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About the Book
Books dealing with State and local histo...)
About the Book
Books dealing with State and local histories in the United States may examine a city, a suburb, a municipality, a region, a community, an association, a church group, or the entire State. In fact, local history, is the largest category of history publishing. Often being of the community that is the subject of the book, local or regional historians can provide a specific insight into their subject matter.
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(One of our most remarkable First Ladies and Americans, he...)
One of our most remarkable First Ladies and Americans, here is Dolly Madison in her own words. This long-forgotten, out-of-print volume is now available for the first time for Kindle. Read her loving correspondence with her husband, James Madison, and her many famous friends like Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Her fire and humor are all on display here in a collection edited in 1886 by her grand-niece, Lucia Cutts. Her birth registry gives her name as "Dolley" but she signed her letters and will as Dolly. Regrettably, like many of her background, was a slave owner nearly to the end of her life and after her husband's death, fell into poverty. She eventually had to sell the family plantation and all her remaining slaves. Daniel Webster bought her former butler and gave him his freedom. He asked the butler to purchase anything in the market that he thought Dolly might want or need and take it to her at Webster's expense.
Dolley Madison was the first Lady and wife of James Madison, President of the United States from 1809 to 1817.
Background
Madison is said to have been named Dorothea for Dorothea Dandridge, afterward the second wife of Patrick Henry, but she is known to history as "Dolly. " The eldest daughter and apparently the third child of John and Mary (Coles) Payne, she was born in what is now Guilford County, North Carolina, where her Virginian parents were spending a year with an uncle.
Her paternal grandfather, John Payne, was an Englishman who settled in Goochland County, Virginia and married Anna Fleming of Scotch descent. Her maternal grandfather was William Coles of "Coles Hill, " Hanover County, Virginia, and formerly of Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland.
Brought to Virginia by her parents, Dolly grew up at "Scotchtown, " in Hanover County. A member of a Quaker family, the little maid lived a restrained country life. Finding the atmosphere of Virginia uncongenial and desiring to provide better educational opportunities for his numerous children, John Payne set free his slaves and in the summer of 1783 removed to Philadelphia, where he engaged unsuccessfully in business and died in 1792.
Education
Madison received slight schooling.
Career
Madison became a social figure of the first importance when her husband assumed the secretaryship of state in 1801. Jefferson was a widower and Dolly Madison was in effect the "first lady. " Almost invariably she assisted the informal President with his "female guests, " and, unwittingly, she was a storm-center in the battle for precedence waged by the British minister, Anthony Merry.
Mrs. Merry criticized her dinners as being like "harvest-home" suppers, but few others objected to her generous, unassuming hospitality. She undoubtedly contributed indirectly to political harmony and served to relieve the excessive plainness of the Jeffersonian social régime. With the inauguration of her husband as president, in 1809, she blossomed into more glorious raiment, and, to one observer at least, she met all the requirements of royalty.
Social life in the Executive Mansion became somewhat more elaborate than it had been in Jefferson's day, though the stiff formality of the Federalist era did not return. In August 1814, she had to flee before the British invaders, but she managed to save many state papers and a portrait of George Washington before the Executive Mansion was burned.
Living after her return in "The Octagon, " she again enjoyed the sunshine of popularity. From the retirement of Madison in 1817 until his death in 1836, she remained at "Montpellier", in Orange County, Virginia, caring for his aged mother (until 1829), reading to her husband and writing for him, living the busy, hospitable life of the mistress of a plantation.
In 1837, she returned to Washington with her niece Anna Payne, whom she adopted; she lived at the northeast corner of Lafayette Square in a house formerly owned by Richard Cutts, husband of her beloved sister Anna, and, as "the venerable Mrs. Madison, " became again a noted and honored figure.
Her last public appearance was at a reception in February 1849, when she passed through the rooms of the White House on the arm of President Polk.
Financial difficulties and the waywardness of her son clouded her last days. She was forced to sell "Montpellier. " Congress had bought Madison's notes on the Federal Convention for $30, 000 in 1837; in 1848 a further appropriation of $25, 000 was made for the purchase of other manuscripts of his. She died in Washington at the age of eighty-one. After ceremonies at St. John's Church, attended by the highest officials of the Republic, she was buried in the Congressional Cemetery, whence her remains were later removed to "Montpellier. "
It is said, that Dolly's fair skin was scrupulously protected from the rays of the Southern sun; her eyes were blue and her hair was black; she was destined to grow tall and to be esteemed beautiful. She was described by Washington Irving as "a fine, portly, buxom dame, " and her "elegance" was much remarked.
Her charm, however, was chiefly due to her perennial and inherent friendliness, to her remarkable memory of persons and their interests, to her unfailing tactfulness. Her popularity may have been a minor factor in Madison's reelection, but essentially she was negative. "She was brilliant in the things she did not say and do".
Connections
Dolly Payne was married on January 7, 1790, to John Todd, Jr. , a lawyer and a member of the Society of Friends. Their son, John Payne Todd, was born on February 29, 1792.
Another son was born in the summer of 1793, but his life went out, soon after that of his father (October 24, 1793), during the epidemic of yellow fever.
Living thereafter with her mother, who had gentlemen boarders, Dolly Todd was too much admired and sought after to remain a widow long. Senator Aaron Burr introduced to her James Madison, almost a score of years her elder, and on September 15, 1794, at the home of her sister Lucy, Mrs. George Steptoe Washington, at "Harewood, " Jefferson County, Virginia, she became the wife of this noted congressman.
The marriage proved to be an unusually happy one, but there were no children.