Custom Dates

Dates

Format: 2024-11
Format: 2024-11

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 10 July 1853

I am very sorry, my dear Mr. Randall, that I can give you no information on the subject of the chasms in Mr. Jefferson’s Correspondence.—I have no copy of Tucker’s Biography at hand to see what mention he makes of them. He wrote whilst my mother was yet living. She, of all persons would have...

Thomas Jefferson Randolph to Charles Wirtenbaker, [ca. 30 June 1858]

Your note inclosing that of Gov. Wise is before me. I most fully appreciate his Excellency’s feelings and views, but as the nearest relative and sole Executor of Mr Jefferson I cannot disregard what I know to have been his cherished domestic feeling, fostered while he lived with a warmth and...

Extract from Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 26 Jan. 1856

Few things could give me more pleasure than to contribute in the smallest degree to the successful termination of the work which at present occupies your time and thoughts. I feel the deepest interest in it.— I will not take up your questions in order, but write what I can, when I can, and as the...

Extract from Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 13 Feb. 1856

No. 3. I have found it impossible to resume my pen until now when I have an hour or so of leisure before turning my attention to the daily cares & duties which admit of no postponement. The decay of my grandfather’s fortune was owing, as you know, to various causes, but to none more than the...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 18 Feb. 1856

… The house at Poplar Forest was very pretty and pleasant. It was of brick, one story in front, and, owing to the falling of the ground, two in the rear. It was an exact octagon, with a centre-hall twenty feet square, lighted from above. This was a beautiful room, and served as a dining-room....

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 22 Feb. 1856

Sent to Mr Randall with alterations or additions which I no longer remember, but the whole letter omitted in Mr Randall’s book No. 5. This letter is a continuation of the one of the 18h and I begin by correcting several small, unimportant inaccuracies. My grandfather’s visits to Bedford were...

George Wythe Randolph to James L. Cabell, 27 Feb. 1856

I have received your letter of the 25th, and but being confined to the house by an attack of measles from which I am not entirely recovered, some little time may elapse before I can comply with your request in reference to the Publisher. It will give me very great pleasure to aid you in any way...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 2 Mar. 1856

I have been prevented from writing, my dear Mr Randall, by the illness of one of my sons, and the absence of a confidential domestic who has for years been a sort of right hand on all household matters. I resume my pen uncertain how soon I may be compelled to lay it down. You ask for the...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 13 Mar. 1856

I know not where to begin in reply to your enquiries, my dear Mr Randall, for many subjects press upon me at once. I will therefore take up the one to which I have already alluded. You say in one of your letters “From some remark that dropped from Wormeley, a former slave in your family, as in...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 27 Mar. 1856

Enclosed you have part of a letter, which I began a week ago. Sudden and severe cold which confined me some days to my bed, prevented me from going on with it: I send it in it’s unfinished state. Yours of the 22nd with it’s enclosures, reached me yesterday. I am not strong enough to write much to...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 31 July 1856

I cannot myself give you any information as to what became of my grandfather’s letters to my mother. She died at Edgehill, October. 1836. I was in Boston at the time of her death and never saw the papers which she left behind. Her father’s letters were no doubt among those papers, and must be in...

Extract from Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 16 May 1857

For the details of Mr Jefferson’s funeral I must refer you to my brothers and sisters. I was not present nor was my sister Cornelia. She was with me in Boston when in July 1826, we received a summons to hasten on to Virginia if we wished to see our grandfather alive. We set off immediately but...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, 11 June 1857

I have your two letters before me—If I have not sooner replied to them my excuse is simply that I could not. A complication of family cares & duties rendered it impossible for me to write till now. The first Mrs Francis Eppes was a niece of my father’s—the eldest daughter of his sister Jane...

George Wythe Randolph to Derby & Jackson, 27 Nov. 1857

I have received your letter of the 25th inst: addressed to “The Honble Geo: W Randolph” and requesting permission to publish in your circular my letter of July 3rd to Mr Randall. You probably mistake me for my elder brother who edited the correspondence of Mr Jefferson and was in public life at...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge’s Memories of Thomas Jefferson, [ca. 1858]

a beginning destined never to go farther— Thomas Jefferson It is now one hundred and fifteen years since a respectable family, possessed of competent fortune, resided on a plantation of Virginia situated on the banks of a mountain stream, the Rivanna, a tributary of the noble James, one of the...

Extract from Mary B. Randolph to Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge, 30 June 1858

“There has been a serious proposition made by the Governor of the State to my father (Col. T. J. Randolph) to have his Grandfather’s remains removed to Richmond, to be placed in the Hollywood Cemetery, where Mr Monroe’s are to be interred, and where Mr Wise proposes that Mr Madison, Mr Jefferson...

Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge to Adolph de Circourt, 18 July 1858

So long a time has passed without my writing to you that I fear you may be almost surprised at receiving a letter from me. You will not however have ascribed my silence to change of feeling towards yourself. You know me too well to suspect me of fickleness in my friendships. You will have placed...