Mary Randolph

The grave of Mary Randolph in Arlington National Cemetery

Mary Randolph (born August 9, 1762 in Amphill, Richmond , † January 23, 1828 in Washington, DC ) was the author of The Virginia House-Wife (1824), one of the most influential household and cookbooks of the nineteenth century. She was the first officially recorded person to be buried in what would later be Arlington National Cemetery.

family

Mary Randolph was the daughter of Thomas Mann Randolph (1741–1794), a member of the Virginia Convention from 1776 and his first wife, Ann Cary Randolph. The Randolph family were among the most influential families in Virginia , with roots dating back to the early colonial days. She was a descendant of Pocahontas and her British husband, John Rolfe . Mary was the cousin of George Washington Parke Custis and the godmother of his daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee . Her siblings included Thomas Mann Randolph , who represented his state in the US House of Representatives between 1803 and 1807 and was governor of the state of Virginia from 1819 to 1822 ; and Virginia Randolph Cary (1786-1852), author of Letters on Female Character, Addressed to a Young Lady, on the Death of Her Mother (1828).

life and work

Mary was born in Amphill, her maternal grandfather's plantation in Chesterfield County , and was the oldest of 13 siblings. Her upbringing included housekeeping, which was part of the education of an upper class woman at the time, she learned to run a large house with numerous employees. Mary married her cousin David Meade Randolph in December 1780 on the Presque Isle Plantation in Chesterfield County, Virginia. He was an eminent farmer and well-known inventor who had served in the War of Independence . The couple had eight children, four of whom reached adulthood: Richard, William Beverly, David Meade and Burwell Starke.

Because most of the Presque Isle plantation was swampy and posed a health risk, the family moved to Richmond. Her Moldavia townhouse in Richmond became the center of the Federalist Party's activities . Mary's hostess skills and cuisine were known well beyond Richmond. The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 ended David Randolph's political career, the fall in tobacco prices and the recession of 1800-1802 caused the family to lose much of their fortune, they wrote Moldavia out for sale and moved into a tenement house.

In order for her family to maintain the standard of living, Mary took an unusual step for a woman of the upper class and opened a pension. At the same time David became an agent for the Black Heth Coal Mines and traveled to England and Wales in this capacity. He applied for some patents in shipbuilding and candle production. Mary Randolph herself is said to have invented an ice box, but the patent was filed under David's name. In 1819 the couple went out of business and moved to Washington DC to live with their son, William Beverley Randolph.

It was there that Mary wrote her book The Virginia House-Wife , which appeared in 1824 and had six editions by 1860. By writing a cookbook with clear and concise instructions that did not yet exist in this form at the time, she closed a gap. The cookbook was specially tailored to the conditions in Virginia, the cookbooks of the time were all imported from England. Mary tried to make life easier for women by reducing the time they had to spend in the kitchen. The Virginia House-Wife contained numerous recipes from inexpensive ingredients that anyone could afford and that could be used to cook impressive dishes. The book contained popular recipes from the South, described how to prepare vegetables correctly, and introduced dishes from abroad, such as gazpacho , to the cuisine of the South. Her cookbook became synonymous with fine dining in Virginia. The Virginia House-Wife is now considered a historical document.

Web links

• Arlington Cemetery site
• Biography and gravestone
• the Virginia House-Wife
• 2009 Virginia Women in History profile