The Life Of James Madison

Submitted By AthensSlater1
Words: 564
Pages: 3

Dolley Payne was born on May 20, 1768 and the first girl in her family in North Carolina. Her parents previously from Virginia moved from there in 1765. Dolley’s mother who was a Quaker married Dolley’s father who was a non-Quaker in 1761 and three years later he applied and was admitted to the Quaker Monthly Meeting in Virginia. Dolley Payne at the time was raised in the Quaker faith. In the January of 1790 Dolley Payne married John Todd, who was a Quaker lawyer from Philadelphia. The couple had two sons quickly in their marriage John Payne and William Temple. Dolley’s sister Anna moved in with the family in 1793 to help take care of the children. In October of 1793 the yellow fever epidemic had taken the lives of her husband and her younger son William both as well as her parents-in-law. Dolley was widowed at 25 with a young son to take care of. Shortly after the death of her husband, Dolly most likely met her next husband James Madison at a social event in May of 1794. James Madison was seventeen years older than Dolley and was quite well known for being a longstanding bachelor at the age of forty-three. Their encounter must have gone smoothly, because in August Dolley had accepted Madison’s marriage proposal and they were married on September 15, 1794. Madison wasn’t a Quaker and so Dolley was expelled from her usual society of friends for marrying him. They lived in Philadelphia for the next three years due to Madison’s position as a delegate to the Continental Congress which met in Philadelphia. In 1797 after serving eight years in the House of Representatives, James Madison retired from politics. Madison and his family returned to his family’s plantation in Orange County, Virginia. The family had just settled in, when Thomas Jefferson was elected as the third President of the United States in 1800. Jefferson asked Madison to serve as his Secretary of State, and once Madison had accepted the family, including: Dolley, her son Payne Todd, Dolley’s Sister Anna Payne, and Madison moved to Washington D.C. They took a large house because Dolley thought entertaining would