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[116] kkk [A Father’s Grief, A Daughter’s Memories] (1832) Martha Jefferson Randolph Martha Jefferson Randolph (1772–1836), Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter , was also one of his closest confidantes. With the death of her mother in 1782, she accompanied her father to Philadelphia the following year when he went there to serve his last term in Congress. He placed her in school in Philadelphia and then went to Annapolis, where Congress was meeting temporarily . Once Congress appointed Jefferson minister to France, she accompanied him from Philadelphia to Boston, where they took passage to France. In Paris, he enrolled her at L’Abbaye Royale de Penthémont, a prestigious convent school. They returned to Virginia in 1789. On 23 February 1790, she married Thomas Mann Randolph. She undertook the task of educating their numerous children. With a reputation as the finest French teacher in the region , she often gave French lessons to other local children. They named their first son after his grandfather: Thomas Jefferson Randolph. The list of names of their other sons—Benjamin Franklin Randolph, George Wythe Randolph, James Madison Randolph, Meriwether Lewis Randolph—read like an honor roll of Jefferson’s best friends. Martha also made sure to educate her daughters . She instilled in all of her children a profound respect for their grandfather . The Randolphs made their home at Edgehill, but she spent much of her time at nearby Monticello. Once Jefferson’s second presidential term ended and he returned to Monticello, she and her children moved there permanently . After her father’s death in 1826, his enormous debts, combined with those of her husband, forced her to sell Monticello, which she wistfully referred to as her “lost home.” After her husband’s death in 1828, she lived with one or another of her children until her own death in 1836. She wrote the following reminiscence for George Tucker when he was preparing his Life of Thomas Jefferson (1837), but B. L. Rayner published it before Tucker as part of Sketches of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of Thomas Jefferson (1832). [117] during my mother’s life he (Jefferson) bestowed much time and attention on our education—our cousins, the Carrs, and myself—and after her death, during the first month of desolation which followed, I was his constant companion while we remained at Monticello . . . As a nurse no female ever had more tenderness nor anxiety. He nursed my poor mother in turn with aunt Carr and her own sister—sitting up with her and administering her medicines and drink to the last. For four months that she lingered he was never out of calling; when not at her bedside, he was writing in a small room which opened immediately at the head of her bed. A moment before the closing scene, he was led from the room in a state of insensibility by his sister, Mrs. Carr, who, with great difficulty, got him into the library, where he fainted, and remained so long insensible that they feared he never would revive. The scene that followed I did not witness , but the violence of his emotion, when, almost by stealth, I entered his room by night, to this day I dare not describe to myself. He kept his room three weeks, and I was never a moment from his side. He walked almost incessantly night and day, only lying down occasionally, when nature was completely exhausted, on a pallet that had been brought in during his long fainting-fit. My aunts remained constantly with him for some weeks—I do not remember how many. When at last he left his room, he rode out, and from that time he was incessantly on horseback, rambling about the mountain , in the least frequented roads, and just as often through the woods. In those melancholy rambles I was his constant companion—a solitary witness to many a burst of grief, the remembrance of which has consecrated particular scenes of that lost home beyond the power of time to obliterate . [. . .] In returning, he was detained ten days at Havre de Grace, and, after crossing the Channel, ten more at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, which were spent in visiting different parts of the island, when the weather permitted : among others, Carisbrook Castle, remarkable for the confinement of Charles the First, and also for a well of uncommon depth. We sailed on the 23d of October, 1789, in company with upwards of thirty vessels who had collected there...

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