The Randolph Women . . .
& Their Men
Ruth Doumlele
Book Publishers Network
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Bothell • WA • 98041
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www.bookpublishersnetwork.com
Copyright © 2010 by Ruth Doumlele
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LCCN 2009912349
Editor: Vicki McCown
Cover Designer: Laura Zugzda
Typographer: Nina Barnett
To the memory of
John, “heart of my heart,”
and
Tony, who filled my life with his magic
and
for Suzanne,
a treasure beyond compare
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Cast of Characters
The Trial, April 29, 1793
1787
Mataox and Bizarre
Monticello and Paris
Gouverneur Morris
1788
1789
Tuckahoe and Mataox
1790
1791
1792
1793
After the Trial
1794
1795
1796
1797
1798
1799
1800
1801
1802-1804
1805
1806
1807
1808-1809
1810
1811
1812
1813
1814
1815
1816
Epilogue
Line of Descent
End Notes
Bibliography
About the Author
Acknowledgments
What a ride this has been–sharing the lives of these women, two centuries after their turbulent times. Reading their letters, I marveled at their eloquence in describing the most mundane events for their readers. And their men’s were no less eloquent, from Gouveneur Morris’s lyrical prose to John Randolph’s diatribes.
The journey began in the Cumberland Court clerk’s office, where I found the court order from Richard Randolph’s trial. The trail led me to the Prince Edward Courthouse and Richard’s will freeing his slaves, and from there to the Bizarre plantation cemetery, in an iron-fenced enclosure with cows grazing nearby.
There were so many helpful people along the way, beginning with the court clerks in these counties as well as those in Goochland, Chesterfield, and Lancaster. I am grateful to the staff in the Lipscomb Library at Randolph College, who provided a wonderful sanctuary to pore over the extensive records of John Randolph of Roanoke; the Swem Library at the College of William and Mary; the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia; and the archives at the Mary Ball Washington Museum and Library in Lancaster County. Staff members in my own neighborhood’s Midlothian Library, as well as those at the Main Branch, Richmond City Library, were always eager to help. I could never have completed this book without the resources at the Library of Virginia, where Conley Edwards in the archives and Audrey Johnson and Tom Camden in Special Collections guided me unerringly. I was fortunate to live close to the Virginia Historical Society and its extensive Randolph family collections, where Dr. Nelson Lankford gave me good advice and Dr. Lee Shepard graciously checked the files to be certain that my material was used legally.
I am indebted to my professors at the University of Richmond in allowing this nontraditional student in the master’s program to use much of the Randolph women’s material. Dr. Frank Eakin and Dr. Margaret Denton were especially supportive, and Dr. Woody Holton, demanding professor and mentor, guided my narrative superbly.
Sabra Ledent tracked my progress with great editing and critiquing; Jennifer McCord helped me define my priorities; Bob Reilly drew the Virginia plantations map; Jerry Stuart diagrammed the way to the Bizarre graveyard; and Jim Logios was my Apple/Mac guru.
I deeply appreciate Sheryn Hara’s expertise and patience in bringing my efforts to fruition. Sheryn, the engine of Book Publishers Network, and her team are the great ladies of publishing.
A host of special people have been there for me, every step of the away. I thank fellow members of the Richmond Branch, National League of American Pen Women; the daughters in the Commonwealth Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution; a number of wonderful friends in the Powhatan County Historical Society; and many others who have offered support and encouragement.
Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family. My husband, John, lived for years with eighteenth-century guests in the study. My children—Tony, who left us too soon, and his family, Leigh, Nick, and Kyra, and my daughter, Suzanne, with Tom, Randy, and Courtney, and now with Josh, Meredith, and Owen—were incredibly patient, as were my sisters Lois and Esther.
Thank you, thank you!
FOREWORD
It cannot be a coincidence that the Virginia colony began the production of tobacco and the importation – the word is inappropriate here – of women in the same year: 1613. Not that Englishwomen were put to work in the tobacco fields; no, the importation of another category of human beings, Africans, had begun in earnest. But the great Chesapeake tobacco plantations could never have operated without the European women who managed the households, raised the children, and – surprisingly often – brought immense wealth to the men they married. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were the most famous of the Founding Fathers who remained outside the charmed circle of the inner gentry until they married wealthy widows.
Women were as important to the colonial struggle for home rule as they had been to the development of the colony. How could the boycotts of British merchandise – especially the pledge not to drink tea – have succeeded without the efforts of women? And it was women who spun the thread and wove the garments that patriots donned in place of what they had once imported from the mother country. When the conflict became a shooting war, women managed the farms of absent soldiers and statesmen, and they sometimes followed their menfolk right into the army. George Washington deserves praise for enduring the bitter winter at Valley Forge, but so does Martha, who was with him there the whole time.
And then, later, when the charmed vessel sank beneath the waves, the gentlewomen went down with the ship. The market for tobacco, as it turned out, was not inexhaustible, and the soil of Virginia was quite easily exhausted. Within a few decades of the great military victory at Yorktown in 1781, a combination of slackening demand and soil exhaustion led to a series of debilitating economic defeats. Some members of the gentry class held on by going into trade. Others sold off their human chattel, which inevitably meant the permanent separation of families. It was an ill portent that the category of well-to-do Virginians who seemed to hold on the longest was the lawyers – in particular those who agreed to represent British merchants suing for pre-revolutionary debts.
Yet every gentry family that tied its fate to the cultivation of tobacco was doomed to decline. The Randolphs were such a family. The union in 1680 of William Randolph of Turkey Island with Mary Isham of Bermuda Hundred produced nine children, and they in turn established the Randolph dynasty. Many of their descendants’ names are among the most illustrious in American history: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Robert E. Lee, Lady Nancy Astor, J. E. B. Stuart, and Thomas Nelson Page.
It was said, “No one was good enough for a Randolph except another Randolph,” and the Randolphs married cousins and had children who married Randolphs. While intermarriage produced geniuses in some instances, deviant genes also generated serious character flaws and physical defects. The emergence of libertine traits and tempestuous dispositions triggered explosive events as the eighteenth century ended. John Marshall’s grandmother, a Randolph of Tuckahoe, became a lunatic. Richard Randolph of Bizarre, married to a Randolph cousin, was considered one of the most promising men in Virginia, but he ruined his reputation by immoral behavior. His brother, John Randolph of Roanoke, never married, achieved prominence in Congress, and was seemingly headed for a pinnacle in government but destroyed himself by publicly turning on President Jefferson, a cousin, and President James Madison. As he descended into madness, his attempt to destroy his cousin Nancy Randolph failed. She fought back publicly, supported by her husband, New York statesman Gouverneur Morris. Thomas Mann Randolph married Martha Jefferson, a Randolph cousin. She worshipped her father, who controlled the marriage, and was unable to accept her husband as a true partner. He became an embittered recluse, never reaching his potential as congressman or governor.
“When I look back upon the past,” John Randolph wrote, “the eventful history of my race and name . . . presents a tragedy that far outstrips in improbability and rivals in horrour all dramatic or romantic fiction.”
Randolph was thinking primarily of the men of the family, but, if anything, his female cousins fell further than the men. As told here by the eloquent Ruth Doumlele, the story of the Randolph women is gripping, and it is also instructive. But most of all it is precisely what Randolph said it was: tragic.
Woody Holton, Ph.D.
Map of Virginia Plantations, circa 1795
Introduction
The Randolph family heritage in Virginia began with the Indian princess Pocahontas. She became friends with the English settlers at Jamestown, particularly with Captain John Smith. During a severe famine, she and her people brought food to Jamestown, saving the settlement. Later, she was seized and held hostage by the English there. While in captivity, Pocahontas adapted well to their culture, learned English, and converted to Christianity. John Rolfe, a young planter, fell in love with her and their marriage on April 5, 1614, began the Peace of Pocahontas, a cessation of hostilities between the Indians and the English. John Rolfe took his wife and their son to England in 1616. Princess Pocahontas, now known by her Christian name, Rebecca, was presented at the English court. Her regal bearing impressed the king and queen and her fun-loving disposition charmed the formal English. As she and her husband prepared to return to America, Pocahontas became ill, died, and was buried at Gravesend in 1617. Her son, Thomas, was educated in England and then returned to America to claim his heritage. His marriage to an English woman, Jane Poythress, produced a daughter, Jane, who married a Bolling. Their children married Blands, who married Randolphs, the many descendants of William Randolph I of Turkey Island.
William Randolph emigrated to Virginia in the last half of the seventeenth century and built his home, Turkey Island, on the James River east of Richmond. The large home, named for the wild turkeys that roosted in the chimneys, lasted until the Civil War, when fire from Union gunboats destroyed it.
Already a big landowner, William acquired more land and possessions from property seized after Bacon’s Rebellion. Randolph’s social position and acquisitions were enhanced even more by his friendship with William Byrd II of Westover, and his marriage in 1680 to Mary Isham of Bermuda Hundred brought him even more wealth. His prized tobacco went to merchants in England to be sold, and its proceeds purchased furniture, silk, slaves, and indentured servants. William Randolph helped to found and charter the College of William and Mary in 1693 and became a trustee.
Mary Isham Randolph bore seven sons and two daughters who received land and property. One son, Henry of Longfield, settled in England. Sir John became master of Tazewell Hall. His son Peyton was the first president of the Continental Congress; a grandson, Edmund, served as a governor of Virginia, a U. S. secretary of state, and U. S. attorney general. Other sons were Edward of Bremo, William II of Chatsworth, Thomas of Tuckahoe, Richard of Curles, and Isham of Dungeness. The daughter of William I, Mary, married John Stith, a president of William and Mary College in Williamsburg, and Elizabeth married Richard Bland.
All built elegant plantation homes along Virginia rivers. The home of Richard of Curles was ninety-five by twenty-six feet, two stories, with a sixty-foot colonnade connecting it with other buildings.
Their descendants married Randolphs who married first, second, and third cousins until the family genealogy resembled a “tangle of fish hooks.” It was said that “no one was good enough for a Randolph except another Randolph.” Family traits of pride and acquisitiveness were at times exacerbated by the tempestuous willfulness of the Pocahontas bloodline; and this intense interbreeding produced character flaws, hereditary disease, and personality distortions. Virginians at odds with the Randolph traits commented, “If God had been the God of Virginia, he would have struck William Randolph of Turkey Island with sterility.” Even so, the Randolph courage, richness of intellect, and eloquence also produced geniuses, statesmen, and generals.
This true story of the Randolph women and their men examines the intertwining of several Randolph families of the Revolutionary War and post–Revolutionary War era.
Thomas Randolph of Tuckahoe married Judith Fleming. Their daughter, Mary, was found in flagrante delicto with Reverend James Keith. She followed him, when he was banished for fornication with a gentlewoman, to a distant parish. They were married, and she became the grandmother of John Marshall, chief justice of the United States.
Thomas’s son Thomas Mann Randolph married Ann Cary, a cousin from the Isham Randolph line. She descended from Pocahontas through Richard of Curles’s marriage to Jane Bolling. With the Randolph fascination for men, she was described as beautiful, spirited, and articulate. Sir John Leslie, on his stay at Tuckahoe, wrote that she “exalted his opinion of the whole sex.” They produced three sons—Thomas Junior, William, and John—and seven daughters—Mary, Elizabeth, Judith, Ann Cary (Nancy), Jane, Harriet, and Virginia. Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. married his cousin, Martha Jefferson.
Mary Randolph, called Molly, shown in a St. Memin silhouette to have been a handsome woman, married her cousin, David Meade Randolph. They built a “city plantation,” Moldavia, in Richmond. In the spacious home with its octagonal ballroom, they entertained with “sumptuous repasts” and “grand and glorious balls.” Molly was referred to as the “Queen of the Realm,” by Samuel Mordecai, a nineteenth-century historian, for her fabulous entertaining. Moldavia had stood for more than a century when it was demolished around 1900. Later, Molly opened a boarding house and became a successful businesswoman. While living in Washington, D. C., she published the first American cookbook, which included numerous recipes from the Tuckahoe menus.
Judith Randolph inherited her mother’s beauty and her attraction to men. A distant cousin, Peter Randolph of Chatsworth, described her on a visit to Tuckahoe to “storm the citadel of her virtues and accomplishments.” He spoke of her “angelic majesty . . . her beauty in its meridian splendour . . . and the magical influence of a beautiful woman on the soul.” Sir John Leslie spoke to Judith’s brother of his love for her, his “burning affection tinctured with sadness,” because she did not reciprocate. In what later became a great tragedy, she married, at a young age and unwisely, her cousin, Richard Randolph of Matoax and Bizarre.
Ann Cary Randolph, called “Nancy,” a few months younger than Judith, was sunnier, more athletic. A descendant, Francis Biddle, described her as being “full of the delight of living, hot-blooded, careless, haphazard.” Historian A. J. Eckenrode described her as “handsome, determined in character, and infinitely courageous.” Her letters chronicle the sad events of her life—evicted from Tuckahoe, living subserviently with various relatives, penniless in a nonexistent job market for a woman of her training and social standing. Her seduction and impregnation by her brother-in-law, Judith’s husband, Richard, reduced her to a “trull,” a fallen woman. She found happiness for a few years as the wife of northern aristocrat and statesman Gouverneur Morris.
Nancy’s January 1815 letter to John Randolph was described, in 1888, “as a literary performance, this letter . . . is entitled to rank as one of the finest specimens of English composition anywhere to be found, equaling, if not exceeding in vigor and point as well as elegance in form of expression, the celebrated letters of Junius.”
Her husband, Gouverneur Morris, referred to her as “that fortune, my wife,” and “the bounty of Him who gilds with a celestial beam the tranquil evening of my day.”
Jane Randolph married her cousin Thomas Eston Randolph of Dungeness, a wealthy planter who later lost his fortune. Harriet married Richard Hackley of New York, whom Jefferson appointed as consul at Cadiz, Spain. He returned with a Spanish mistress, causing his wife to leave him and Martha Randolph to refer to him as a ”mean rascal and a fool.”
Martha and Tom Randolph reared his youngest sister, Virginia. She married her cousin, Wilson Jefferson Cary, and after his death at a young age, she wrote articles and books to help support herself and their children. She wrote of a smoldering problem, “Slavery is indeed a fearful evil, a canker in the bud of our National prosperity.” Her daughter carried on a family tradition when she married a northern cousin, the son of her sister Nancy and Gouverneur Morris.
Frances Bland descended from William Randolph I through his daughter Elizabeth. When she married a cousin, John Randolph, a descendant of Richard Randolph of Curles, her father-in-law was a first cousin and her husband’s mother-in-law was also his aunt. John built Matoax for her, which sat high above the Appomattox River near Petersburg and was noted for its extensive library. She was described as “a woman of superior personal attractions who excelled all others of her day in strength of intellect for which she was so justly celebrated.” The “tawny,” stately beauty was fearless as British troops advanced during the Revolution, wearing her husband’s steel-hilted dagger in her stays. She bore three sons—Richard, Theodorick, and John—before her husband died. She later married St. George Tucker.
The sons were educated at boarding schools and universities. Richard was described as a man of “great personal beauty, a character out of a Roman novel, excelling in strength of intellect.” He was said to “have extensive and useful accomplishment with commanding and extraordinary talent.” He destroyed his future and Nancy’s reputation when he seduced her and they were tried for the murder of her infant.
Theodorick attended college in New York City, adopted a dissolute lifestyle, and died of consumption at age twenty-one.
John Randolph of Roanoke became known as the most eloquent man of his time. He was erratic and brilliant, an ardent states rightist. While Thomas Jefferson said, “I am a citizen of the world,” John Randolph said, “When I speak of my nation, I mean the Commonwealth of Virginia.” His rapier-like verbal attacks seldom missed their mark. Although seemingly destined for greatness in public life, he destroyed his career when he publicly turned on President Jefferson. Even so, when he spoke at the end of his career in 1829, it was reported “the gallery was crowded to suffocation” to hear him. “The thrilling music of his speech fell upon the ear like the voice of a bird singing in the pause of a storm.”
Thomas Jefferson was descended from Isham of Dungeness through his daughter Jane, who married Peter Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton and their two daughters were Martha and Maria. Martha was “homely,” six feet tall and angular, “a delicate likeness of her father,” with a frank and affectionate manner. She married her cousin Thomas Randolph Jr. of Tuckahoe, a skilled horseman, hard-working, dedicated to his family. Her unusual and extreme love for her father doomed their happiness, leaving Thomas sad and embittered. Maria was beautiful, simple, and reserved, “the fairest flower which my eyes ever beheld.” She married her cousin John Eppes and died young in childbirth.
To the Randolph coat of arms, Nil Admirari (Wonder at Nothing), John Randolph of Roanoke added Fari Que Sentiat (Do What You Feel), an appropriate representation of this family’s response to their environment and time in history.
Cast of Characters
The Families
Other characters:
“I look forward with great impatience to March.
I am afraid to flatter myself with the hope of seeing you sooner.
. . . every sentiment of tenderness. . .
centered in you and no connexion found since
that could weaken a sentiment interwoven with my very existence”
January 22, 1798
Martha Jefferson Randolph to Thomas Jefferson
“When I look back upon the past,
the eventful history of my race and name . . .
presents a tragedy that far outstrips in improbability
and rivals in horrours
all dramatic or romantic fiction”
John Randolph of Roanoke
“Perhaps some wind may yet waft you over the bosom of the Atlantic
and you shall become acquainted with my wife,
and you shall see that fortune –
fortune No, - the word befits not a sacred theme, -
let me say the bounty of Him,
who . . . gilds with a celestial beam
the tranquil evening of my day.”
Gouverneur Morris to John Parish
The Trial
April 29, 1793
Although regular Cumberland County court days had passed, a crowd had assembled outside of the courthouse to hear details of this case, a previously unheard-of event in the county. Not only would it be a scandalous scene involving one of the local gentry, but defense attorney Patrick Henry would make a rare appearance. For those unable to crowd into the courtroom, a sentry climbed a tree near a window to view the proceedings and pass the information to those below. The mood swung from those who waited to see the whoring, adulterous husband, Richard Randolph of Bizarre, get his just due, to others who felt that “God himself would think twice before dooming one of his quality!” He was accused of feloniously murdering a child said to have been his and his sister-in-law’s, Nancy Randolph.
Inside, the county justices and the attorneys waited.
The twenty-three-year-old prisoner entered the courtroom with the sheriff, walking the gauntlet of angry citizens and well-wishers. He exuded the description of having “great personal beauty,” of being a “character out of a Roman novel.” With flashing dark eyes and tawny hair pulled back with a ribbon, he wore buckled shoes, cotton stockings, knee breeches, waistcoat, and coat. Of his legal counsel, only the well-dressed Alexander Campbell, precise and somber, appeared to be an appropriate associate. John Marshall, with dark, penetrating eyes, wore baggy breeches and a foulard that was slightly askew. “Old Pat” was dressed in dark countryman’s breeches and coat, with tiny spectacles perched on his nose. He thoroughly enjoyed the adulation and reverence of the spectators and was always a crowd-pleaser.
Dick Randolph’s brother, Jack Randolph, sat on the front row. Two handsome women sat with him. Judith Randolph, Dick’s wife, in the middle trimester of pregnancy, had been described as “a beautiful woman . . . who transported” her suitor with rapture. Her younger sister, Nancy, sat with her. Their brother, Tom Randolph, sat with his wife, Martha, across the courtroom, glaring at Dick with hatred.
The long months of vicious gossip, speculation, and accusation would end soon with the determination whether Dick, and possibly Nancy, would be tried later before a jury. The minutes of this proceeding would not be recorded; the order book would indicate only whether the prisoner was found guilty and would stand trial or be released.
The Commonwealth opened with a deposition from Carter Page of The Fork plantation, the husband of Mary Cary Page, Judith and Nancy’s aunt.
He had seen Miss Nancy and Mr. Randolph together frequently, had seen them kissing at Bizarre. The previous May, he noticed an increase in her size and wondered if she were pregnant, but he knew of no criminal act between the two. They did not try to conceal their affection for each other, and there was no other reason to believe that she was pregnant.
Martha Jefferson Randolph, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson, President Washington’s secretary of state, was called. She was poised and at ease. In response to a justice’s question, Martha explained that around September 12, at Mrs. Richard Randolph’s request, she had suggested a remedy for Miss Nancy’s colic.
“I recommended gum guaiacum, an excellent remedy for the colic, but cautioned that it could also cause an abortion.”
Later, Miss Nancy’s aunt, Mrs. Page, requested some of the medicine for her niece. She sent some a few days later. One of the justices asked whether she believed that Miss Nancy was pregnant.
“I suspected that she was.”
“Did you send enough to cause an abortion?” Henry asked.
“Yes, but I know of cases where even more has been given to pregnant women without harm,” she answered.
Mary Cary Page, the sisters’ “Aunt Polly,” considered herself the family matriarch, although she was only twenty-six years old. Her father, Archibald Cary, and Patrick Henry were political enemies and Cary had once threatened to “thrust a dagger” through Henry’s heart.
On a visit to Bizarre, she testified, Mrs. Randolph had told her that Mr. Randolph and Miss Nancy were company only for themselves, but that he was generally out on his plantation and her sister was upstairs in her room. But Mrs. Page’s suspicions were aroused when she noticed how fond Mr. Randolph and Miss Nancy were of each other. After Miss Nancy’s shape changed, and she began to complain of disorders, she refused to undress and go to bed in her aunt’s presence. Suspicious of her niece’s condition and anxious to learn more, Aunt Polly peeked through a crack in the locked door and observed that Miss Nancy was undressed and appeared to be pregnant. Later, when she heard gossip that Miss Nancy had been delivered of a child, she went to Bizarre and asked to examine her in order to contradict the report. Miss Nancy refused, saying that if her denial were not enough, she would give no further satisfaction.
Patrick Henry relished the opportunity to cross-examine Archibald Cary’s daughter and discredit her testimony.
He asked whether Miss Nancy had ever undressed for bed in her presence. Mrs. Page replied no, admitting that her refusal was not unusual.
“Your purpose in going to the door and eavesdropping on your niece’s conversation was only one of concern?” he asked with a skeptical but deferential smile.
“Yes.”
“And you peeped through the crack, also, to observe?”
“Yes.”
Seizing his opportunity, Henry asked coyly, “And pray, madam, which eye did you peep with?”
The question infuriated the witness and before she could reply, Henry turned to his audience in the courtroom and thundered “Great God, deliver us from eavesdroppers.”
Spectators roared with laughter. The sentry in the tree by the window passed the remarks down to Henry’s audience outside the courtroom. Their hero had not lost his touch. And the witness’s testimony had been discredited as being frivolous.
Randolph Harrison was careful and deliberate in his testimony.
“Yes,” he replied, “I had observed improprieties between Mr. Randolph and Miss Nancy but had too high an opinion of them to be suspicious.”
He described the Randolphs’ visit to his home, Glentivar. He met them outside of his home and handed the ladies out of the carriage. Miss Nancy had her great coat buttoned around her, and he observed no sign of pregnancy. She complained of not feeling well and lay down on the bed and after dinner retired to her room upstairs. After supper, Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Judith Randolph went up to check on her; she was still ill but told her sister she had taken essence of peppermint for colic.
During the night, Mr. Harrison and his wife were awakened by loud screams and a servant came to their door to ask for laudanum for Miss Nancy. Mrs. Harrison went upstairs to see Miss Nancy and, finding she was better, returned shortly. Later, they heard steps on the stairs and assumed it was Mr. Randolph and thought he had sent for a physician. Servants had gone up and down the stairs several times.
The next day, he and Mr. Randolph went in to lay a fire in her room. Miss Nancy was in bed and very pale. There was a disagreeable odor in the room. After their guests left on Saturday, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison were told by a Negro woman that Miss Nancy had miscarried. Six or seven weeks later, he investigated a report that a birth had been deposited on a pile of shingles. He found the shingle and observed that it had been stained.
Henry asked whether the disagreeable odor was one that would be attributed to childbearing. The witness imputed it to a cause totally different. The ladies’ behavior later was the same as before, he told Henry. On a later visit to Bizarre, everything seemed as usual, except that Mr. Randolph appeared somewhat “crusty.”
Mary Harrison was called next. After months of Judith’s denials and expressions of misery, she was sympathetic to her friend. Her testimony was the same as her husband’s until after dinner, when she went upstairs. Miss Nancy seemed unwell and her sister told her to take her gum guaiacum. Mrs. Randolph went to bed and Mrs. Harrison came downstairs. When she went upstairs after the screams, Mrs. Harrison found Mrs. Randolph sitting up in bed with a candle burning and said that her sister must have the hysterics.
“I went to the door but found it fastened by a bolt. Then I recalled that the catch was broken and the door would not remain closed without being fastened. I knocked and Mr. Randolph opened the door at once. He asked me not to bring the candle in; Miss Nancy had taken laudanum, was in great pain, and the light hurt her eyes. I put the candle down and went into her room. Miss Nancy, her seven-year-old sister, Virginia, and a Negro girl about fifteen were in the room. I stayed for a while but Miss Nancy seemed better and I left.”
The next day, she found blood on the pillowcase and on the stairs. The sheets and bed quilt were gone. Miss Nancy was in bed, very pale, with blankets drawn up close. After her guests’ departure, Mrs. Harrison found an attempt had been made to wash the bed but she had to remove the feathers to wash the ticking.
She noticed no resentment or alarm in Mrs. Randolph that might be expected if her sister had had a child and she suspected her husband was the father. She was uneasy only because her sister was sick.
A midwife testified of examining the bed and finding appearances of a possible birth or abortion. She conceded, when questioned by Henry that another problem could have the same effect.
Mrs. Brett Randolph testified that, although she had never noticed any ill will between the sisters, Mr. Randolph was very attentive to Miss Nancy, more so than to Mrs. Randolph. On the visit to the Harrisons’ home, Miss Nancy wore a close gown without any attempt to conceal her shape. Mrs. Randolph thought she was large enough to admit the possibility of a pregnancy. When she saw Miss Nancy next, her size was diminished. Ill health may have produced the change.
Archibald Randolph, Mary Harrison’s brother, told the justices that about eighteen months earlier he had entertained suspicions that Mr. Randolph and Miss Nancy were too fond of each other. Before this event happened he had relinquished those suspicions. He had not noticed any increase in her size at the Harrisons’ home. She seemed weak and asked for his help to go upstairs. He noticed a disagreeable odor but had no suspicion of it until Mr. Peyton Harrison, Randolph Harrison’s brother, told him that she had had a child or had miscarried.
Peyton Harrison informed the court that he too had perceived a fondness between Miss Nancy and Mr. Randolph. Henry asked why he would repeat slaves’ gossip of such a matter. Mr. Harrison replied that, as a friend, he felt it was his duty to pass the information on to Mr. Archy.
Jack Randolph testified on behalf of his brother. Spectators noted the lack of similarity in their looks. Now almost twenty years old, he had flaxen hair, was tall, thin almost to the point of emaciation, and beardless. His voice was high and squeaky but his elocution was superb. His brother, Theodorick, now deceased, had told Jack of his engagement to Miss Nancy, while Jack was studying in Philadelphia. His brother and sister-in-law had told him that Miss Nancy was in low spirits after his brother’s death.
“The most perfect harmony existed in the family, and I often observed how much fonder Mrs. Randolph was of Miss Nancy than of her other relations. That fondness had increased.”
Jack was with her a lot, and observed that she never wore stays and continued to dress in her usual manner. He attributed her ill health to an obstruction. He sat in the room with her at the Harrisons’ home and noticed the disagreeable odor but did not detect it on the way home in the carriage.
Brett Harrison visited at Bizarre without ceremony, saw perfect harmony between the family members, and found no reason to suspect a pregnancy or criminal act.
Testimony in Dick’s hearing ended. The justices accepted the testimony in Dick’s hearing as Nancy’s also.
Except for one significant addition.
Judith Randolph, because she could not testify for her husband, gave a deposition for her sister that was designed to exonerate her husband. The decision was hers, and hers alone, and she committed perjury.
She was awake the entire night, she said, because of her sister’s illness. Just before Mrs. Harrison came upstairs, Judith left Miss Nancy’s room and awakened her husband. She asked him to drop some laudanum for her sister. He was reluctant, but he went in to her sister.
She maintained that a child could not have been taken out of the room without her knowledge, and she was confident that no such thing happened. Her husband did not go downstairs until after daybreak.
John Marshall later prepared the detailed notes of evidence that outlined the basis for the defense, explaining the circumstances in the foregoing testimony, “examining them without favor or prejudice.”
He listed five areas of concern: the fondness of Mr. Randolph and Miss Nancy for each other; the appearance of pregnancy; the request for gum guaiacum, knowing it to be a medicine to produce abortion; the events at Mr. Harrison’s; and Miss Nancy’s refusal to comply with the request of Mrs. Page for an examination.
Mr. Randolph’s and Miss Nancy’s fondness for each other was due to her special circumstances. Having grown up in ease and indulgence, with every wish granted, she had been left with no home, few possessions, and relatives who had little patience. His brother, her fiancé, had died, after which he and his wife had extended to her their home’s hospitality. His special attention was appropriate and they would have concealed their feelings for each other if they had been guilty. Mrs. Randolph was present and never found their actions inappropriate.
The small increase in Miss Nancy’s size could be attributed to several causes. When the Pages noticed this increase in May, Miss Nancy, if pregnant, would have been in the third or fourth month; a pregnancy would not have been noticeable until then. By the first of October, she would have been about eight or nine months and ready to deliver.
Although Mrs. Brett Randolph suspected Miss Nancy was pregnant in September, she did not mention an increase in size. Nor did Mr. and Mrs. Page, who saw her at the same time. Mr. and Mrs. Brett Randolph saw Miss Nancy frequently, and although Mrs. Randolph noticed she was larger, she agreed that there could be another reason. Mr. John Randolph found no reason for suspicion, nor did Mr. Archy Randolph.
If she had been close to a delivery, it would have been apparent to everyone.
Mr. Randolph Harrison, who helped her out of the carriage, denied that she had any appearance of pregnancy.
The increase in size first noticed in May must have been caused by an ailment that, unlike a pregnancy, would not cause continual growth.
Gum guaiacum is a medicine used not only to cause abortion but also to remove obstruction. If Miss Nancy were near delivery, the use of this drug would have been unnecessary; she would have sought abortion earlier in the pregnancy and taken the drug at home without fear of discovery.
The illness at the Harrisons’ could have been from either cause. There was no attempt to conceal the pain. Mr. Randolph was in the room at the request of his wife and his request not to bring a candle into the room was natural for a person who had taken laudanum.
The blood and the appearance of the bed and covers were due to another cause and aroused no suspicion until a servant reported a miscarriage. The servants apparently were aware of the suspicions, and anything unusual would have seemed to be proof. No one would have placed a birth on a pile of shingles.
Mrs. Randolph had no apprehension except for her sister’s health. Miss Nancy immediately resumed her horseback riding when she returned to Bizarre. There was the most perfect family harmony.
Miss Nancy has reason to regret her refusal to allow Mrs. Page’s examination. Any innocent person may have refused.
Although there is some reason for suspicion, even Miss Nancy’s enemies must admit that every circumstance can be explained without imputing her guilt.
“Candor will not condemn or exclude from society a person who may only be unfortunate,” concluded Marshall.
The gentlemen justices ruled:
“It is the opinion of the court that the said Richard Randolph is not guilty of the felony wherewith he stands charged and that he is discharged out of custody and may go hence . . .”
Dick Randolph was detained at the courthouse for two more days; the other Randolphs of Bizarre left. Judith was distraught with humiliation at the public exposure, while Nancy attributed the cries of adulation as Patrick Henry left the courthouse to shouts of joy for Dick’s freedom, “expressed in shouts of exultation.” The noise shut out the sisters’ quarreling voices to everyone but Jack, who rode postilion as he and his cousin Robert Banister accompanied them.
On April 30, 1793, Dick Randolph gave Patrick Henry a note for £140 pounds, due May 30, 1793. Henry assigned the note to William Andrew, who later sued and won judgment with costs and interest, on July 28, 1794.
Martha Randolph wrote her father, Thomas Jefferson, who was in Philadelphia, “They have been tried and acquitted, tho their lawers [sic] gained more honour by it than they did.”
Court Order, April 29, 1793, Cumberland County, VA
Order Book 18, 1792-1797
1787
On a warm, sunny day in late June, two men rode westerly from Richmond through lush countryside. One was young and fashionably dressed, while the older man was clad simply. They turned onto the lane leading to Tuckahoe plantation, where tall cedar trees flanked the mile-long drive from the whitewashed gates to the brick-and-frame mansion. It had been built on a bluff, high on the north side of the James River.
The older man, Dr. Thomas Currie, came for a professional visit to the plantation’s mistress, Ann Cary Randolph. The younger man, Peter Randolph of Chatsworth, came to “storm Miss Judah’s (Judith’s) citadel,” to court a Randolph daughter. At two in the afternoon, they reached Tuckahoe where Judith was “doing the honors of the table.”
“Miss J’s beauty was in its meridian splendor . . . I was transported with rapture,” Peter later described the visit to a friend. “I sat down to dine but could scarcely swallow a mouthful . . . my hand trembled, my heart palpitated.” Later, Judith played the harpsichord and Peter found the “musick . . . inspired by some deity.”
Judith Randolph would have the same effect on other men throughout her life.
With great distances between plantations and slow travel, guests came for days and sometimes weeks. Peter, a Randolph cousin, planned a three-day stay, for by then they would have seen all of his clothes.
He arrived in a “genteel riding coat, white waistcoat, nankeen breeches, white stockings and half boots,” with a red coat, black silk breeches, and an “elegant dimmity waistcoat” in his wardrobe. Peter was a dandy.
Plantation mistress Ann Cary Randolph had come to Tuckahoe as a beautiful, spirited, and articulate girl when she married Colonel Thomas Mann Randolph in 1761. By 1786, they had ten living children. There were two older daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, who were already married and two older sons, Tom and William. Judith was the oldest daughter at home; Nancy was twenty-two months younger. The other children were Harriet, Jane, John, and Virginia, the youngest.
Judith was a dark, sultry beauty, with mood swings, while Nancy was sunny and athletic. Her long, dark hair framed her face with large expressive eyes. She raced her brothers and sisters on horseback over Tuckahoe’s vast acreage along the river. Women of the time were often fearless and skillful riders.
But few women studied away from home. Judith complained to her second cousin Martha Jefferson about the lack of educational opportunities for women in Virginia, particularly at Tuckahoe because the plantation tutor was in Scotland with her two brothers. She envied Martha, who studied at a Catholic abbey in France. Martha lived in Paris while her father, Thomas Jefferson, served as U.S. minister to France. In Virginia, daughters studied literature, French, and rudimentary arithmetic, taught by a tutor. Instructors came to teach ballroom dancing; musicians gave pianoforte and harpsichord lessons. Their mothers taught needlework and social etiquette. They were expected to learn the skills of proficient plantation mistresses: taking care of the sick, both family and slaves, keeping plantation books, and maintaining contact with others through letter writing.
Women married early with only a brief period between childhood and marriage to enjoy balls, parties, and courtship. Southern men expected their wives to be skillful in home management, gracious in conversation, decorous with men outside of the family, and productive in bed. After her marriage, Ann showed remarkable proficiency in all these skills. She was a gracious and tireless hostess to the many guests invited to Tuckahoe. In 1782, the Marquis de Chastellux, who had served with the French during the Revolution and published a book on his travels in America, wrote of his visit to Tuckahoe and its prodigal hospitality.
Sons studied geography, mathematics, science, and philosophy. Most sons attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, but Colonel Randolph sent Tom and William, accompanied by their tutor, Thomas Elder, to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in 1784. When Elder returned, he reported that William preferred people, and a social life, to academia. Tom, Elder said, was a scholar and a gentleman. After William went to London on a spending spree, the Colonel, who had mortgaged one of his plantations, Varina, to pay for their education, promptly ordered William home. Tom stayed on in Edinburgh and formed a close friendship with John Leslie, a mathematician and alumnus of St. Andrew’s University.
Tall green oaks shaded the Tuckahoe manor house. A boxwood maze enclosed gardens of verbena, marigolds, and poppies. The house had north and south wings connected by an elongated salon that separated the two sections with arched doorways. There was a glittering chandelier, a spinet, harpsichord, chairs, and four sofas. Family portraits decorated the walls. Furniture, china, and plate had been ordered from France and England. A frieze with flowing flowers and vines on the Georgian paneling on the north stair was the only example of such carving in Virginia. The rooms were paneled in walnut and pine. A guest once described a room as “an apartment all done in velvet and gold and a bed decorated like a feast day.” A library featured books such as Tom Jones, a titillating novel by Henry Fielding, and Pamela, Virtue Unrewarded and Clarissa Harlowe, both inspirational epistolary works of Samuel Richardson.
Paired frame buildings flanked the mansion. One, the schoolhouse, was where Thomas Jefferson had studied as a small boy when his family lived with the Randolphs. The other building was the plantation office. Colonel Randolph had built elaborate stables along the rear, and one was especially equipped for his favorite horse, a dappled grey named Shakespeare; his groom lived there as well. The outdoor kitchen was behind the house and the lane used for rushing food from the fireplace there to the dining room inside was referred to as “battercake alley.”
Tuckahoe’s prosperity came from the tobacco, produced by slaves, that was shipped to England. There tobacco merchants arranged for its sale. The proceeds, after the exorbitant fees charged for service and commissions, were used to purchase silk gowns, shoes, and nankeen breeches for family members, furnishings for the mansion, and beautiful horses for the Colonel. The horses were for his use, for his guests, and were given as gifts to his children.
The daughters’ every wish was gratified as they matured into womanhood. Musicians came in to play at the dances that Judith, her best friend and cousin, Mary Randolph of Dungeness, and others led up together. Nancy, in early adolescence, read her books, rode her horse, and watched, awaiting her turn in the social sphere.
The plantation had no incursions from the British during the Revolutionary War. Virginians whose homes had been burned and slaves stolen rancorously noted that Tuckahoe was spared because of the Colonel’s earlier entertainment of British Major-General John Phillips and General Lord Charles Cornwallis.
Tuckahoe even had its resident ghost, a young woman in white seen sobbing and fleeing along the east walk. She was said to be Mary Randolph, one of the Colonel’s aunts. She had fallen in love with the Dungeness overseer, but because of the difference in their social status, their romance was forbidden. They ran away and were married. When they were found on Elk Island, above Tuckahoe, Mary was brought back home. Two stories were told about her. One said she was forced to marry a minister much older than she, and the ghost was Mary fleeing from her elderly bridegroom. The other story said she was a licentious young woman and was found in flagrante delecto with the Reverend James Keith. He was banished by the Anglican Church to a distant parish. Mary followed him and they were married. After the birth of several children, she heard a rumor that her first husband was alive and searching for her. She became so fearful that her children would be labeled bastards that she lost her mind. Her daughter married Thomas Marshall, and one of their sons, John Marshall, became chief justice of the United States. Thus, the chief justice was the grandson of an insane woman.
MATOAX AND BIZARRE
In the spring of 1787, Frances Tucker brooded over her pregnancy, the seventh since her marriage to St. George Tucker in 1778. She lashed out at Tucker in a letter, blaming him for her predicament. The only methods of birth control—abstinence and coitus interruptus, both requiring his cooperation—were practices that she never suggested. When he received her letter, he returned to Matoax to assuage her concerns. After his departure, Frances was reconciled to the pregnancy, promising to “conceal every circumstance that might trouble you.”
Bizarre Historical Marker, Farmville, VA.
Virginia Department of Historic Resources
She shouldered heavy responsibilities exacerbated by his frequent absences; his legal work required frequent travel. Frances supervised the care of four young children—Fanny, Harry, Tudor, and Beverley— at home. Her sons by her first marriage, to John Randolph—Dick (Richard), Theo (Theodorick), and Jack (John)—were away at school. She was also responsible for plantation operations at Roanoke, Matoax, and Bizarre, left by John Randolph to his children. Each location had its overseer, but Frances was manager.
Frances, the daughter of Theodorick Bland of Cawsons, a descendant of William Randolph I of Turkey Island, was considered a woman of superior personal attractions and thought to be “exalted in strength of intellect.” Her brother, Dr. Theodorick Bland, thought her voice was so lovely that she could “charm a bird out of a tree.”
In 1769 she married John Randolph of Matoax, also descended from William Randolph I, and both were descended from Pocahontas. John built their home on a grassy knoll overlooking the Appomattox River, near Petersburg. The spacious manor house, which he called Matoax after Pocahontas’s tribal name, was flanked by beautiful groves and was noted for its extensive library. Frances had three sons, and a daughter who died, before her husband died in 1775, leaving her a widow at age twenty-three. She returned home often to Cawsons and visited friends on other plantations. While in Williamsburg, the tall, dark, statuesque widow met St. George Tucker, from Bermuda, who had gone into law practice in Virginia. Her good looks, intelligence, and refined manners captivated him. After their marriage in 1778, Tucker moved to Matoax and bonded quickly with his wife’s sons. Their first child, Fanny, was born in 1779 and Harry was born in 1780. A young orphan, Maria Rind, lived with them to help with the younger children.
In early January 1781, the Tuckers learned of Benedict Arnold’s landing with British troops at Westover and their march to Richmond. Matoax would be in Arnold’s path and Tucker acted quickly to remove his family out of harm’s way by taking them to Bizarre, the Randolph plantation in Cumberland and Prince Edward counties. Frances, with week-old Harry, Maria Rind, and little Fanny, rode in the family chariot, driven by Syphax. Her three sons, accompanied by the slave Essex, traveled on horseback; Tucker was outrider. After the family was settled at Bizarre, Tucker joined volunteers commanded by General Robert Lawson and left to fight the British.
On a march through the area, the British had destroyed everything they could not carry away with them, and Frances, still recuperating from Harry’s birth, faced a daunting situation. She had to arrange for food and clothing for both her family and the slaves. Then she faced another crisis.
Baron von Steuben, fighting with the Americans, was routed from Point of Fork in Fluvanna County and planned to retreat to Prince Edward. General Lawson and his volunteers refused to join in retreat and St. George Tucker sent Frances an urgent message. Leave Bizarre.
“Lose no time . . . to remove yourself and our little ones out of the way.”
She left by midnight that night, wearily packing for the forty-mile journey to Roanoke plantation in Charlotte County. A mare foaled (“folded,” she wrote Tucker), the babies screamed, and seven-year-old Jack watched his mother as she hurriedly threw his father’s valuable papers into a pillowcase and thrust his steel-hilted dagger into her stays. Jack asked why.
“My son,” she replied, “your mother will never be insulted.” Frances was fully prepared to protect her family and her honor.
At Roanoke, in a smoky two-room cabin, she tried to cope, supervising the slaves who had accompanied her, the nursing baby, a toddler, and Dick, Theo, and Jack. The three boys, without a tutor or male influence, ran wild.
“I wish I had a tutor to make me mind my books. I am such a perverse boy I want to play instead of read,” Theo wrote Tucker.
Frances Tucker’s letters to her husband contained assurances of her devotion such as “My lips have not been touched since yours blessed them.”
St. George Tucker, later attached to troops led by Lafayette, wrote her of the fifth anniversary celebration of the Declaration of Independence in Williamsburg. The Marquis de Lafayette hosted an officers’ dinner that was followed by a feu de joie and a military review. Later, recuperating from a fever, Lafayette heard that Washington had arrived. Despite the fever, Lafayette left his bed, mounted his horse, and raced to greet his friend and commander.
“He embraced General Washington with an ardor not easily described,” Tucker wrote Frances of Lafayette’s greeting.
When Tucker learned that the British would be under siege at Yorktown and the danger was past, he allowed his family to leave Roanoke.
“We were never so glad as when we got your letter to return to Bizarre,” Theo reported.
Tucker spoke French fluently and served as an interpreter between the French and Continental officers at Yorktown, and he, with his brigade, witnessed the surrender ceremony. Cornwallis did not appear; he sent a message that he was ill. As the British band played “The World Turned Upside Down,” the French and American troops faced each other in long lines. The British marched between them, their eyes turned toward the French. They refused to acknowledge surrendering to the Americans. Incensed, Lafayette ordered the drum major to strike up “Yankee Doodle.” The lively music so startled the British troops that they involuntarily looked to the Americans.
The family was reunited at Matoax. With the courts open again, Tucker returned to his law practice and travel, but he was home often enough that Frances found herself pregnant again. After another son, Tudor, was born in 1782, the Tuckers sent Dick, Theo, and Jack to Walker Maury’s school in Orange County. Maury was unctuous and servile to the parents but abused and humiliated his pupils. He routinely lashed Jack every Monday. The beatings, reported by Dick, appalled his parents, who sent Jack to visit Tucker’s family in Bermuda.
Frances’s problems did not abate with Jack away. She gave birth to another son, Beverley, and while she was recuperating in 1784, Theo ran away from Maury’s school, now in Williamsburg. Benjamin Harrison, of a nearby Tidewater plantation, had given Theo cash to take the stage to Frances’s sister in Petersburg. Maury’s report to the family did not mention his harsh treatment, only that Theo had been “assuming airs.” Elizabeth Banister persuaded Theo to return, but the situation deteriorated. Maury reported that Theo had been disobedient since his return.
In 1785, Tucker, to give Frances a respite, took the entire family and a favorite riding horse for a visit with his parents in Bermuda. The visit was a pleasant interlude, but the travel arrangements, particularly on the return, weakened Frances, frail with another pregnancy. Passengers on the ship were responsible for food and quarters for themselves and their servants, and oversight of these arrangements fell on her. According to Jack, their “return on a long and boisterous voyage in a miserable sloop” depleted her strength. Sometime after their return home, her baby died at birth.
Jack and Theo returned to Maury’s school, and Dick entered the College of William and Mary.
Tucker took his wife to New York City for medical treatment and they were away during July and August 1786. While in the North, Tucker visited New Jersey College (now Princeton University) to check its suitability for his stepsons’ enrollment. When they returned home, they found that Theo had run away again and this time he refused to return. John Banister reported that “Maury made a violent attack upon Theo, who repelled him.” Maury had then called in an usher to assist in the beating. According to Jack later, “the shocking barbarity of Maury towards my brother Theodorick drove him away from school.” Frances promptly removed Jack from Maury’s too and hired a tutor to operate a small school at Matoax.
Soon, Tucker was off again, to Annapolis, Maryland. He, James Madison, and Edmund Randolph were Virginia delegates to the Annapolis Convention, mandated to recommend the adoption and addition of commercial guidelines to the Articles of Confederation. The Articles had been submitted to the thirteen states in November 1777 for ratification, which did not take place until 1781. The reluctance in ratification indicated their inadequacy. John Adams referred to them as a “rope of sand,” and George Washington found them “wanting energy.” By September 1786, the Annapolis Convention, unable to formulate satisfactory revisions, recommended a general convention to study comprehensive amendments.
Jack and Theo Randolph entered New Jersey College in March 1787. George Wythe, Dick Randolph’s law professor at William and Mary, had been named chancellor of Virginia. He moved to Richmond, and freed his slaves. Dick admired the celebrated Wythe, but the Tuckers were unable to persuade him to go to Richmond to continue his law studies. He preferred Williamsburg, informing his mother that he needed to be still more on guard with respect to his morals. Temptation won out, however, for he later told of the lady who received him in bed at Mr. Wythe’s home. When Frances heard of his association with “dissolute companions,” she sent him North, over his protests. He grumbled to his mother about his dislike of the North, where people did not even know their neighbors’ names.
Frances hoped that life would be easier, with her sons away, after she hired John Coalter, a young man from Augusta County, as a tutor for the younger children.
Her troubles continued, however, as yet another pregnancy advanced. After a serious illness in October, she had a nasty fall in November, injuring her foot, and the injury did not heal. Dr. Bland treated his sister’s injury initially, then sent to Petersburg for advice and even wrote Dr. McClurg in Richmond, requesting help. The remedy prescribed was a “pediluvium, if she could stand it.” This was a special footbath of hot water and brandy in which rosemary or some other aromatic herbs had been boiled.
Her situation was exacerbated later when a Bizarre slave appeared at the door. He had run away to get to Frances and tell her of the extreme and repeated cruelty of the overseer to the plantation slaves. This overseer had driven off many of the more valuable slaves who refused to accept his treatment. Although Frances was expecting Tucker’s return home, she did not hesitate. She wrote him a letter describing the situation and left immediately for Bizarre, “where anarchy reigns.” She could no longer leave “the miserable creatures a prey to the worst part of mankind.” She had to mitigate, as much as she could, “the pangs of their cruel situation.”