“In the spring of 1828, my mother returned to Monticello, accompanied by Cornelia and Septimia, leaving my brother at a boarding-school in the country near Cambridge. This being their first separation, it was felt most acutely on both sides, for he, just ten years old, was an unusually sensitive and warm-hearted boy, and as the ‘youngling of her flock,’ was the darling of her heart. He was to remain behind among strangers, whilst his mother, the object of his passionate fondness and devoted attachment, was to return without him to that dear old home he so well remembered and loved. My mother, on her return to Monticello after an absence of eighteen months, found my father very ill. He had been a part of the previous winter in Georgia, engaged as commissioner on the part of the United States in establishing a boundary line between that State and Florida. His letters spoke of his enjoying the climate, and he enjoyed also the opportunities which he there found of gratifying his fondness for botanical studies; but he returned home in very bad health, and after a few months of severe suffering, died on the 20th of June, 1828, in his sixtieth year. Monticello was sold the following winter. My mother took leave of her beloved home in December—that home which had been the scene of her happiest years, where she had enjoyed her dear father’s society, and been the solace of his age; where her children had been, most of them, born and grown up around her, and where her own happy childhood had been passed before the death of her mother. “She removed with her family to the house of her son Jefferson. My mother lived a year with my brother’s family, during which time she formed a plan of keeping a school for young ladies, assisted by her unmarried daughters, who were to be teachers under her superintendence. This plan was, however, rendered unnecessary by the donations so generously made her by the States of South Carolina and Louisiana, of $10,000 each. About this time, also, Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, prompted by the wish to do something in aid of Mr. Jefferson’s daughter, offered to my husband, who had just then commenced the practice of the law, one of the higher clerkships in the State Department, with a salary of $1,400. This offer was accepted by him, with the understanding that my mother and sisters would go with us to live in Washington as one family. In the autumn of 1829, we bade adieu to our native mountains, and removed to Washington. We occupied a small house with a pretty garden, pleasantly situated, where we lived together, forming one family, consisting of seven grown persons and four children, the two youngest being my own, and the other two orphans of my eldest sister, who had been taken by their grandmother to her home at Monticello, while her father was still living.