Verse derives from a colonial love song,
Over the Hills and Far Away, and is from a popular 18th century opera. Thomas and Martha Jefferson shared a passion for music - she played the pianoforte and he the violin. I adore the lyrics in this song.
And I would love you all the day
Every night would kiss and play
If with me you’d fondly stray
Over the hills and far away
This design is part of the larger sampler of mine, For Mrs. Jefferson, which is no longer available. For information on this pattern,
CLICK HERE!...
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, the wife of Thomas Jefferson, died before her husband became the third President of the United States therefore she didn't have 'First Lady' recognition. However, her legacy remains as endearing as the other women in this position. Mrs. Jefferson graced the pages of 18th century Virginia history with elegance and captured Mr. Jefferson's heart with love and music.
Martha was born October 19, 1748. She was married first to Bathurst Skelton in 1766; he died shortly two years later. When Thomas Jefferson began courting her in December 1770, Martha was living at The Forest, the young widow's plantation, with her young son, John. Martha and Thomas married New Year's Day 1772 near Williamsburg, Virginia. It was recorded that she was of a slender figure, had hazel eyes and was "wooed by many". Like other Virginia ladies of the plantation, she played an essential part in supervising the estate's operations. Her skills included a knowledge of cooking, sewing, spinning, weaving, brewing, raising fowl, dairying, food presentation, music, educating children, and caring for the sick.'Martha Jefferson was musically talented and managed a well-organized household. She and Mr. Jefferson shared a deep passion for music.
Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson were married for ten years until her passing in 1782; Martha's son, John, from her first marriage died at the age of twelve. Of the six children born during her marriage to Jefferson, only two daughters, Martha and Mary (Martha, called Patsy, and Mary called Maria or Polly), lived to adulthood. Two daughters and a son died as infants, and her last child, Lucy Elizabeth, died at the age of two of whooping cough. Martha Jefferson herself lived only four months after the birth of her last child. After months of tending to her, Thomas Jefferson noted in his account book (September 6), "My dear wife died this day at 11:45AM." Jefferson buried his wife in the cemetery at Monticello.
Thomas Jefferson never recorded their life together; in a memoir her referred to ten years "in chequered happiness". Half a century later his daughter Martha remembered his sorrow as "the violence of his emotion ... to this day I not describe to myself". For three weeks he had shut himself in his room, pacing back and forth until exhausted. Slowly that first anguish spent itself. In November he agreed to serve as commissioner to France, eventually taking Patsy with him in 1784 and sent for Polly later.
When Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, he had been a widower for nineteen yeras. Occasionally he called on Dolly Madison for assistance. And it was Patsy (then Mrs. Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr.) who appeared as the lady of the President's House in the winter of 1802-03. She spent seven weeks there and was there again in 1805-06 and gave birth to a son named for James Madison, the first child born in the White House. It was Martha Randolph with her family who shared Jefferson's retirement at Monticello until his death.
Jefferson once wrote to a friend, "All my wishes end, where I hope my days will end, at Monticello." After seventeen years of retirement, dwelling "in the midst" of his grandchildren, with his books and his farm, Jefferson's days did end at Monticello, on July 4, 1826.
Before her death in 1782, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson copied the following lines from Laurence Sterne's Tristam Shandy:
Time wastes too fast: every letter
I trace tells me with what rapidity
life follows my pen. The days and hours
of it are flying over our heads like
clouds of windy day never to return -
more. Every thing pressed on -
To this, Mr. Jefferson added:
and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, every absence which follows it,
are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make
...
Today is Thomas Jefferson's 268th birthday. Delight in music and love of life.
What a memorable morning! I was up shortly after 3AM and luckily had everything set out last night for our early viewing party. Ben woke at 5 and Zack at usual time. They wore the shirts I made for them! (Ben had complete input on his as you can see.)
