Marietta Minnigerode Andrews

Marietta Minnigerode Andrew (1869-1931) was an author and artist who was active in efforts in the 1920s to purchase and preserve Monticello as a historic site. 

She was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1869 to Virginia Cuthbert Powell and Charles Minnigerode, the oldest of ten children. Although her mother was related to some prominent Virginia families, the Minnigerodes were far from wealthy. As an adult, Andrews described herself as a “poor relation.”  

In 1887, she began taking classes at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., while living with relatives in Alexandria, Virginia. Her father’s death a few months later spurred her to start offering art lessons to help supplement the family income (classes at the Corcoran were offered free of charge). In 1890, she secured a position as an assistant teacher at the Corcoran. Through the assistance of family, friends, and the Gallery, she was able to make two trips to Europe in the early 1890s, where she studied artworks and techniques that she then used to inform her teaching. 

In 1895 she married Eliphalet Fraser Andrews (1835-1915), the Director of the Corcoran. The couple had two children, Mary Lord Andrews (1896-1918) and Eliphalet Fraser Andrews Junior (1898-1932).  

Although she had to resign her position as a teacher following her marriage, she continued to be involved in the artistic community of Washington, D.C. In addition, she was a member of the  National Women’s Party (NWP) and the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and helped organize a 1914 suffrage march in Washington, D.C. 

Following her husband’s death in 1915, Minnigerode Andrews added writing to her portfolio of activities, publishing her first book in 1917. 

In 1920, Minnigerode Andrews was one of the founders of the Washington, D.C., based “National Monticello Association,” one of many organizations formed to try and purchase Monticello. Although unsuccessful, the group’s efforts led to Andrews and her co-founders being invited to join the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation’s Board of Governors in 1923. For the next seven years, Andrews devoted much of her time, energy, and artistic talent to raising money to help pay off Monticello’s mortgage and fund necessary restoration work. 

Minnigerode Andrews’ activities in support of Monticello built on her artistic skills and her social connections in Washington, D.C. She hosted teas, organized theatrical pageants – even appearing as Martha Wayles Jefferson – and made public appeals for support. In February 1925 she coordinated a gala costume ball at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., for which she also crafted six presidential silhouettes. In 1926, she wrote and produced a pageant depicting key events in the life of Thomas Jefferson; the show was mounted in high school auditoriums and emphasized Jefferson’s efforts in public education.  

In 1925, she acted as a guide for fifty-seven young women on a month-long trip to France, the culmination of a fundraising campaign that paid off over a third of the TJMF’s mortgage. The women on the trip were described as “self-sufficient” - they had jobs, mostly in offices with some in the arts. The trip was, in a way, an echo of the opportunities Minnigerode Andrews had herself as a young woman.  

Minnigerode Andrews died in August 1931 and is buried in a family graveyard in Middleburg, Loudon County, Virginia. 

 - Megan Brett, 3/3/26

Further Sources

Griffin, Barbara J. “The Life of a Poor Relation: The Art and Artistry of Marietta Minnigerode Andrews.” Virginia Cavalcade 40 (1991): 148-159; 41 (1991), 20-33. 

Griffin, Barbara J. “Andrews, Marietta Minnigerode.” In Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Library of Virginia, 1998. 

Moon, Krystyn M. “Marietta M. Andrews and the Writing of ‘Black Brother’”. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 133, no. 1 (2025): 44-74. 

Scrapbook and related materials, Ladies "Jefferson Pilgrimage" to France, 1925. Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Archives. Jefferson Library, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Special Collections and Archives, Charlottesville, VA.