John Wayles Eppes - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

Eppes married his first cousin Maria Jefferson (known also as "Polly"), the daughter of Martha (Wayles) and Thomas Jefferson, October 13, 1797 at Monticello. The couple resided at Mont Blanco in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

Among the wedding gifts received from Thomas Jefferson was the 14-year-old enslaved girl Betsy Hemmings (1783–1857), the mixed-race daughter of Mary Hemings and granddaughter of Betty Hemings, and 30 other slaves.

Eppes and Maria had three children:

• a daughter born December 31, 1799 who lived only weeks;
• a son Francis W. Eppes (September 20, 1801–May 30, 1881), and
• Martha (called Maria) (February 20, 1804–February 1806).

After her son Francis was born, in 1802 Maria Jefferson Eppes "borrowed" Critta Hemings, one of Betty Hemings' daughters, from her father's household to care for the infant boy as a nurse. In 1827 after Jefferson's death, Francis W. Eppes purchased his former nurse from the estate and gave her freedom. She was then 58 years old and lived until 1850.

Mary Jefferson Eppes died two months after the birth of her third child Maria, on April 17, 1804 at her father's home. The girl died at age two.

Eppes was a widower for five years. In 1809 he married the nineteen-year-old Martha Burke Jones from North Carolina; she was known as Patsy. They had four surviving children, born from 1810 to 1820. Among their children was Mary Eppes, who married Philip A. Bolling. Patsy lived with her daughter near the end of her life and was buried at her plantation, not next to the grave of her husband at Milbrook.