Mary Randolph

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"Molly" Randolph (Mrs. David Meade Randolph)

Mary Randolph (1762-1828) is perhaps most famous as the author of the first regional American cookbook The Virginia Housewife published in 1824. A popular housekeeping book that featured nearly 500 recipes for Southern and especially Virginia cooked foods and baked goods. She was a direct descendant of Pocahontas; Cousin of Thomas Jefferson; and of Robert E. Lee.

Her brother Thomas Mann Randolph, Governor of Virginia 1819-1821, married Martha Jefferson, (called Patsy), daughter of Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826).

Mary Jane Randolph was born in 1762, before the American Revolutionary War (1775 – 1783), at Ampthill Plantation in Chesterfield County, just south of Richmond. A member of the landed gentry, she married her first cousin David Meade Randolph (1760-1830) in 1780. Her husband was a patriot officer during the Revolutionary War, and George Washington appointed him the US Marshall of Virginia in 1795, with headquarters in Richmond.

Ampthill Plantation was located in the Virginia Colony, in what would become Chesterfield County, on the south bank of the James River about four miles south of the head of navigation at modern-day Richmond, Virginia.

Mary was the eldest child of Thomas Mann and Ann Cary Randolph, of Tuckahoe. Her maternal grandfather was Archibald Cary, of Ampthill; Her paternal grandfather was William Randolph, of Tuckahoe. Mary was a direct descendant of Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, wife of George Washington Parke Custis, the builder of Arlington House.

Her youngest son, when a midshipman in the U.S. Navy, fell from a mast and was crippled. Her devoted care of that injured son is said to have hastened her death, and would seem to explain her epitaph. She died on January 23, 1828 (aged 65) in Washington City, but was buried on the hillside just below Arlington House at a spot she had earlier selected, with the brick wall surrounding the grave added to keep cattle away.

Counted among Mary Randolph’s ancestors were the Jamestown settler John Rolfe and the famous Virginia Indian princess Pocahontas, who married in 1614.

[1]

Tombstone epitaph

Mary Randolph is the first person known to be buried at Arlington.

"Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Mary Randolph her intrinsic worth needs no eulogium The deceased was born The 9th of August, 1762 at Amphill near Richmond, Virginia and died the 23rd of January 1828 in Washington City a victim to maternal love and duty'


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References

  1. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=135882 THE HISTORICAL MARKER DATABASE, last revised on May 10, 2021; originally submitted on November 30, 2013, by Allen C. Browne of Silver Spring, Maryland.

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