Virginia Clay-Clopton - Biography - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

Tunstall married Clement Claiborne Clay (1816-1882), an attorney and young legislator, whom she had met at her uncle Collier's. They were quickly engaged after her return from the Female Academy and married a month later in 1843. She moved with him to Huntsville, Alabama, where his family was based.

When her husband was elected by the legislature as a U.S. Senator in 1853, Virginia Clay moved with him to Washington, DC. On the train they met numerous other people from the state who were going to be part of Congress and the administration, forming friendships that lasted. In the capital, they were part of the political social life of the elite. That first winter Clay gave birth to her only child, who died soon after. Within a year, she was fully participating in the many events of the city.

In rounds of dinners, she met other Congressmen, members of the diplomatic corps and President Franklin Pierce's administration. During these years in Washington, she and her husband and numerous other Southerners lived at Brown's Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. For a couple of winters they shifted to the Ebbitt Hotel, but returned to Brown's, where many of their friends stayed during Congressional sessions. It was an extension of their social life.