page_title: Mary Jefferson Eppes
section_title: Marriage and family
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Jefferson Eppes / Marriage and family
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of John Wayles Eppes
context_page_description: Mary Jefferson Eppes, known as Polly in childhood and Maria as an adult, was the younger of Thomas Jefferson's two daughters with his wife who survived beyond the age of 3. She married a first cousin, John Wayles Eppes, and had three children with him. Only their son Francis W. Eppes survived childhood. Maria died months after childbirth.
context_section_description: Maria, as she was now called, married her childhood friend and cousin John Wayles Eppes, the son of Francis and Elizabeth Epps, on October 13, 1797, at Monticello. The couple lived at his plantation, Mont Blanco, on the James River in Chesterfield and visited his family's plantation, Eppington. 
  After several miscarriages and the death in January 1800 of a newborn baby girl, Maria and John had two children:
  Francis W. Eppes (September 1801 – May 1881)
  Maria Jefferson Eppes (February 1804 – February 1806)
  Maria traveled with her sister from November 1802 to January 1803 where they served as his hostess and informal First Lady. Maria had poor health as her mother did. She never recovered physically from her third childbirth, and subsequently died on April 17, 1804 at Monticello, where she is buried.
  My aunt, Mrs. Eppes, was singularly beautiful. She was high-principled, just, and generous. Her temper, naturally mild, became, I think, saddened by ill-health in the latter part of her life.  In that respect she differed from my mother, whose disposition seemed to have the sunshine of heaven in it. ... [My mother] was intellectually somewhat superior to her sister, who was sensible of the difference, though she was of too noble a nature for her feelings ever to assume an ignoble character. There was between the sisters the strongest and warmest attachment, the most perfect confidence and affection.
  — Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge to Henry S. Randall, January 15, 1856
  Her death prompted Abigail Adams to send written condolences to President Jefferson; it was the first break in a long silence between the two families following the acrimonious presidential campaign of 1800. Abigail wrote movingly of the immediate affection she had felt for Maria when meeting her in London as a girl, an affection which had never altered.
caption: John Wayles Eppes
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