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Martha Jefferson was born at Monticello in Albemarle County on September 27, 1772, the first of five children (and one of only two who survived to adulthood) of Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson. -
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They were married on New Year’s Day, 1772, at the bride’s plantation home “The Forest,” near Williamsburg. When they finally reached Monticello in a late January snowstorm to find no fire, no food, and the servants asleep, they toasted their new home with a leftover half-bottle of wine and “song and merriment and laughter.” -
The birth of their daughter Martha in September increased their happiness. Within ten years the family gained five more children. Of them all, only two lived to grow up: Martha, called Patsy, and Mary, called Maria or Polly. -
Martha's father, John Wayles, died at age 58 in 1773. He left substantial property, including slaves, but the estate was encumbered with debt.[30] Upon Wayles' death, Betty Hemings and her six children with John Wayles were moved "without hesitancy" to Monticello to prevent the Hemings from being separated -
in June 1779 Jefferson became governor of Virginia and moved ger family with him to the capital, Williamsburg, where Patsy, as she was known in childhood, took dancing lessons, -
Martha Jefferson died due to childbirth complications -
When Jefferson became President in 1801, he had been a widower for 19 years. He had become as capable of handling social affairs as political matters. Occasionally he called on Dolley Madison for assistance. And it was Patsy–now Mrs. Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr.–who appeared as the lady of the President’s House in the winter of 1802-1803, -
The deaths of former U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826–the day of the Jubilee–the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, was an extraordinary and eerie coincidence. Jefferson died shortly after noon at the age of 83 in Monticello, Virginia.