Let’s hear it for the Birthday Girl! Dolley Payne Todd Madison turns 254 years young on May 20. The U.S. Postal Service issued this stamp on her 212th birthday in 1980.
She was the fourth of eight children born to her devout Quaker parents. She was just thirteen when the Patriots won the Battle of Yorktown. When the war officially ended in 1783, Dolley’s father freed their slaves in accordance with his religious beliefs. Then the family moved to the Philadelphia where he opened a starch business.
When I first learned of this, I was skeptical. Running a starch company doesn’t sound very lucrative, does it? Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t. Dolley’s father went bankrupt, and the Quakers cast him out of the Society of Friends. (Some friends, huh?) However, the church interpreted his bankruptcy as a sign of disapproval from God. So, the poor man took to his bed for two years. As he lay dying of depression, he asked Dolley to marry an up-and-coming Quaker lawyer, John Todd. Dolley happily obliged and soon gave birth to two sons.
However, the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 soon swept through Philadelphia, devastating the city. Dolley’s husband and infant son died within hours of each other, as well as her in-laws. She and her older son Payne also were quite sick but managed to recover. So, at the young age of 25, Dolley Todd became a widow and moved into the boardinghouse that her mother ran to keep the family solvent.
Suitors soon lined up outside the boarding house for Dolley. At that time Philadelphia served as our Capital while Washington City was under construction. Congressman James Madison from Virginia noticed her on the street and asked his friend and her boarder, Senator Aaron Burr, to introduce them. Dolley and James were married in less than a year. The rest, as they say, is history!
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