Part of the American History & Genealogy Project

Martha (Wayles) Jefferson 1748 ~ 1782

Mrs. Martha Wayles Jefferson, wife of the third President of the United States, was born in 1748 in Charles County, Virginia, and died September 6, 1782, at Monticello, the famous country home of Thomas Jefferson, near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Her father, John Wayles, was a wealthy lawyer, who gave his daughter all the advantages of refinement and education which were afforded at this time. Her first husband was Bathurst Skelton, whom she had married at a very early age, becoming a widow before she was twenty.

In January, 1772, she married Thomas Jefferson. In 1781 Mrs. Jefferson's health became so precarious that her husband refused a foreign mission. In the autumn of 1782 she died. She was the mother of five children, three of whom survived her.

Martha Patsy Jefferson

Women of America

Source: The Part Taken by Women in American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.