Dolley Madison - Second Marriage

Second Marriage

Dolley Payne Todd and James Madison, a delegate to the Continental Congress which met in Philadelphia until 1800, likely encountered each other at social events in the temporary federal capital. In May 1794, Madison asked his friend Aaron Burr to introduce him to the young widow. Madison was seventeen years her senior and, at the age of forty-three, a longstanding bachelor. The encounter apparently went smoothly, for a brisk courtship followed; by August Dolley accepted his proposal of marriage. Since he was not a Quaker, she was expelled from the Society of Friends for marrying him. They were married on September 15, 1794, and lived in Philadelphia for the next three years.

In 1797, after eight years in the House of Representatives, James Madison retired from politics. He returned with his family to Montpelier, the Madison family plantation in Orange County, Virginia. There they expanded the house and settled in. When Thomas Jefferson was elected as the third president of the United States in 1800, he asked Madison to serve as his Secretary of State. Madison accepted, and his family: Dolley, her son Payne Todd (as he was commonly called), and her sister Anna Payne, moved to Washington, with their domestic slaves. They stretched to take a large house, as Dolley believed entertaining would be important in the capital.