Ann Cary Randolph (January 23, 1791–February 11, 1826),[1] daughter of Martha and Thomas Mann Randolph, was Jefferson's first grandchild and chief gardening correspondent when he was absent from Monticello. "[H]ow stands the fruit with you in the neighborhood & at Monticello," Jefferson wrote twelve-year-old Ann from Washington,
and particularly the peaches, as they are what will be in season when I come home. the figs also, have they been hurt? you must mount Midas & ride over to Monticello to inform yourself, or collect the information from good authority & let me have it by next post.[2]
Ann tended Monticello's flower garden as well, and Jefferson sent one of two extant drawings of the flower beds there to his granddaughter, on the back of a letter describing his plans:
From yourself I may soon expect a report of your first visit to Monticello, and the state of our joint concerns there. I find that the limited number of our flower beds will too much restrain the variety of flowers in which we might wish to indulge, and therefore I have resumed an idea ... of a winding walk surrounding the lawn before the house, with a narrow border of flowers on each side.[3]
During the winter of 1805-06, when Ann was fifteen, she lived in the President's House with her grandfather, along with her mother and five brothers and sisters. Just a year before Jefferson's retirement from the presidency, on September 19, 1808, Ann married Charles Lewis Bankhead, a twenty-year-old law student. Their first home was at Carlton, on the western slope of Monticello.[4] Ann and Charles's marriage was a troubled one; Bankhead was an alcoholic and physically abusive. After one particularly serious episode at Monticello, Jefferson wrote to Bankhead's father hoping to convince him that his son's recovery could only be effected by his moving home, where his sobriety could be constantly enforced.[5] Trustees managed Bankhead's estate after 1815, when Jefferson sought to ease a financial crisis by adding 130 acres to the couple's holdings.
Charles's behavior toward Ann and their children continued to distress the family greatly.[6] Following a bloody street fight between Bankhead and his brother-in-law Thomas Jefferson Randolph in 1819, Jefferson wrote that Bankhead deserved to be in a penitentiary. Ann was so attached to her husband that she could not be persuaded to leave him to live at Monticello.[7] She died in February 1826, at the age of thirty-five, two weeks after the birth of her fourth child. Jefferson, who was present at Ann's death, "abandoned himself to every evidence of intense grief."[8] Ann was buried in the family graveyard at Monticello.
- Text from Stein, Worlds, 235-36; additions from Heidi Hackford, 2004.
*Note: After the birth of her daughter Ellen and before her last child William, Ann had at least seven other pregnancies that resulted in miscarriage, stillbirth, or children who died in infancy.
1791 February 2. (Thomas Mann Randolph to Jefferson). "Polly has allready informed you of the addition of a little Grand Daughter to your family and of its unexpected arrival; which was pleasing to us as it was not in the least premature. Mrs. Fleming had been kind enough to offer her assistance to Patsy during her confinement which we expected would have commenced about the end of February, and I had gone down to accompany her up. But Mrs. Lewises attention and tender concern supplied the place of Mrs. Fleming and made some amends for the want of my Sympathy. Patsy has had one slight fever only which lasted for a very short time: the little girl is perfectly well and grows fast."[9]
1791 February 8. (Thomas Mann Randolph to Jefferson). "The little one is perfectly well and increases in size very fast. We are desirous that you should honor her and ourselves by confering a name on her and accordingly have deferred the christening till we can hear from you."[10]
1797 June 12. (Mary Jefferson to Jefferson). "Mr. Randolph and the children arriv'd here last tuesday all in perfect health Ann and Jefferson grown so much as to amaze us, Ann seems to promise more every day of resembling her mother. Her disposition is the same allready she will no doubt be worthy of her."[11]
1801 January 31. (Martha Jefferson Randolph and Thomas Mann Randolph to Jefferson). "my 2 eldest are uncommonly backward in every thing much more so than many others who have not had half the pains taken with them. Ellen is wonderfully apt. I shall have no trouble with her, but the two others excite serious anxiety with regard to their intellect. of Jefferson my hopes were so little sanguine that I discovered with some surprise & pleasure that he was quicker than I had ever thought it possible for him to be, but he has Lost so much time and will necesarily lose so much more before he can be placed at a good school that I am very unhappy about him. Anne does not want memory but she does not improve. she appears to me to Learn absolutely without profit."[12]
1801 February 5. (Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph). "I have formed a different judgment of both Anne & Jefferson from what you do; of Anne positively, of Jefferson possibly. I think her apt, intelligent, good humored & of soft & affectionate dispositions, & that she will make a pleasant, amiable and respectable woman."[13]
1811 May 7. (Elizabeth House Trist to Catharine Bache). "Bankhead has given up the scheme of going to Bedford and has made a purchase of that Farm adjoining Monticello .... I fancy it is a great disappointment to Mr Jefferson who pleased him self with the Idea of Anns living in Bedford as he shou'd be a great part of his time there ... Ann notwithstanding she will be so near her family regrets the change as she thinks it will not be so much for their interest to be so near Charlottesville."[14]
1814 August 22. (Elizabeth House Trist to Catharine Bache). "I heard too with great concern that Bankhead has turn'd out a great sot always frolicking and carousing at the Taverns in the Neighbourhood poor Ann I feel for her and Mr. R. is so much involved that tis thought he can never be extricated."[15]
1826 February 11. (Cornelia Jefferson Randolph to Mary Jefferson Randolph). "you had better come down this morning for you will never see sister Ann again if you do not, there is no hope for her. Virginia ought to be told for she must know the worst soon, and grandpapa."[16]
ca. 1852. (Robley Dunglison). "On the last day of the fatal illness of his granddaughter, who had married a most unworthy person of the name of Bankhead, a man of the most intemperate habits, and, so far as I know, possessed of no redeeming virtues, Mr. Jefferson was present in the adjoining apartment, and when the announcement was made by me, that but little hope remained,—that she was, indeed, moribund, it is impossible to imagine more poignant distress than was exhibited by him. He shed tears; and abandoned himself to every evidence of intense grief."[17]
- Jefferson Library staff, 2008
