships would be kept discreet. So in 1802, when a newspaper ran a story

about President Jefferson's relationship with Sally and the fact that he had children out of wedlock, it was up to his daughter, Patsy, to take charge of her father's image. While in Paris with her father and Sally, Patsy had grown tall and slim with red hair and freckles. She was a cultured woman, well-educated and experienced in the arts,

and in 1789, she was brought out into Paris society at the court of Louis XIV. Like her mother before her, Patsy was an accomplished dancer, harpsichord player, and horsewoman. In February of 1790, Patsy returned to Virginia and married Thomas Randolph. Thomas was her second cousin, and he had recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh. She moved into Randolph's Virginia plantation Edge Hill, which was near Monticello where she spent her childhood. The couple had 12 children together, with only one daughter dying in infancy. That was very unusual. Patsy, unlike her mother, did not have trouble with her pregnancies and remained healthy after each one.

Patsy took the education of her children very seriously, establishing a school at Edgehill to educate them. She was also very devoted to her father and would make frequent visits to Monticello with her children. By the time Jefferson was elected President of the United States in 1801, he had been a widower for almost 20 years. For a while, he often invited Dolly Madison, Secretary of State James Madison's young wife, to serve as his escort. Officially, Martha Jefferson's name is on the White House's list of First Ladies. But it was Patsy who supported her father in many official and unofficial ways, during his eight years in office. She was not present for either of his inaugurations in the new capital city of Washington, D.C. in 1801

and 1805, but she made two lengthy visits, one in the winter of 1802 and the second in the winter of 1806. During her second visit to the White House, she gave birth on January 17, 1806, to her eighth child, James Madison. Randolph. James was the first baby to be born in the White House, and now it seems a little absurd that we would have babies born in the White House, but that was very much the case during this time in history. Patsy didn't live continuously at the White House while her father was president. Her husband did, though. Thomas Randolph and her sister Polly's husband, Jack, lived with Thomas Jefferson in the White House while they both served their terms as congressmen from Virginia. During her father's presidency and throughout his retirement, Patsy acted as his

hostess. When the newspaper scandal about his illegitimate children broke, Patsy's presence and the presence of her young children helped to reinforce Jefferson's image as a devoted family man with a stable domestic life. They went out together to be seen, often to religious services held in the hull of Congress. And it worked. Jefferson held on to his popularity and was elected to a second term. After her father retired from public life in 1809, Patsy and her family moved to Monticello. She stayed on as mistress of Monticello, even while her husband Thomas served in Richmond as governor of Virginia. The two Thomases, Thomas Randolph and Thomas Jefferson, kept up a friendly, close relationship during the early years of Randolph's marriage to Patsy. But Randolph's

behaviors became erratic after he served in the war of 1812, and he became withdrawn from Patsy, his children, and his father-in-law. Both of the Thomas's, Jefferson, and Randolph, began to have financial difficulties too, and it was a strain on Patsy who was trying to manage both Edgehill and Monticello. Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, with Patsy at his side. Shortly before his death, he remarked that his last pang of life was parting with her. And of course, John Adams famously died on the same day. Due to all the debt that her father left behind, Patsy was forced to sell Monicello in 1831, including the enslaved people she inherited from her father.

She lived with her children for the rest of her life estranged from her husband who had become prone to violent outbursts when he drank. Four years before Jefferson died, Sally Hemings' two oldest children, Beverly and Harriet, were allowed to leave Monticello without being legally freed. It was reported later that they both passed into white society and were not discovered to have been enslaved at Monticello or even suspected to have African blood. Sally Hemings was unofficially freed or given her time by Patsy when her father passed away and Jefferson's will freed her younger children Madison and Esten. Sally, Madison, and Esten were listed as free people in both the 1830 and the 1833 censuses. In 1834, Patsy dictated an informal addendum to her will.

It instructed her children to officially give her half-aunt, Sally Hemings, her freedom. In the end, the addendum was moat. Sally died in 18. a year before Patsy's unexpected death at age 64. Ah, what tangled webs we weave, right? There is so much more to the story, though. I need to tell you way more about the Hemmings family. So join me in the next episode. I have some very fascinating details to share.

I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interested. If you enjoyed today's episode, would you consider sharing or subscribing to this show that helps podcasters out so much? I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMan. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck Parks, and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. We'll see you soon.