Anne Cary Bankhead

Anne Cary Bankhead (Randolph)

• Find A Grave Memorial ID # 6874342
• PAPERS OF THE RANDOLPH FAMILY OF EDGE HILL

Anne Cary Randolph, the eldest child of Martha Jefferson Randolph and Thomas Mann Randolph, was born at Monticello on 23 January 1791. On 19 September 1808, at the age of seventeen, Ann married Charles Lewis Bankhead, the son of Dr. John Bankhead, who proved to be an irredeemable alcoholic with a violent temper. Their first child, John Warner Bankhead, was born in 1810, and three more children followed.

In 1811, the Bankheads purchased "Carlton," an 800-acre farm adjacent to Monticello, which they later deeded to trustees in order to pay off their debts. Ann died at Carlton in February 1826 at the age of thirty-five, just twelve days after the premature birth of her son, William.
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Ann Cary Randolph, daughter of Martha and Thomas Mann Randolph, was Jefferson's first grandchild and chief gardening correspondent when he was absent from Monticello. "[H]ow stands the fruit with you in the neighborhood & at Monticello," Jefferson wrote twelve-year-old Ann from Washington, and particularly the peaches, as they are what will be in season when I come home. the figs also, have they been hurt? you must mount Midas & ride over to Monticello to inform yourself, or collect the information from good authority & let me have it by next post.

Ann tended Monticello's flower garden as well, and Jefferson sent one of two extant drawings of the flower beds there to his granddaughter, on the back of a letter describing his plans:

From yourself I may soon expect a report of your first visit to Monticello, and the state of our joint concerns there. I find that the limited number of our flower beds will too much restrain the variety of flowers in which we might wish to indulge, and therefore I have resumed an idea ... of a winding walk surrounding the lawn before the house, with a narrow border of flowers on each side.

During the winter of 1805-06, when Ann was fifteen, she lived in the President's House with her grandfather, along with her mother and five brothers and sisters. Just a year before Jefferson's retirement from the presidency, Ann married Charles Lewis Bankhead, a twenty-year-old law student. Their first home was at Carlton, on the western slope of Monticello. Ann and Charles's marriage was a troubled one, marred by alcoholism and violence. After one particularly serious episode at Monticello, Jefferson wrote to Bankhead's father hoping to convince him that his son's recovery could only be effected by his moving home, where his sobriety could be constantly enforced.

Unfortunately, Charles's behavior toward Ann and their children continued to distress the family greatly. Following a bloody street fight between Bankhead and his brother-in-law Thomas Jefferson Randolph in 1819, Jefferson wrote that Bankhead deserved to be in a penitentiary. Ann was so attached to her husband that she could not be persuaded to leave him to live at Monticello. She died in February 1826, at the age of thirty-five, two weeks after the birth of her fourth child. Jefferson, who was present at Ann's death, "abandoned himself to every evidence of intense grief."

Ann Cary Randolph Bankhead, Monticello

Citations

Featured Letter: An Alcoholic Grandson-in-Law