Tobias Lear - Family Life

Family Life

Lear married Mary (Polly) Long, his childhood sweetheart, in 1790. Together they had a son, Benjamin Lincoln Lear (b. 1791), but Polly died in the President's House in Philadelphia during the 1793 Yellow fever epidemic that claimed around 5,000 people. In 1795, he married Frances Bassett Washington, recent widow of the President's nephew, George Augustine Washington, but Fanny died in 1796 of tuberculosis. Tobias married again, this time to the young Frances Dandridge Henley. His new wife was also nicknamed Fanny and was the niece of Martha Washington.

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