Page:The Ladies of the White House.djvu/182

160 and he enjoyed also the opportunities which he there found of gratifying his fondness for botanical studies; but he returned home in very bad health, and after a few months of severe suffering, died on the 20th of June, 1828, in his sixtieth year. Monticello was sold the following winter. My mother took leave of her beloved home in December—that home which had been the scene of her happiest years, where she had enjoyed her dear father's society, and been the solace of his age; where her children had been, most of them, born and grown up around her, and where her own happy childhood had been passed before the death of her mother.

"She removed with her family to the house of her son Jefferson. My mother lived a year with my brother's family, during which time she formed a plan of keeping a school for young ladies, assisted by her unmarried daughters, who were to be teachers under her superintendence. This plan was, however, rendered unnecessary by the donations so generously made her by the States of South Carolina and Louisiana, of $10,000 each. About this time, also, Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, prompted by the wish to do something in aid of Mr. Jefferson's daughter, offered to my husband, who had just then commenced the practice of the law, one of the higher clerkships in the State Department, with a salary of; $1,400. This offer was accepted by him, with the understanding that my mother and sisters would go with us to live in Washington as one family. In the autumn of 1829, we bade adieu to our native mountains,