Dolley Madison - Early Life and First Marriage

Early Life and First Marriage

Dolley Payne was born as the first girl in her family on May 20, 1768, in the Quaker settlement of New Garden, North Carolina, in Guilford County. Her parents, both Virginians, had moved there in 1765. Her mother, Mary Coles, a Quaker, had married John Payne, a non-Quaker, in 1761. Three years later, he applied and was admitted to the Quaker Monthly Meeting in Hanover County, Virginia, where Coles' parents lived. Dolley Payne was reared in the Quaker faith.

By 1769, the family returned to Virginia to live near the Coles family. As a young girl, Dolley grew up in comfort at her parents' plantation in rural eastern Virginia, deeply attached to her mother's Coles family. In total, the Paynes had four boys (Walter, William Temple, Isaac, and John) and four girls (Dolley, Lucy, Anna, and Mary).

In 1783, following the American Revolutionary War, John Payne emancipated his slaves, as did numerous slaveholders in the Upper South. Some, like Payne, were Quakers, who had long encouraged manumission; others were inspired by revolutionary ideals. From 1782 to 1810, the proportion of free blacks to the total black population in Virginia increased from less than one percent to 7.2 percent, and more than 30,000 blacks were free.

Payne moved his family to Philadelphia, where he went into business as a starch merchant. By 1789, however, his business had failed. He died in October 1792. Dolley's mother Mary Payne initially made ends meet by opening a boarding house. A year later she moved to western Virginia to live with her daughter Lucy, who had married George Steptoe Washington, a nephew of George Washington. The widow Mary Coles Payne took her two youngest children, Mary and John, with her.