In addition to reading the the Madisons’ personal correspondence, Montpelier’s documentary researchers read memoirs and reminiscences written by contemporaries and Madison family members. There are two particularly interesting sources which survive for the life of Dolley Madison, written by members of her family. Dolley’s niece, Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts, wrote a set of memoirs of the life of her famous aunt, to whom she had been very close, titled Memoir I and Memoir II. In turn, Mary’s niece Lucia adapted those memoirs into a compact and readable book titled Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison.
Lucia presented a romantic ideal of Dolley Madison by changing names, dates and the text of actual letters. Although Mary’s admiration of Dolley is apparent from her Memoirs, Lucia changed actual scenes of Dolley’s life and those changes are reflected in her editing of Mary’s Memoirs and her own published work. Together, these works and their creators make an interesting puzzle for documentary researchers at Montpelier. Continue Reading…
As part of the Presidential Detective Story, Montpelier’s research team examines correspondence and other records from family members who inherited or purchased objects with a Madison provenance. Once such sale that we have been studying to better understand the dispersal of Madison objects is the 1852 sale of the contents of Toddsberthe, the home of John Payne Todd, Dolley’s son.
John Payne Todd only outlived his mother by two and a half years. He died in Washington in January 1852. In the last decade of his life, he began to construct a series of dwellings which he named Toddsberthe, on land near Montpelier. Our research indicates he hoped his mother would spend her final years with him at Toddsberthe. He spent extravagant amounts of money to construct this home, despite his heavy debt. Todd’s outlandish design included a ballroom, rotunda, and several other rooms that suggest grandiose intentions which were never fully carried out. Some of the buildings were unfinished and t at least one was damaged by fire when he died.
Following Todd’s death, Toddsberthe and its contents were sold to satisfy his many creditors. The November 1852 sale liquidated much of Montpelier’s furniture and artwork that Dolley did not take to Washington in 1844. Family members, including Dolley’s niece Annie Payne Causten, arranged to purchase some of Dolley’s belongings at the sale. Causten, was Dolley’s caretaker and companion during the former First Lady’s final years.
At the time of the sale, Annie lived in Washington. Shortly after Dolley Madison’s 1849 death, Annie had married Dr. James H. Causten, Jr., a prominent Washington physician. Surviving letters suggest that her health declined. She died only a few days before Toddsberthe’s sale. Shortly before the sale, she and her husband drafted a memorandum to her father-in-law, James Causten, Sr., to suggest objects to purchase at Toddsberthe sale. Continue Reading…
Last week we installed a pair of card tables in the Drawing Room (M108) that have excellent Montpelier provenance. Card playing, backgammon, and other games were popular pastimes during the late 18th and early 19th century. Several visitors recalled seeing games being played during their visit with the Madisons. During his 1816 visit, Baron de Montelzun mentioned games of chess being played at Montpelier.1 In an exchange of letters between Dolley Madison and her sister Anna Payne Cutts in the spring of 1804, they mention playing Loo, a card game similar to the modern game of Hearts.
The tables were purchased at an undated Montpelier sale by a local family who lived at a neighboring plantation. In the mid 20th century, the tables were separated when one was sold. Both tables maintained their Madison provenance and were brought together for display here at Montpelier after it was confirmed that they were a matching pair. As part of our research, wood sampling was conducted on the tables, indicating they were made in New England based on the types of wood used. It is possible that these tables were shipped to Virginia or were acquired by the Madisons in Philadelphia, a port city with a thriving furniture trade. One of the tables was graciously donated to Montpelier by Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Thompson, and the other is currently on loan to us. We are thrilled to be able to display them together in situ.
New Document in the Grills Gallery
There is a new document now on display in the Grills Gallery in the Visitors Center here at Montpelier. It is an undated memorandum from Dolley Madison to a Mr. Zantzinger; a shopping list of household and personal items for him to purchase on her behalf. The many interesting items include “two [large] Looking-Glasses”, “100 yds best carpeting,” various types of clothing, and “one dozen fanciful but cheap snuff boxes.”
This is not the only time the Madisons made purchases through an agent or friend. In the 1780s, James Madison sent requests for books to his friend Thomas Jefferson, who was in Paris. Shortly after his 1794 marriage, Madison asked his friend James Monroe, then Minister to France, to acquire household goods for him, among which were French carpets and yards of red and green silk intended for curtains for two rooms. Later in their married lives Dolley begins to order goods on her own, not just through her husband. The Zantzinger order is an example of this as is a quite similar order Dolley commissioned in 1810 from merchant and US Commercial Agent in Bordeaux William Lee.2
The Zantzinger memorandum gives us an idea of Dolley’s tastes, and her budget. She wants nice looking glasses and good carpet, but only as fine as can be purchased for $100 each. This was not a spending spree; Dolley was instead a savvy shopper who set a limit on the lengths to which she, or her agent, should go to acquire fashionable decorations for the house. Although she does not set an upper limit for the “print of the bust of N. Bonaparte” listed, she does quote Zantzinger the price that the print was selling for “some months since;” she did at least have an estimate for how much it should cost.
Who was Mr. Zantzinger? His identity is far from apparent in the memorandum, and he was not a regular correspondent with Dolley. There are a few possibilities, two of which seem most promising:
The first is the Philadelphia merchant firm of Kepple and Zantzinger. Although the memorandum does not appear to date from the period when the Madisons were living in Philadelphia, they may have kept in touch with useful connections in that city. The firm of Kepple and Zantzinger would have had at least one Mr. Zantzinger in it.
The second possibility is one William P. Zantzinger, supercargo, mentioned in a 1819 Supreme Court case. A supercargo is “An officer on a merchant ship who has charge of the cargo and its sale and purchase” ([italic]American Heritage Dictionary), so this Zantzinger would have been in a position to make purchases for the Madisons.
Of course, it is possible that William P. Zantzinger was somehow related to the Zantzingers of the merchant firm in Philadelphia; in a letter to a friend written in Tripoli, Dolley Madison’s brother mentions having met “Mr. Zantzinger Supercargo of a vessel from Philadelphia” while in Italy.[note: John Coles Payne to Boyd, May 25, 1807, Private Collection] Merchant firms in the late 18th and early 19th centuries sometimes included extended families – fathers, sons, cousins, nephews – so a supercargo from Philadelphia could be related to a Philadelphia firm.
The memorandum helps us to better understand Dolley Madison’s taste, the limits of her pocketbook and her desire to acquire certain goods in France. But, it also raises further questions about the Madisons’ patterns of consumption, who they used as agents for long-distance shopping and how they made those connections.
We hope that you can come and see this document and other Madison items in our Grills Gallery.
1 Moffatt, L. G. and J. M. Carriere “A Frenchman Visits Norfolk, Fredericksburg and Orange County, 1816.” Virginia Historical Magazine, July 1945 2 Mary Lee Mann, A Yankee Jeffersonian: Selections from the Diary and Letters of William Lee of Massachusetts Written from 1796 to 1840, Cambridge, MA, 1958, p. 133.
Court Records Research
In an earlier post, we explained the concept of “provenance,” and how we use it here at Montpelier. Tracking down an object’s provenance often requires documentary research. In this post, we would like to expand on a type of research we touched on in our last post – documentary research with court records, and how it is helping us better understand the Madisons and their lives at Montpelier.
Court records provide us with a unique approach to comprehending the Madison family through legal transactions. We utilize probate records such as wills, inventories and accounts of estate sales for many Madison family members to create a better understanding of what each person inherited, owned, bought and sold. We then build on this knowledge by examining the records of lawsuits for Orange County, Virginia which are housed at several repositories across the state, including the Orange County Courthouse, the Library of Virginia, and the State Record Center.
These records are spread across several courts, for example, courts for different jurisdictions, such as county and district. Making this a bit more difficult are changes to the structure of the court system itself as the 19th century progressed. Since we want to collect all information possible for James and Dolley Madison, his parents, her son John Payne Todd, and other close family members, we are systematically going through the records of each court in chronological order. It is a slow process, but more thorough than relying just on indexes or making random searches on years of suspected activity. While we are specifically interested in mentions of furniture and interior decoration in our current research, we record all cases for future reference. We have uncovered many court cases that have helped shed light on the history of the Madisons, their changing financial status, the individuals with whom they did business, their slaves, and so much more.
One interesting case involved Dolley Madison and a merchant named Thomas Vial. He brought suit against her for nonpayment of accounts, submitting as evidence a list of all the items she had purchased from him in 1842 and 1843. This list provides us with information on what types of beverages and food she purchased. It also raises more questions for us: Did Dolley buy items from Mr. Vial in other years? If so, were her purchases for entertainment or for the everyday management of the household? Do any records of Thomas Vial’s business survive? In this manner, court documents can provide answers as well as questions that will hopefully lead to further discoveries.
The Fourth of July
Although July 4 was not designated as a federal holiday for almost a hundred years after the Declaration of Independence was signed and drafted, it was considered by some a day of celebration from the very first anniversary. The way people chose to celebrate varied from place to place, some holding big parties and others holding prayer meetings.
Two hundred years ago, on July 4, 1809, citizens of the town of Pittsfield, Vermont, chose to celebrate the anniversary of American Independence by writing a letter to their President, James Madison. That letter now belongs to the Library of Congress, and you can see and read it for yourself.
The language of the letter is more formal, and certainly more flowery, than most people today would use, even when writing to the President. The underlying message, on the other hand, still applies today. While these citizens of Pittsfield voted for James Madison, and wanted him to succeed, they closed their letter by celebrating the “Sovreign Lord” of the United States: the People.
What better time than Mother’s Day to consider how the design and furnishings of Montpelier reflected the presence of the matriarch of the Madison family – James Madison’s mother Nelly Conway Madison – and how one family accommodated two generations under the same roof. Montpelier was built by James Madison senior in the 1760s to house his immediate family. In 1797 when James, Jr. took a temporary hiatus from politics and moved home with his bride Dolley, father and son added a two-over-two room duplex with a side passage to house the younger couple. When, following his father’s death, James junior enlarged and remodeled the building once again, he did the opposite carving out a suite of rooms on the first floor for his widowed mother.
Nelly Conway Madison was a remarkable woman. She oversaw the domestic management of her husband’s plantation, gave birth to twelve children, helped to educate them, and lived to age 98. In recognition of the important role she played in the Montpelier community and to illustrate the inclusion of two households under one roof, Mrs. Madison’s Best Room (M112) is one of four rooms which have been singled out for refurnishing.
Mrs. Madison’s “apartments” encompassed two rooms from the 1763 house and two rooms and storage areas in the adjacent wing James junior added between 1809 and 1812. Visitor James Paulding remembered that this wing was “appropriated to the mother of Mr. Madison then upwards of ninety years of age. The Old Lady seldom joined the family circle but took her meals by herself, and was visited everyday by Mr. & Mrs. Madison…”[1]
Our challenge will be to show how different Nelly Madison’s apartments were from the rooms occupied by her son and daughter-in-law. Even when empty, her Best Room shows a fondness for the past retaining features from the 1760s era house including a high wainscot which lines the walls and the British-made sandstone fireplace surround with its weighty egg and dart carving.
I want to share with you some of our plans for upcoming exhibits within the newly restored Madison mansion. Over the spring and summer we plan to move furniture and exhibit components into the mansion along with text panels which will help explain our process.
Our first major focus will be the Dining Room (M105). As of this week, we have removed the exhibit case that featured archaeology fragments of ceramics and glassware and installed two pieces of furniture. There is a dining table (a period piece with no Madison provenance) and a sideboard with purported Madison provenance, both on furniture lifts. It was a challenge to fit the furniture and lifts in the room and still leave room for a group of 20 people, but we managed to come up with arrangement that should work.
Even though this particular set of tables does not have a Madison family provenance, the form matches the “3 folding leaf Mahogany tables” that were listed in the 1836 Inventory of the Dining Room.[1] The end sections are obviously from the same table, with the center section having been substituted at a later time. All three tables are period and similar to what the Madisons might have owned.
“in the center of the room a square mahogany table…” -George Shattuck, Jr., 1835
“a large long and wide well polished mahogany table…” -Mary Cutts, Recollections, ca. 1850
According to the 1836 Inventory of the Madison Dining Room “2 Mahogany sideboards” (1 “old” / 1 “new”) were listed. Curatorial staff are currently conducting research on multiple sideboards with purported Madison provenance.
This particular sideboard was donated to The National Trust for Historic Preservation (Montpelier) in 1986 with a strong family history of purchase at an early Montpelier sale. At this time we do not have any record or advertisements of sales taking place at Montpelier during Madison ownership of the property, or in the post-Madison period until 1881.
A large sale took place at Montpelier in April, 1881, in which the “valuable personal property” of the recently deceased Frank Carson, occupant and brother of Montpelier’s owner, was auctioned off. A broadside advertising the sale included “a large quantity of HOUSEHOLD AND KITCHEN FURNITURE/ some very superior, Mirrors, Paintings,…a handsome portrait of President Madison, and other relicts of President Madison, one grand piano…”[2] While the broadside is unclear as to which, if any, furniture was owned by James Madison, it seems likely that the association of the sideboard with Montpelier could have easily been linked to the Madisons.
The Madisons had two sideboards in their Dining Room; the date of this sideboard places it potentially in the category of “new” sideboard. We will place photographs of the other sideboards that we are researching in the room and ask the question “which one of these do you believe may be the Madisons’ ‘old’ sideboard?”
“…on one side of the door was an old sideboard.” -George C. Shattuck, Jr. 1835
-Montpelier Curatorial Staff
1 “List of articles in Dining Room at Montpellier” and “Engravings in dining room,” July 1, 1836, box 1, folder 1831–1839, Papers of Dolley Madison, MS 18940, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. 2 Madison, James. Letters and Documents at the Library of Virginia. Miscellaneous reel 4276. “Broadside announcing an auction at Montpelier in Orange County, Virginia on April 13, 1881.”
In the early years of the new United States, Presidents and Ex-Presidents had pride of place among the celebrities that attracted public interest. The fascination with James Madison stemmed from the notable role he played in the creation of the Constitution, and his outliving all his compatriots to become the “last of the Founders.” Foreigners and American citizens alike were anxious to meet the man who served as President and beat a path to his door, and retirement did little to diminish this appeal.
Today, Montpelier is the benefactor of James and Dolley Madison’s celebrity and the open door policy that reigned in Virginia. Many who came to see the Madisons in retirement recorded their impressions of the famous pair, their hospitality, and the house and its contents in letters to friends and family or in articles in newspapers and magazines. Montpelier staff has determinedly been collecting these accounts for many years because, when considered as a whole, they offer some of the best insights into life in the Madison household after their retirement from public life. Continue Reading…
Today is Valentine’s Day, and while the first commercially printed valentines weren’t available in the United States until the mid-1800s, the association of February 14 with romance can be traced back to the 15th century.[1] As a diversion, we thought we would share a bit of eighteenth century romantic language.
The following is not from a letter between James and Dolley Madison – they loved each other, but spent very little time apart, leaving future generations with only a handful of correspondence. Rather, this is taken from a letter sent to Dolley Payne Todd in 1794, during the period when James Madison was courting her. The letter was written by her cousin, Catherine Coles.
“…now for Madison he told me I might say what I pleas’d to you about him to begin, he thinks so much of you in the day that he has Lost his Tongue, at Night he Dreames of you & Starts in his Sleep a Calling on you to relieve his Flame for he Burns to such an excess that he will be shortly consumed & he hopes that your Heart will be calous to every other swain but himself he has Consented to every thing that I have wrote about him with Sparkling Eyes…” [2]
[1]For more information on the early celebration of Valentine’s Day, see the work of Henry Ansgar Kelly on Chaucer and Valentine’s Day. [2]Catharine Coles to Dolley Payne Todd, June 1, 1794. Papers of Dolley Madison, Various Accessions, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. Transcription from Thomas A. Mason, Robert A. Rutland, and Jeanne K. Sisson, eds., The Papers of James Madison, vol. 15 (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1985), 342.
We are pleased to announce that Lynne Dakin Hastings has joined Montpelier as Vice President for Museum Programs. Prior to coming to Montpelier, Lynne was Curator of Historic Interiors for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, responsible for overseeing the arrangement and preservation of more than 200 historic spaces, as well as consultant for special projects in the Historic Area. She formerly was the Chief Curator and Cultural Resources Specialist for the National Park Service at Hampton National Historic Site, near Baltimore, Maryland for many years, initiating the research, planning and implementation of interiors restoration, collections management, archival collections and library, archaeological surveys, grant funded research and acquisitions, and collaboration with non-profit foundations. As VP for Museum Programs, Lynne will coordinate the Archaeology, Curatorial and Education departments, keeping projects focused, involving the appropriate staff and consultants, and helping the team to reach consensus. We are very excited that she is here!
Inaugurations and Mrs. Smith
Last week, our nation celebrated the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States with all of the pageantry and celebrations reserved for such an occasion. Many people do not realize that 2009 also marks the bicentennial of Madison’s Presidency and the first Inaugural Ball.
The Madison’s Inaugural ball took place at Long’s Hotel, located one block from the Capitol building in Washington. Four hundred tickets were sold, costing $4 a piece. The ball would have been the highlight of the year for Washington’s high society.
Margaret Bayard Smith, one of Dolley Madison’s lifelong friends, attended the ball and described Dolley’s entrance:
“Madison’s March was then played and Mrs. Madison led in by one of the managers and Mrs. [Anna] Cutts and Mr. Madison, she was led to the part of the room where we happened to be, so that I accidently was placed next to her. She looked a queen. She had on a pale buff colored velvet [dress] made plain, with a very long train, but not the least trimming, and beautiful pearl necklace, earrings, and bracelets. Her head dress was a turban of the same coloured velvet and white satin (from Paris) with two superb plumes, the bird of paradise feathers. It would be absolutely impossible for anyone to behave with more perfect propriety than she did. Unassuming dignity, sweetness, grace. It seems to me that such manners would disarm envy itself, and conciliate even enemies”1
Margaret Bayard Smith’s letters and diaries are an invaluable source of information for scholars who study Washington in the early 19th century. Mrs. Smith’s husband was the editor of the National Intelligencer, the premier Washington D.C., newspaper, so the Smiths knew many of the most important politicians in Washington. The Smiths also visited Montpelier on several occasions; Mrs. Smith’s letters provide valuable clues regarding room use and furniture at Montpelier.
For example, in August of 1809, she described arriving at Montpelier and being ushered into the Dining Room,
“It was near five o’clock when we arrived, we were met at the door by Mr. M who led us in the dining room where some gentlemen were still smoking segars [sic] and drinking wine. Mrs. M. enter’d the moment afterwards, and after embracing me, took my hand, saying with a smile I will take you out of this smoke to a pleasanter room”2
Later in that same passage, Mrs. Smith called Dolley Madison “kindness personified”. The two women were already friends by the time of the 1809 visit, but as First Lady and the mistress of Montpelier, Dolley was a gracious hostess to people she barely knew. The letters written by visitors, especially those like Mrs. Smith, provide us with glimpses of the way the rooms at Montpelier were furnished and used.
