Martha Wayles Jefferson life and biography

Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, also known as:Mrs. Thomas Jefferson born October 19, 1748 in Charles City, Virginia, United States - died September 6, 1782 in Albermarle County, Virginia, United States was the First Lady of the United States.

Though she was the only wife of the nation's third president, Thomas Jefferson, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson never became First Lady.

An "Amiable Wife"

At age eighteen, a stunning, auburn-haired Virginian named Martha Wayles Skelton became a widow. With the death of her husband Bathurst Skelton in 1768, she and her infant son, John, moved to her father's plantation, the Forest, near Williamsburg, Virginia. After two years of mourning, she was courted by a bevy of suitors. Among those hopeful bachelors was the twenty-seven-year-old lawyer, farmer, and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Thomas Jefferson.

Mrs. Skelton's firstborn son died in the summer of 1771, at age three. Six months later, she and Jefferson married. Both were accomplished musicians; he played the violin, and she excelled at keyboard instruments. (While Jefferson was courting Mrs. Skelton, whom he would soon call by the affectionate nickname "Patty," he purchased a fortepiano from Germany for her, to be installed in the home he was building in Charlotesville, which he would call Monticello.) The wedding took place on New Year's Day, 1772, at the Wayles-family plantation. After two weeks of joyous celebration, the couple readied for the 100-mile drive back to Monticello. Their phaeton broke down, however, and, after an overnight stop, they completed their journey on horseback in what had become three feet of snow. But they arrived at Monticello late in the evening in good cheer. The servants all having long gone to bed, Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson scrounged up a half-empty bottle of wine and drank a toast to their new life.

Martha Jefferson was described by acquaintances and relatives as "slight," "graceful," "ladylike," and "accomplished." The French general Marquis de Chastellux, who fought with the Continental Army, referred to her as a "gentle and amiable wife." Her brother-in-law, Robert Skipwith, characterized her as having "the greatest fund of good nature that sprightliness and sensibility which promises to ensure you the greatest happiness mortals are capable of enjoying," according to the Monticello Resources web site.

The War Years

In September 1772, Mrs. Jefferson gave birth to a daughter, Martha ("Patsy"). Within the next decade, there would be five more children but only two, Martha and Mary ("Polly"), would live to adulthood. Two daughters, Lucy and Jane, and a son, who remained unnamed, died as infants. With each successive pregnancy, Mrs. Jefferson's health deteriorated. The records of the family physician note that during their first year at Monticello, he made visits to Mrs. Jefferson on an almost monthly basis. At one point she even contracted smallpox. Her account books show numerous omissions, sometimes for periods of months at a time, indicating illness.

In the winter of 1775, the Jeffersons visited the Wayles plantation. With his wife in poor health and fierce fighting surrounding the nearby port city of Norfolk, Jefferson quickly moved his family back to Monticello. Mrs. Jefferson's already weakened state worsened with the birth of her son in 1777. Then, only two months after their infant daughter Lucy died in April 1781, the family made another hasty escape from the British, who were desperate to capture Jefferson, by finding refuge with neighbors who had a house on a nearby mountain. A third daughter, Lucy Elizabeth, was born in May 1782. It was a difficult birth, and Mrs. Jefferson never regained her health.

She remained bedridden for four months after Lucy Elizabeth's birth. The household slaves who nursed her reported hearing Mrs. Jefferson say she didn't want her children to have a stepmother (Lucy Elizabeth wouldn't survive past the age of two, when she'd contract whooping cough). Shortly after, she fell into a coma. Seeing her hopeless condition, Jefferson fainted and had to be carried out of the room. On September 6, 1782, Jefferson wrote in his diary, "My dear wife died this day at 11:45 a.m." To the Marquis de Chastellux he later confided, "A single event wiped away all my plans and left me a blank which I had not the spirits to fill up," as quoted on the Monticello Resources web site.

Martha's Legacy: A Cherished Companion

Distraught over losing the woman that had given him ten years of "unchequered happiness," Jefferson destroyed all reminders including her letters and likenesses of that contentment. As a result, no known portraits of Mrs. Jefferson remain. It is said that she was an accomplished household manager, and was skilled in all aspects relating to that task, from cooking, preserving, sewing, and weaving, to brewing, animal husbandry, nursing, and schooling children.

Jefferson promised his wife he would not remarry, and he was true to his word. Though he denied having a relationship with a slave named Sally Hemings (whose father allegedly was John Wayles, Mrs. Jefferson's father), DNA evidence indicates Jefferson was the biological father of two of Hemings' children. Hemings had arrived at Monticello in 1776 as part of the estate of John Wayles, and served as attendant to Mrs. Jefferson's daughters.

Nineteen years after Mrs. Jefferson's death, Thomas Jefferson became President and remained in that office until 1809. With no wife to act as First Lady, he often was aided by Dolley Madison, the wife of his secretary of state, James Madison. On other occasions when an official mistress of the White House was required, the Jefferson daughters would sit in as First Lady. Both had married politicians, and frequently stayed, with their families, at the White House. The youngest daughter, Mary (Maria Jefferson Eppes), frail and beautiful, was said to resemble her mother. Known as Polly, she died in 1804 at age twenty-five, also, like her mother, during childbirth. Martha ("Patsy"), now Martha Jefferson Randolph, who had traveled to France with her father and been educated abroad, made an excellent stand-in. She gave birth to the first child born in the White House, accompanied her father to Monticello upon his retirement, and was lovingly referred to by Jefferson as the "cherished companion of my early life, and nurse of my age."

Some historians suggest that had Mrs. Jefferson survived, Thomas Jefferson may not have become President. Not only did Mrs. Jefferson profess an aversion to politics and prefer to spend her days at Monticello than at anyplace else, but with his wife by his side Jefferson, who tended toward shyness, may not have thrown himself into such a demanding political position. For as long as Mrs. Jefferson remained alive, Jefferson limited his political commitments in order to remain in close proximity to her. He turned down the Continental Congress's offer of an ambassadorial position to France, only to assume the job as commissioner to France after his wife's death.

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