The Ladies of the White House; Or, in the Home of the Presidents: Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents from Washington to the Present Time—1789–1881Holloway, Laura C. (Laura Carter)
History
The Ladies of the White House; Or, in the Home of the Presidents: Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents from Washington to the Present Time—1789–1881
Holloway, Laura C. (Laura Carter)
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Presidents' spouses -- United States -- Biography
“In the summer of 1832, my mother parted with the orphan granddaughter,
Ellen Bankhead, whom she had adopted, and who, being then married to Mr.
John Carter, of Albemarle, returned to live on his estate in his native
mountains, and among the scenes of her childhood. Willie, her little
orphan brother, was about that time claimed by his paternal grandfather,
and placed at a day-school near him. In the following spring, Mr. Trist
purchased a house into which we all moved. I think my mother felt more
at home in this pleasant, new abode than she had ever done since leaving
Monticello. The house had been built by Mr. Richard Rush, our Minister
to England for many years, and when we first moved to Washington, was
occupied by this gentleman and his lovely wife and family. It was a
spacious dwelling, admirably planned and built, with a large garden and
out-buildings, the whole enclosed by a high brick wall. There the last
three years of my mother’s life were spent, although her death took
place suddenly at Edgehill, my brother’s residence in Virginia.
“The winter preceding had been marked by the death of my brother, James
Madison Randolph, who had just completed his 27th year. He was buried at
Monticello on a cold day in January. I remember the negroes assembled
there, and made a fire to keep them warm while they waited for the
procession which followed him to his early grave, who, they said, was
the ‘black man’s friend,’ and would have shared his last cent with one
of them. At the time of our removal to that pleasant new home, my
brother-in-law, Mr. Joseph Coolidge, of Boston, having gone to China,
was engaged in business in Canton; his family remaining in Boston. In
the summer of 1834, and during the absence of her husband, my sister
paid us a visit, passing the summer in Virginia at my brother’s, and the
following winter with us in Washington. On that occasion, my mother had
all her daughters with her for the last time; and Lewis, yet unmarried,
was still living with her. The season was remarkable for its severity,
the thermometer falling so low as 16° below zero, on a gallery with a
southern exposure of our house, and so late even as the 1st day of
March, stood at zero—the snow a foot deep in the garden. Soon after the
purchase of that house, Mr. Trist, whose health had been very delicate,
was appointed by General Jackson to be United States Consul at Havana,
which post had become vacant by the death of Mr. Shaler, long
distinguished as our Consul at Algiers. He proceeded there alone, and in
the summer returned to Washington. After remaining with us a few months,
he again went to Havana alone to pass one more winter there, and then
return to take charge of the office of First Comptroller of the
Treasury, which General Jackson had tendered to him. He was still in
Havana in the spring of 1835, when my brother Lewis left us to be
married in Tennessee, and Mr. Coolidge arrived from China and came
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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