USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -A widow of her first marriage, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson was the wife of the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Dying of ill health during the Revolutionary War, she did not live to see her husband become President.

Detailed explanation-2: -Of the six children born to Thomas and Martha, only two survived to adulthood, Martha and Mary. Martha died four months after the birth of her last child. The couple’s letters to one another were burned, though by whom is unknown, and Thomas rarely spoke of her, so she remains a somewhat enigmatic figure.

Detailed explanation-3: -Martha was weakened by the physical strain of so many pregnancies. In September 1782 she died at Monticello, possibly from complications following Lucy’s birth in May 1782.

Detailed explanation-4: -Of the six children born during her ten year marriage with Jefferson, only two daughters, Martha and Mary, would live to adulthood. Two daughters (Jane Randolph and Lucy Elizabeth) and an unnamed son died as infants, and her last child, also named Lucy Elizabeth, died at the age of two of whooping cough.

Detailed explanation-5: -Hemings was then 14 years old but, tellingly, Abigail Adams thought she was 15 or 16. Writing Jefferson that the two had arrived, Abigail Adams took them under her wing until an emissary showed up two weeks later to convey them to Paris, where Jefferson almost certainly began having sex with Hemings.