Ella K. Barnard

“ Though born in North Carolina she was but one year old when her parents returned to their former home in Hanover county, Virginia, and in later years Dolly always preferred to call herself a Virginian, for it was around the old Scotch Town homestead that all her loving memories clustered. It was in Virginia, too, that she imbibed the early training that fitted her to become a graceful, tactful leader in the nation's social life. ”

“ Here Patrick Henry, already famous, lived, and Dolly Payne, a blue-eyed, merry little lassie, sat beside her mother in the family room, "the blue room," with its walnut wainscoting trimmed with pine, and solid walnut doors, and learned to sew and read. Scotch Town stands on high ground, and for miles around you can see an unbroken stretch of country. ”

“ During the eight years when, as wife of the Secretary of State, she and her sisters, Lucy and Anna, were often called on by Jefferson [57] to do the honors of the White House, she wore her "pretty Quaker cap." Indeed it was not until she came there as its mistress that she reluctantly laid it aside as "no longer suitable to her surroundings."
She has sometimes been accused of adhering less strictly to some of the more essential beliefs of Quakerism, for which her father had suffered so much.
Dolly was perhaps never a great woman, but she was infinitely better, a loving one. ”

“ I Thomas Pleasants of Goochland County in Virginia from mature deliberate consideration and the convictions of my own mind being fully persuaded that freedom is the natural birthright of all mankind and that no Law moral or divine has given me a right to or property in the persons of any of my fellow creatures, and being desirous to fulfil the injunction of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by doing to others as I would be done by. ”

“ Returning to Philadelphia, Dolly threw herself into the gay life of the capital, of which she at once became one of [86] the chief ornaments. John Adams wrote to his wife from Philadelphia: "I dined yesterday with Madison. Mrs Madison is a fine woman, her sisters equally so. One of them is married to George Washington. The ladies, whose name is Payne, are of a Quaker family, one of North Carolina."
Her marriage to Madison opened up to her a larger and broader life, one for which, by nature, she was well fitted. ”

“ As a justice the planter was one of five to preside at all trials of the negroes, they not being allowed a trial by jury, but on the agreement of the five they were freed or condemned and sentenced. Such tasks as these, with the oversight of his estate and his duties in the House of Burgesses, made the Virginia gentleman a busy man. Still, he never allowed his life to become a strenuous one, but found ample time for his pleasures and for his social duties. ”

“ Of Dolly, Harriet Martineau said:
"She is a strong-minded woman, fully capable of entering into her husband's occupations and cares, and there is little doubt that he owed much to her intellectual companionship, as well as to her ability in sustaining the outward dignity of his office. When I was her guest she was in excellent health and lively spirits, and I trust that, though she has lost the one great object of her life, she may yet find interests enough to occupy and cheer many years of honored age."
James Madison had died shortly after this visit on June 28, 1836. ”

“ There is little time in this busy world of ours for reading,—little, indeed, for thinking;—and there are already many books; but perhaps these few additional pages relating to Dolly Madison, who was loved and honored during so many years by our people, may be not altogether amiss. During eleven administrations she was the intimate friend of our presidents and their families. What a rare privilege was hers—to be at home in the families of Washington, of Jefferson, of Madison, of Monroe ”

“ A rough people many of them still were, without doubt, when the little Dolly was born in their midst, on a plantation in Guilford county, to take charge of which her father had come a few years before from his Virginia home to where a thrifty, God-fearing colony of Quaker emigrants from New Garden, Pennsylvania, had peopled the wilderness, and in memory of the Pennsylvania home had erected a new "New Garden Meeting House" in a forest clearing. ”

“ He was a man of affairs, a vestryman, and a member of the House of Burgesses.
The English traveler Smythe has given a pleasing picture of the Virginia gentleman. "These in general have had a liberal education, possess enlightened understanding and a thorough knowledge of the world, that furnishes them with an ease and freedom of manners and conversation highly to their advantage in exterior, which no vicissitudes of fortune or place can divest them of, they being actually, according to my ideas, the most agreeable [22] and best companions, friends and neighbors that need be desired. ”

“ An excellent breakfast at nine o'clock, a sumptuous dinner at two, tea and punch in the afternoon, and an elegant little supper, divided the day most happily for those whose stomachs were never unprepared. ”

“ Generations of worthy ancestors had transmitted to her the instincts of a lady, a warm and loving heart, and an appreciation of true worth, traits that were to serve her well in after years.
[21] The grandfather, Josias Payne [1] , gentleman, was the son of George Payne, justice and high-sheriff of Goochland, who was descended from one of "Virginia's Adventurers," a younger brother of Sir Robert Payne, M.P. from Huntingdonshire, England. Josias Payne had become the owner of thousands of acres of Virginia's richest land along the James river. ”

“ He, with several brothers, came to Virginia to escape the Quaker persecution in England, settling first in Henrico and afterwards in Hanover county, where he died in 1760, at an advanced age. He had acquired a large estate, and many negroes. What a gratification it would have been to the old man had he lived a few years longer and heard his wayward grandson, Patrick Henry, argue the "Parson's cause," or make his first great speech in the House of Burgesses. ”

“ My beloved & tender Mother left us forever on the 20th of October last—She was in Virgia with my youngest sister when she died without suffering or regret. The loss is only ours, & for that only ought we her children to mourn.
Mr. Madison unites with me in best wishes & regard for you and yours.
D. P. Madison [51] ."
The following unpublished letter [52] from James Madison to his brother-in-law, George Steptoe Washington, is interesting as giving an account of the early troubles with Great Britain that finally led to the War of 1812:
Washington, Decr 7, 1807. ”

“ Robert Pleasants was the son of John Pleasants, of Henrico, the clerk of the Upper Quarterly Meeting, who had died in 1771 and freed all his slaves by will, providing for the maintenance of those over forty-five years of age. The laws of Virginia, however, did not permit his heirs to carry out his wishes, and the slaves remained in their possession until 1798, when they finally succeeded in having the freedom of not only the several hundred originally freed, but of their issue, confirmed by a decree of the High Court of Chancery of Virginia.—From Friends' records, Monument Street, Baltimore. ”

“ A few years earlier a cousin of Dolly Dandridge, from her own home, the White House on the Pamunky, had been married to Colonel Washington, a gallant young officer lately elected to the House of Burgesses. A few years later Dolly Dandridge herself became the second wife of Patrick Henry, the cousin of Mary [20] Payne, a young lawyer of Hanover county, whose eloquence had electrified the House of Burgesses, and who was now its acknowledged leader in the fight against English taxation. ”

“ William Coles came later to America from Enniscorthy, Ireland, and married Lucy, the sister of his brother's wife, then the widow of William Dabney, by whom she had one son, William. William and Lucy Winston Coles had three children: Walter; Lucy, who married her cousin Isaac Winston, and Mary, the wife of John Payne, and mother of Dolly Madison.
Lucy Winston came of a Quaker family that has, perhaps, furnished more men of note than any other in our country. Her father, Isaac Winston, [5] emigrant, was an able man of an old Yorkshire family that had settled in Wales. ”

“ The Paynes settled in what was then the northern part of Philadelphia, and at first John Payne believed his means ample to live in the same hospitable way that had been his wont on the old Virginia plantation, but he soon found his expenses were increased much beyond his expectations, and decided, with the assistance of his sons, to start in business in Philadelphia. For this kind of life, however, his early training had not fitted him, and the business [60] venture was a complete failure. ”

“ There are no schools or printing to make poor people "dissatisfied." But later there was one free school endowed by a large-hearted man. Virginia up to this time had few schools. In some neighborhoods the planters clubbed together and log school houses were built, but there were more often none at all, the boys being sent North or abroad for their education, while that of the girls was often entirely lacking. ”

“ Will you believe it, my sister? We have had a battle or skirmish near Bladensburg, and I am still here, within sound of the cannons! Mr. Madison comes not; may God protect him! Two messengers covered with dust come to bid me fly; but I wait for him.... At this late hour a wagon has been procured. I have had it filled with the plate and most valuable portable articles belonging to the house; whether it will reach its destination, the Bank of Maryland, or fall into the hands of British soldiery, events must determine.
[104] ”

“ Dolly found herself more than comfortably provided for.
The moving of the national capital to Philadelphia had crowded the city to its utmost capacity, and homes were hard to find. Mary Payne had opened her doors, [38] and Aaron Burr, then Congressman, was fortunate to find boarding there.
Dolly was soon drawn into society, and her brilliant beauty and charming manners drew many admirers. James Madison requested to be introduced, and Dolly wrote her friend, Elizabeth Lee: "Thou must come to me, for Aaron Burr [39] is [76] going to bring the great little Madison to see me this evening." ”

“ It was probably in the fall of 1787 that two of Dolly's Virginia friends came to pass the winter in Philadelphia,—Deborah Pleasants, [19] the daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Pleasants of Beaver Dam, who had been a friend and schoolmate at the old Cedar Creek School; and her cousin Elizabeth Brook, [20] then from Leesburg, Virginia, a Quaker settlement where the smaller plantations of from one hundred to three hundred acres were cultivated entirely by free labor. ”

“ At the time of Dolly's death [64] her negro slaves were valued at two thousand dollars.
Madison was much interested in the Colonization Society. Of the National Society, founded in 1817, Bushrod Washington was president. Afterward there [113] was a State Colonization Society of Virginia organized, and of it John Marshall was president, and its vice-presidents were James Madison, James Monroe, James Pleasants, John Tyler, Hugh Nelson and others. These men all recognized the fact that "slavery proved the spring of woes innumerable," and hindered progress in the south. ”

“ Madisonia, the daughter, seems to have been at school.
This letter, [65] like so many of Dolly's, was undated. It has her frank mark upon it. It was probably written in June, 1842, when Tyler vetoed the tariff bill.
Plantation life, with its roomy surroundings, has given many finely developed characters. The oak, the chestnut and the tulip tree of the forest tower higher, because of close contact, perhaps, but in shape differ little from each other. Planted in the open, each one hastens to assume its natural form, and becomes symmetrical in a way with which the other cannot vie. ”

“ Dr. William Thornton, the architect of the Octagon House, was born of Quaker parents in the West Indies, May 27th, 1761. He came to Washington in 1793, and was the right-hand man of the commissioners in the early history of Washington. He died there in 1828. He was also the architect of Tudor Place and of the United States Capitol. His works give him sufficient praise.
"The Capitol in the federal city, though faulty in detail, is one of the finest designs of modern times."—B. H. Latrobe's Journal. ”

“ Here also are the portraits of George Steptoe, and the "gay fox-loving squire," Samuel Washington, his father, the loving husband of five wives, who laid them [90] one by one in the little family burying plot near by, where now he himself and many of his descendants sleep the last sleep.
"In ancient graves, where trailing vines
And tender wild flowers grow."
In 1807 a great grief came to Dolly in the loss of her beloved mother, who did not live to see her mistress of the White House. Mary Coles had been a belle and beauty during her girlhood. ”

“ It has been said that it is difficult to overestimate the influence of these Quaker pioneers (of whom Charles Lynch was chief) in establishing better relations with the Indians and fostering a spirit of peace and justice amongst the neighbors. Lynch soon became a leading man, and already in 1763 had great wealth in the form of tobacco, cattle and slaves.
He was asked in 1764 to become a member of the Assembly, but refused as inconsistent with his Quaker principles. ”

“ The Marquis de Chastellux, a major-general under Rochambeau, in the Revolutionary Army, who wrote an account of his travels in Virginia in 1780-2, has, however, given us a picture of a country family of this time, and of one not far distant from Scotch Town. He visited the family of General Nelson at Offley, an "unpretentious country place in Hanover county," and says: [49]
"In the absence of the General, who had gone to Williamsburg, his mother and wife received us with all the politeness, ease and cordiality natural to his family. ”

“ To point out the importance of circumspection in your conduct, it may be proper to observe, that a good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. ”