Mary Randolph

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"Molly" Randolph (Mrs. David Meade Randolph)

Mary Randolph (August 9, 1762 – January 23, 1828) is perhaps most famous as the author of the first regional American cookbook The Virginia Housewife published in 1824. A popular housekeeping book that featured Southern, and especially Virginia, cooked foods and baked goods. An overall household guide, featuring nearly 500 recipes, it also explained how to make soap, starch, blacking and cologne. She was a direct descendant of Pocahontas; Cousin of Thomas Jefferson; and of Robert E. Lee.

Her brother Thomas Mann Randolph, Governor of Virginia 1819-1821, married Martha Jefferson, (called Patsy), daughter of Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826).

Mary Jane Randolph was born in 1762, before the American Revolutionary War (1775 – 1783), at Ampthill, the eldest child of Thomas Mann and Ann Cary Randolph, of Tuckahoe. Her maternal grandfather was Archibald Cary, of "Ampthill"; her paternal grandfather was William Randolph, of Tuckahoe. A member of the landed gentry, she married her first cousin David Meade Randolph (1760-1830) in 1780. Her husband was a patriot officer during the Revolutionary War, and George Washington appointed him the US Marshall of Virginia in 1795, with headquarters in Richmond. David Randolph was a Federalist and an open critic of his second cousin Thomas Jefferson. After Jefferson's 1800 election to the presidency, he removed David Randolph from office and the family's fortunes declined.

Ampthill plantation was located in the Virginia Colony, in what would become Chesterfield County, on the south bank of the James River about four miles south of the head of navigation at modern-day Richmond.
Tuckahoe, the Randolph family plantation house in Goochland County, was built between 1730 and 1740, by William Randolph, Mary's grandfather. William Randolph and Maria Judith Page Randolph, the owners of the house, died in 1745 leaving three orphaned children in the care of Thomas Jefferson's parents, Peter Jefferson and Jane Randolph Jefferson. The Jefferson family moved to Tuckahoe for seven years to care for the children. Thomas Jefferson, his siblings, and his cousins, including Mary, were educated in a one-room schoolhouse on the estate.

Mary and David's youngest son, when a midshipman in the U.S. Navy, fell from a mast and was crippled. Mary's devoted care of that injured son is said to have hastened her death, and would seem to explain her epitaph.

Mary died on January 23, 1828 (aged 65) in Washington City, but was buried on the hillside just below Arlington House at a spot she had earlier selected, with the brick wall surrounding the grave added to keep cattle away. Mary Randolph was the first person known to be buried at what would become Arlington National Cemetery, at the home of her cousin George Washington Parke Custis, stepgrandson of George Washington and father of Mary Custis, wife of Robert E. Lee.

David died on September 27, 1830 (aged 71–72) and is buried at Bruton Parish Episcopal Church Cemetery Williamsburg, Virginia

Counted among Mary Randolph’s ancestors were Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, wife of George Washington Parke Custis, the builder of Arlington House; the Jamestown settler John Rolfe and the famous Virginia Indian princess Pocahontas, who married in 1614.

Tombstone epitaph

Mary Randolph is the first person known to be buried at Arlington. [1]

"Sacred to the memory of

Mrs. Mary Randolph
her intrinsic worth needs no eulogium
The deceased was born
The 9th of August, 1762
at Amphill near Richmond, Virginia
and died the 23rd of January 1828
in Washington City
a victim to maternal love and duty"



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References

  1. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=135882 THE HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE, last revised on May 10, 2021; originally submitted on November 30, 2013, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.

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