page_title: Virginia Randolph Cary
section_title: Early life and family
hierarchical_section_title: Virginia Randolph Cary / Early life and family
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing by Thomas Jefferson showing the original front elevation of his home Monticello, located in Albemarle County, Virginia. Image from "Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic," by Fiske Kimball, New York, 1922, fig. 72. The original drawing is in Coolidge collection.
context_page_description: Virginia Randolph Cary was an American writer. She was the author of Letters on Female Character, Addressed to a Young Lady, on the Death of Her Mother, an influential advice book.
context_section_description: Virginia Randolph Cary was born on January 30, 1786, most likely in Goochland County, Virginia, at Tuckahoe, the plantation owned by her parents. Her twelve sisters and brothers included Mary Randolph (1762–1828), author of the influential cookbook The Virginia House-Wife (1824), and Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. (1768–1828), who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1803 to 1807 and as Governor of Virginia from 1819 to 1822.
  After her mother died in 1789, the three year old Cary lived at Monticello in Albemarle County, Virginia with her brother and sister-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. and Martha Jefferson (1772–1836), the daughter of Thomas Jefferson. Her sister Judith married William Randolph's great-grandson, Richard Randolph of Bizarre. His paternal ancestors included Pocahontas, the youngest daughter of Chief Powhatan and her English-born husband John Rolfe. Her older sister, Ann Cary "Nancy" Randolph, was the wife of Gouverneur Morris and mother of Gouverneur Morris Jr. Ann figured in a scandal involving her brother-in-law and distant cousin, Richard Randolph of Bizarre, in which he was responsible for "feloniously murdering a child said to be borne of Nancy [Ann] Randolph."
caption: Monticello elevation drawing, 1771. Monticello was Thomas Jefferson's residence. Construction of the dome was (which gives Monticello its current profile), was being built into the 19th century.[1]
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