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(May 20, 1786, Rowan, Guilford, NC - July 12, 1849, Washington, DC)
Dolley's Legends
How's that Spelled?
We've all seen her name spelled Dolly and even heard that her real name was Dorothy or Dorothea. What's correct?
Her parents named her Dolley Payne. As recorded in Quaker records under her parents' names, "Dolley their daughter was born ye 20 of ye 5 mo 1768." Dolley herself always spelled her name with an e; it is also spelled that way on many legal documents.
Scholars at the Dolley Madison Project, a University of Virginia research project, believe that Madison's niece, Mary E. E. Cutts, was the first to change Madison's name in a short 1854 memoir. Cutts wrote that Madison was named Dorothy in compliment to her mother's aunt Mrs. John Henry, "but that she grew up the name was growing out of fashion, so she ever afterwards wrote it Dolley and so she was called." Lucia B. Cutts, Madison's great niece, later took what she wanted from Mary E. E. Cutts' memoirs for her own Madison biography and, after some creative editing, changed Dolley to Dolly. Her 1886 book The Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison, the first book-length biography of Madison, is the first known publication to have used the misspelling Dolly.
An 1896 biography entitled Dolly Madison by Maud Wilder Goodwin asserted that Madison's real name was Dorothea, "in honor of Dorothea Spotswood Dandridge, daughter of Nathaniel West Dandridge and granddaughter of long remembered governor Alexander Spotswood." A combination of the two errors appeared in Allen C. Clark's 1914 book, Life and Letters of Dolly Madison. Clark stated in his book that Madison's real name was Dorothea, after Dorothea Spotswood Dandridge, but that "Dorothea was quickly changed to Dolly."
By the early twentieth century, the American public was clearly confused about Dolley Madison's name. Products and companies such as Dolly Madison Ice Cream and the Dolly Madison Bakery based their names on the popular misspelling. In the Encyclopedia Britannica she was Dorothy; the Encyclopedia Americana referred to her as Dolly; and the Reader's Encyclopedia called her Dorothea.
Although James Madison's biographer, Irving Brant, asserted as early as 1950 that Madison's name was Dolley, no one listened. It took the authority of the Smithsonian Institution to correct the famous first lady's name. In 1958 the Smithsonian added Dolley Madison's 1809 inaugural gown to its first ladies exhibit. A museum curator investigated the many versions of her name and resolutely declared that the correct spelling was, and always had been, Dolley. The news was important enough to make the front page of the New York Times and to be noted in Time magazine. From then on, biographers and scholars have included e in the name. Nevertheless, products with the trademarked name Dolly Madison help keep alive the misspelling, confusing yet another generation of Americans.
Why did the name change occur in the first place? Dolley Madison Project historians believe that the early biographers felt the name Dolley wasn't refined enough for the celebrated first lady, so they changed it to something they considered more sophisticated.
Dolley's Famous Bravery
Is the textbook version of Dolley Madison bravely risking her life to save important papers and George Washington's portrait accurate?
Historians usually rely on primary documents to answer such questions, and in this case they have several to weigh. Madison recorded her own version of the day in a letter she wrote to her sister:
Tuesday Augt. 23d. 1814.Dear Sister
My husband left me yesterday morng. to join Gen. Winder. He enquired anxiously whether I had courage, or firmness to remain in the President's house until his return, on the morrow, or succeeding day, and on my assurance that I had no fear but for him and the success of our army, he left me, beseeching me to take care of myself, and of the cabinet papers, public and private. . . . . I am accordingly ready; I have pressed as many cabinet papers into trunks as to fill one carriage; our private property must be sacrificed, as it is impossible to procure wagons for its transportation. . . . My friends and acquaintances are all gone; Even Col. C with his hundred men, who were stationed as a guard in the enclosure . . . .
Wednesday morng . . . Three O'clock. Will you believe it, my Sister? We have had a battle or skirmish near Bladensburg, and I am still here within sound of the cannon! Mr. Madison comes not; may God protect him! Two messengers covered with dust, come to bid me fly; but I wait for him. . . . At this late hour a wagon has been procured, I have had it filled with the plate and most valuable portable articles belonging to the house. . . .
Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of Gen. Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvass taken out it is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York, for safe keeping. And now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it, by filling up the road I am directed to take. When I shall again write you, or where I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell!!
Other primary accounts, though differing on some details, largely agree with Madison's version. However, Paul Jennings, President Madison's African American slave, wrote a much different version of Madison's activities on the fateful day of August 24, 1814. Jennings's 1865 memoir, A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, contradicts Madison's letter to her sister:
It has often been stated in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she cut out from the frame the large portrait of Washington (now in one of the parlors there), and carried it off. This is totally false. She had no time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to get it down. All she carried off was the silver in her reticule, as the British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected every moment. John Susè [Jean-Pierre Sioussat] (a Frenchman, then door-keeper, and still living) and Magraw, the President's gardener, took it down and sent it off on a wagon, with some large silver urns and such other valuables as could be hastily got hold of.
So whose version is accurate? Decide for yourself!
In response to accusations of self-aggrandizement, Dolley Madison replied, "I acted thus because of my respect for General Washington, not that I felt a desire to gain laurels; but should there be a merit in remaining an hour in danger of life and liberty to save the likeness of anything, the merit in this case belongs to me."
Ice Cream Firsts
Was Dolley Madison the first person to serve ice cream at the White House?
Although Madison did serve ice cream at White House gatherings, President Thomas Jefferson first offered guests the dessert in the mansion seven years before James Madison took office. George Washington, an even earlier fan of the sweet treat, bought an ice cream machine in Philadelphia in 1784.
Inaugural Ball Firsts
Did Dolley Madison throw the first presidential inaugural ball?
Madison did arrange a grand ball at Long's Hotel, a block away from the Capitol, for her husband's inauguration, but it was not the first of its kind. George Washington danced a mean minuet at the first inaugural ball, which took place in New York City on May 7, 1779 (although some contend that, because this ball was not officially sanctioned by the government, it doesn't count as the first). Neither John Adams nor Thomas Jefferson partied at such an event, making James Madison the second president to celebrate in this fashion. Madison's inaugural ball held other firsts, though: it was the first held in Washington, D.C., the first held on the day of the inauguration, and the first in which the United States Marine Band performed.
http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/workshops/legends/DMlegends.html
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