The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1888-05-23
MRS. PRESIDENT MADIsoWs SON.
\ Man Who Drank Up Montpelier and the
Negroes of tho Plantation.

negroes OF
Harriet Taylor Upton. in May Wide Awake.l
Mrs. Madisbn's property, valued at s20,-
OOO was finally divided between Anna
and Payne Todd-to the latter the money
was welcome. He had dissipated his own
fortune, his mothers private property,
Montpellier-''h literally drank up the
place and the negroes" remarked one who
knew him we'll speaking OF Montpelier.
President Madison had labored in vain TO
reform the habits of idleness and extrava-
gance, and also had paid many of his debts.
Some of his means he had sunk in the
erection of strange structure, on an &C.
centric plan, upon his own estate, Todds-
birth, intending that his mother should
there make her home. The house origin
ally upon the place had been burned, and
he had built a great tower with a ball
room and state dining-TOom, grouping
around ii several small buildings, some old,
others new; in one of these cottages his
mother was to live, entering the dining
room through window. When he built
this house-which for lack OF money he
was unable to complete-he was inter
ested, like many people at that time, in
the subject of silk culture, and intended
to turn the place into silk farm; and,
Enthusiastically, before he had planted
his mulberry trees, or Matched his silk
worms, he imported a number of French
men to make the silk. Toddsbirth is still
standing, not far from Montpelier.
Mrs. Madisons last breath brought forth
the words, "My poor boyp' and it is inn
possible for any one to think of her son
without sigh. Step by step he grew dis
agreeable and disSipated. a cousin, re-
calling him to-day, writes:
''As for my cousin, Payne Todd, my
childish memories of him do not bear re-
peating. His manners were perfectly
Grandisonian, but 1 was a little afraid OF
him. Do not ask me why"
He became gourmand and wholly lost
his beauty and elegance. He cultivated
taste for foreign cookery, and friend of
his boyhood says that he was continually
sending to the Old World for favorite arti
Giles OF food; so that at last he was enor-
mously stout quite the figure that man
must be who drinks liquors as constantly
and eats as self-indulgently as did he.
One who remembers him in his later
years, after his inherited beauty was OBJ
liberated, saws that he looked very much
like every other common man who be-
comes Observation-Disclosures and pulled and
grizzly and slouchy.
Payne Todd accomplished nothing IN lie
that was worth a mans while. During
the first years of the Monroe adninistra-
ton he was President Monroe's private
secretary, but for some reason did not re-
main. He ran for congress and was de-
feated. He never took his place among
country gentlemen as the master OF his
estate He never married. He forfeited
the esteem of every friend whom his
mother and President Madison secured
for him. At forty-two, he died of a long
and fearful fever, in Washington, two
years after Mrs. Madison, at hotel on
Fifteenth St, surrounded by some of
his mothers old slaves, but with no
white person near him. During his con-
scious moments he bad been full of grief
and remorse. In the snow and cold, on
Washington's birthday, he was laid to rest
in the Congressional. cemetery, followed
there by a carriage containing one friend,
and another with his servants. Others OF
the family buried there were afterward
removed, but no one had sufficient inter
est in Payne Todd to care where he rested.
His only part in the world now is as an
example of a wasted life.