Jane Randolph Jefferson

Jane Randolph Jefferson
Born Jane Randolph
(1721-02-09)February 9, 1721
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets, London, The Kingdom of Great Britain
Died March 31, 1776(1776-03-31) (aged 55)
Massachusetts, United States
Children Jane
Mary
Thomas
Elizabeth
Martha
Peter (died in infancy; 1748)
Peter (died in infancy; 1750)
Lucy
Anna
Randolph

Jane Randolph Jefferson, née Jane Randolph (February 9, 1721  March 31, 1776) was the wife of Peter Jefferson and the mother of president Thomas Jefferson. Born in Shadwell Parish, Tower Hamlets, London, she was the daughter of Isham Randolph, a ship's captain and planter,[lower-alpha 1] and Jane Rogers. She was a cousin of Peyton Randolph.[3]

Early life and education

Randolph was born in Shadwell, a maritime neighborhood of London. She most likely immigrated to Virginia as a child with her family and that her education was received entirely at home. Little is known of her; Jefferson rarely mentioned his mother in his extensive writings. According to the 20th-century biographer Merrill Peterson, she represented "zero quantity" in her son Thomas's life, but more recent scholarship questions Peterson's conclusions.

Marriage and family

Randolph married Peter Jefferson in Virginia in 1739. Together, they had the following children:

Jane Randolph Jefferson died from what was described at the time as an "apoplexy" on March 31, 1776, barely three months before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.[3]

Ancestry

References

  1. Malone, Dumas. Jefferson, The Virginian. Jefferson and His Time. Little, Brown. 1948, 437–40.
  2. Brodie, Fawn M. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. New York: Norton, 33–34.
  3. 1 2 "Jane Randolph Jefferson", Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Foundation
  1. Jefferson personally showed little interest in his ancestry; on his father's side he only knew of the existence of his grandfather.[1][2] Malone writes that Jefferson vaguely knew that his grandfather "had a place on the Fluvanna River which he called Snowden after a mountain in Wales near which the Jeffersons were supposed once to have lived".
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