Thomas Jefferson Randolph
Thomas Jefferson Randolph | |
---|---|
Thomas W. Gilmer | |
Succeeded by | Valentine W. Southall |
Member of the Virginia House of Delegates from the Albemarle district | |
In office December 1, 1834 – December 6, 1835 Serving with Alexander Rives | |
Preceded by | Valentine W. Southall |
Succeeded by | Valentine W. Southall |
Member of the Virginia House of Delegates from the Albemarle district | |
In office December 5, 1836 – January 6, 1839 Serving with Alexander Rives | |
Preceded by | Valentine W. Southall |
Succeeded by | Valentine W. Southall |
Member of the Virginia House of Delegates from the Albemarle district | |
In office December 5, 1842 – December 3, 1843 Serving with Sheldon F. Leake | |
Preceded by | Valentine W. Southall |
Succeeded by | Valentine W. Southall |
Personal details | |
Born | Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. | September 12, 1792
Died | October 7, 1875 Edge Hill, Virginia, U.S. | (aged 83)
Resting place | Monticello |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse |
Jane Hollins Nicholas
(m. 1815; died 1871) |
Children |
|
Parents |
|
Profession | Politician, planter, lawyer, soldier |
Known for | Grandfather and namesake Thomas Jefferson |
Signature | |
Military service | |
Allegiance | Confederate States |
Branch/service | Confederate army |
Rank | Colonel |
Battles/wars | American Civil War |
Thomas Jefferson Randolph (September 12, 1792 – October 7, 1875) of
Early life and education
Thomas Jefferson Randolph was the eldest son of
When Jefferson was 15 (in 1807), his father sent him to Philadelphia for further studies, which Jefferson in part directed toward botany, other natural sciences and anatomy.[2]
Randolph soon became the family leader. In 1819, his alcoholic brother in law, Charles Bankhead (son of Jefferson's friend John Bankhead and married to his eldest sister Ann Cary Randolph), severely wounded Randolph at the Albemarle County courthouse, to Jefferson's consternation.[3] Jefferson died when Randolph was 34, and his father two years later.[2]
Marriage and family
In 1815 Randolph married Jane Hollins Nicholas (1798–1871), daughter of
Meanwhile, Thomas and Jane Randolph had thirteen children:
- Margaret Smith Randolph (1816–1842)
- Martha Jefferson ('Patsy') Randolph (1817–1857)
- Mary Buchanan Randolph (1818–1821)
- Careyanne Nicholas Randolph (1820–1857)
- Mary Buchanan Randolph (1821–1884)
- Ellen Wayles Randolph (1823–1896)
- Maria Jefferson Carr Randolph (1826–1902)
- Carolina Ramsey Randolph (1828–1902)
- Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Jr. (1829–1872)
- Jane Nicholas Randolph (1831–1868)
- Wilson Cary Nicholas Randolph (1834–1907)
- Meriwether Lewis Randolph (1837–1871)
- Sarah Nicholas Randolph (1839–1892)
Hemings controversy
Since the late 20th century, some criticized Randolph for falsely telling historian Henry Randall that his uncle Peter Carr (Thomas Jefferson's nephew) was the father of Sally Hemings' children (rather than his blood relatives, as was later found true). Randolph admitted some of Hemings' children strongly resembled the president. Now, most historians accept that Jefferson had a long relationship with Sally Hemings and fathered her six children. As mentioned below, Randolph had a complex relationship with slavery.
Career
Planter and Jefferson's executor
A planter and leading citizen of his native Albemarle County, like his father and grandfathers, Randolph operated plantations (including Monticello) using enslaved labor. On returning to Monticello in 1815 during a drought crisis, Randolph began to manage Monticello for his (separated) mother and grandfather.[1] In 1817 Jefferson leased another two of his quarter-farms, Tufton and Lego, to Randolph, who soon built a stone house and moved his growing family into the Tufton premises.[5][6]
Randolph had been close to his grandfather and was appointed executor of his estate in Thomas Jefferson's will, executed in 1826. As that year had begun, following the conclusion of his father's term as Virginia's 21st governor and escalation of problems with his creditors following mounting debts, Randolph managed to purchase his father's plantation at
Political career
Albemarle County voters elected Thomas Randolph as one of their delegates (part-time) to the
After
In 1850, Randolph was elected to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, as one of four delegates jointly elected from Albemarle and adjoining Nelson and Amherst Counties.[17][18]
Author and educator
In 1829, Randolph published Memoir, Correspondence and Miscellanies: from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson. It was the first collection of Jefferson's writings. Shortly thereafter, he became a member of the Board of Visitors at the nearby University of Virginia.[2] Links to other of Thomas Jefferson Randolph's works are below.
Randolph also allowed his wife and unmarried sisters to teach school at what had been the original house on his Edgehill estate beginning in 1829. His sister Cornelia Randolph (1799-1871) taught painting, drawing and sculpture there before the American Civil War, during which she moved to Alexandria, Virginia to live with female relatives.[19]
From 1857 to 1864, Randolph served as the rector of the University of Virginia, succeeding Andrew Stevenson.[20]
Civil War and later years
Albemarle County voters also elected Randolph along with Southall and
Continuing his activity in politics after the war, Randolph served as the temporary chairman of the 1872 Democratic National Convention.[22]
Death and legacy
Randolph survived his wife by several years. He died at Edgehill on October 7, 1875, following a carriage accident, and was buried beside her in the Monticello family graveyard.
Jefferson–Hemings controversy
The historian Henry S. Randall, in an 1868 letter to James Parton, also a historian, wrote that "The 'Dusky Sally Story'--the story that Mr. Jefferson kept one of his slaves, (Sally Hemings) as his mistress and had children by her, was once extensively believed by respectable men..."[24] According to Randall, after Thomas Jefferson had died, his oldest grandson Randolph talked with the historian and personally noted the strong resemblance of the Hemings' children to his grandfather, their master.[a]
In the 1850s, Randolph told the biographer Henry Randall that Jefferson's nephew Peter Carr had been the father of Hemings' children. He also said that his mother had told him that Jefferson had been absent for 15 months prior to the birth of one of Sally Hemings' children, so could not have been the father.
The historian Andrew Burstein has said, "[T]he white Jefferson descendants who established the family denial in the mid-nineteenth century cast responsibility for paternity on two Jefferson nephews (children of Jefferson's sister) whose DNA was not a match. So, as far as can be reconstructed, there are no Jeffersons other than the president who had the degree of physical access to Sally Hemings that he did."[29]
Notes
- ^ Randall recounted that Randolph had said the following:
she [Hemings] had children which resembled Mr. Jefferson so closely that it was plain that they had his blood in their veins.... He said in one instance, a gentleman dining with Mr. Jefferson, looked so startled as he raised his eyes from the latter to the servant behind him, that his discovery of the resemblance was perfectly obvious to all.[24]
- ^ Randall passed this family history on to James Parton, and suggested his own confirmation of the material. At the request of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Randall had avoided any discussion of Sally Hemings and her children in his own 1858 biography of Jefferson.[24]
- Merrill Peterson and Douglass Adair.[25] In addition, Randolph's sister Ellen wrote to her husband identifying Samuel Carr, Peter's brother, as the father of Hemings' children. The 20th-century historian Dumas Malone used the letter to refute Jefferson's paternity, and was the first to publish it in the 1970s in one of his volumes of the lengthy biography.[25]Later, 20th-century historians used Malone's extensive documentation of Jefferson's activities to determine that Jefferson was at Monticello for the conception of some of Hemings's children (he was absent for several days of the conception periods for Madison and Eston, and for half the conception period for Beverly; we have no records of Sally's residence during these periods). He recorded the children's births along with those of other slaves in his Farm Book, which was rediscovered and first published in the 1950s.[26][27]
References
- ^ a b "Chapter One: Stealing Monticello".
- ^ a b c d "Thomas Jefferson Randolph". Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Retrieved June 9, 2021.
- ^ "Featured Letter: An Alcoholic Grandson-in-Law | Thomas Jefferson's Monticello".
- ^ Melvin I. Urofsky, The Levy Family and Monticello, 1834-1923 (Monticello Monograph Series 2001, pp. 19, 36
- ^ "Founders Online: Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Lease of Tufton and Lego to Thomas ..."
- ^ a b "Tufton | Thomas Jefferson's Monticello".
- ^ Urofsky pp. 36-38
- ^ Urofsky p. 40
- ^ Urofsky pp. 41-41
- ^ 1850 U.S. Federal Census Slave Schedule for Albemarle County, Virginia pp. 62-63 of 49
- ^ 1860 U.S. Federal Census Slave Schedule for Frederickville, Albemarle County, Virginia pp. 14, 84-85 of 86
- ^ Cynthia Miller Leonard, Virginia General Assembly 1619-1978 (Virginia State Library 1978) pp. 359, 363, 371, 379, 384, 404
- ^ Paul Wilstach, Jefferson and Monticello (Doubleday, Page & Company, 1925 pp. 227-228
- ^ Speech of Thomas J. Randolph in the House of Delegates of Virginia, on the abolition of slavery. Retrieved on 2006-12-06.
- ^ Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and war in Virginia, 1772-1832 (W.W. Norton Company 2013) p. 416
- ISBN 978-1-4696-7311-0) p. 150
- ^ Leonard p. 441
- ISBN 978-1-2879-2059-5.
- ^ "Founders Online: Thomas Jefferson to Cornelia J. Randolph, 3 June 1811".
- ^ Manual of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine (PDF). Retrieved on 2006-12-05.
- ^ Leonard p. 474; see note on talk page
- ^ Official Proceedings of the National Democratic Convention, Held at Baltimore, July 9, 1872. Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, Printers. 1872.
- ^ "A Guide to the Additional Papers of the Randolph Family of Edgehill 1813-1834 Randolph Family of Edgehill, Additional Papers 5533-f".
- ^ a b c d "Letter from Henry Randall to James Parton, June 1, 1868". Jefferson's Blood. PBS Frontline. 2000. Retrieved September 18, 2011.
- ^ a b Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, University of Virginia Press, 1998 edition, preface addresses 1998 DNA results
- ^ Winthrop Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968
- ^ Fawn McKay Brodie, Thomas Jefferson, An Intimate History (1974), p. 287
- S2CID 4424562. Archived from the original(PDF) on April 15, 2016. Retrieved March 14, 2011.
- ^ Richard Shenkman, "The Unknown Jefferson: An Interview with Andrew Burstein", History News Network, 25 July 2005, accessed 14 March 2011.
Further reading
- Freehling, William W., The Road to Disunion (1990).
- Randolph, Sarah Nicholas. The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson: Compiled from Family Letters and Reminiscences (1871), discusses the relationship between Thomas J. Randolph and his maternal grandfather Thomas Jefferson.