Elizabeth Monroe
Elizabeth Kortright Monroe ( * June 30, 1768 in New York City; † September 23, 1830 on their plantation Oak Hill ) was the wife of the fifth U.S. President James Monroe, and thus the First Lady of the United States from 1817 to 1825.
Life
Elizabeth Monroe came from a long-established New York family Dutch- Flemish origin. Even her grandfather Cornelius Kortright (1704 - 1745) was commercially active as a dealer. Her father, Captain Lawrence Kortright (1728 - 1794) continued this tradition and had, among other things made as co-owners of privateers, which were equipped with Kaperbriefen against the "enemies of the Crown " a fortune. He was not only one of the founders of the New York Chamber of Commerce, but had moreover also participated in the Anglo-French clashes during the Indian wars on the part of the British Crown. From the American Revolutionary War, however, he held out. A surprise, therefore, was when his daughter Elizabeth married on 16 February 1786 as seventeen year old James Monroe. At this time the 27 -year-old Monroe was a lawyer. The son of Scottish- Welsh- French origin, was known not only for his pro-French attitude it came up even his anti-British setting. The young couple lived initially in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and in 1787 already came first child into the world. Daughter Eliza Kortright ( 1787-1835 ). In 1794 Elizabeth Kortright Monroe then accompanied her husband to Paris, as this had been appointed in France by President George Washington to the U.S. ambassador. But in 1796 he was again dismissed from his post because he had fallen by his friendly attitude to french in Washington now in disgrace. In spring 1797 the couple returned to Monroe with her daughter back to America. While James Monroe was in connection busy to write a 500 -page apologia, Elizabeth got in the following years two more children: JS (which presumably stands for James Spence, 1799-1801 ) and Mary Hester ( 1803-1850 ). After 1800, however, the political climate changed and Monroe 1803 was again sent to Paris, this time with Robert R. Livingston Minister Plenipotentiary, the successful auszuhandelten there the cession of the Louisiana territory by purchase.
Her husband was in 1811 under President James Madison Secretary of State ( secretary of state ) and the Monroes were thus part of social life in Washington. As Monroe then became president himself in 1817, Elizabeth was indeed the consummate hostess, however, had the Washington some problems with the favorite of her and her daughter European, etiquette -oriented " New York style", which in stark contrast to the more open " Virginia social style " of its extremely popular predecessor, Dolley Madison was. The marriage of their daughter Maria Hester Monroe with her nephew Samuel L. Gouverneur, the first wedding that was held at the White House, then was purely private, without the Washington society, what is not counting her well in the sequence. Even during the presidency of her husband she became ill, could no longer socially committed and he was aloof. Her husband had understanding of it, as opposed to residents of Washington who thought they were lazy and vain.
However, your etiquette - prone, almost aristocratic style European courts, they maintained. The preference of mother and daughter for the formal European manners probably went back to the time in Paris. Daughter Eliza was friends with Hortense de Beauharnais, for example, the later stepdaughter of Napoleon, and both girls attended the elite school of Madame Campan, a former maid of the French queen Marie- Antoinette.
After the end of her husband 's second term, the couple settled on the plantation Oak Hill in Virginia, where he spent the last years together. Elizabeth 's health deteriorated rapidly. She died after a long illness on September 23, 1830 in Oak Hill and was buried in the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.