University of Virginia Library

Alderman Library Gains Letters
Of Jefferson's Grand-daughter

A collection of 213 letters
written by Thomas Jefferson's
granddaughter, Ellen Wayles Randolph
Coolidge, many containing
references to her grandfather, have
been acquired by the University's
Alderman Library. The letters have
been in the family of Ellen
Randolph Coolidge's great-grandson,
Harold Jefferson Coolidge Jr.
of Washington, D.C.

Born in 1796, Ellen Wayles
Randolph was the daughter of
Jefferson's daughter Martha and
Thomas Mann Randolph. During
the summers and at other times
when Jefferson was there, the
family moved from their nearby
farm Edgehill to Monticello, Ellen
lived at Monticello periodically
with her family until 1824 when
she married Joseph Coolidge Jr. of
Boston, a successful merchant trading
chiefly with the Far East.

While at Monticello Ellen often
traveled with her grandfather to his
home, Poplar Forest, in Bedford
county and to Natural Bridge and
other points of interest, from which
she wrote her family many letters
containing references to her
"Grandpapa."

During lengthy social visits to
Richmond, Washington, Baltimore
and Philadelphia in the period
1815-1824, Ellen wrote frequent
letters containing shrewd comments
on the people and social life of
these cities. When she was at home,
her letters written in delicate and
minuscule handwriting to absent
members of the family contained
references to Jefferson, his activities,
his generally declining health
and the constant stream of visitors
to Monticello.

During a visit to Richmond in
1818, 22-year-old Ellen wrote her
mother, "At Monticello I live in the
almost constant exercise of my
heart and understanding having
constantly before me objects of the
warmest affection and highest admiration.
The conversation I hear
there is completely the feast of
reason and I would not permanently
change my situation with any
one living...when I am listening to
insipid conversation and wearisome
remarks, when I compare the range
of intellect in most of the persons I
am acquainted with here to that of
my friends, I bless God for having
been born at Monticello, your
daughter, and so much the object
of my dear Grandfather's care."

Her letters after her marriage
and move to Boston reflect the
serious difficulties she had to face
with her husband absent on business
in China often for long periods
of time, but also her happy
adjustment to New England and its
people.

"They are an enlightened
people, these New Englanders," she
wrote in 1826, "liberal and public
spirited, and how their character
has come to be so misunderstood at
the South, I cannot tell, except that
the division of party and the rage of
political discord impelled them to
act unworthy of themselves, whilst
it embittered our own judgments of
their motives."