- Virginia Randolph Cary
Virginia Randolph Cary (
30 January 1786 –2 May 1852 ) was the author of "Letters on Female Character, Addressed to a Young Lady, on the Death of Her Mother" (1828), an influential advice book.Most likely she was born in
Goochland County, Virginia , at Tuckahoe, the plantation of her parents, Thomas Mann Randolph (1741–1794) and his first wife, Ann Cary Randolph. Her twelve sisters and brothers includedMary Randolph , author of the influential cookbook "The Virginia House-Wife" (1824), andThomas Mann Randolph (1768–1828), who served in the House of Representatives (1803–1807) and as governor of Virginia (1819–1822). After her mother died, she lived inAlbemarle County, Virginia , atMonticello with her brother and sister-in-law, the daughter ofThomas Jefferson .On
28 August 1805 she married her cousin Wilson Jefferson Cary, ofFluvanna County, Virginia . After she was widowed she published four major works:* "Letters on Female Character, Addressed to a Young Lady, on the Death of Her Mother" (1828), an advice book
* "Mutius: An Historical Sketch of the Fourth Century" (1828)
* "Christian Parent's Assistant, or Tales, for the Moral and Religious Instruction of Youth" (1829)
* "Ruth Churchill; or, The True Protestant: A Tale for the Times (1851)", a novelCary died in
Alexandria, Virginia , and is buried in Saint Paul's Episcopal Church Cemetery.References
* Cynthia A. Kierner, "'The dark and dense cloud perpetually lowering over us': Gender and the Decline of the Gentry in Postrevolutionary Virginia," "Journal of the Early Republic" 20 (2000): 185–217.
* Patrick H. Breen, ed., "The Female Antislavery Petition Campaign of 1831–32," "Virginia Magazine of History and Biography" 110 (2002): 377–398.
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