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Montpelier, Orange County, Virginia

THE LIFELONG HOME OF JAMES MADISON James Madison was born at the residence of his mother's parents, at Port Conway, Prince George County, Virginia, but before long he was taken to his father's house, Montpelier, which was the first brick HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE CAVALIERS 297 house built in Orange County. And Montpelier continued to be his home to the day of his death. Much of his life was spent in Washington, but his heart was always turning to the old Virginia plantation where he had spent his boyhood, and he took advantage of every possible opportunity to go there for a longer or shorter visit.

The distance to Shadwell, where Thomas Jefferson lived as a boy, was only thirty miles, but these two who were to have such a large place in the early history of America, did not meet until Madison was seventeen years old. Then lost time was made up. For many years the road between Montpelier and the home of Jefferson became quite familiar to the friends.

In the years before he went to college Madison roamed at will over the twenty-five hundred acres of the Montpelier estate. He walked and rode, he hunted and fished, he learned to take delight in the quiet scenery of that beautiful Blue Ridge country. His tutor, who lived on the estate, was his companion on his expeditions. It was probably due to this outdoor life that his health was so much better in Virginia than it was at the College of New Jersey (Princeton College). Soon after he graduated in 1771 he returned to Montpelier, somewhat broken by reason of overwork and lack of exercise. To a college friend in Philadelphia he wrote rather pessimistically : "I am too tired and infirm now to look for extraordinary things in this world, for I think my sensations for many months have intimated to me not to expect a long or a healthy life, though it may be better for me after some time; but I hardly dare expect it, and therefore have little spirit or elasticity to set about anything that is difficult in acquiring and useless in possessing after one has exchanged time for eternity."

He was right in thinking that he was not to have a healthy life, but he was wrong in thinking it was to be neither long nor eventful. For more than sixty years after he wrote the letter from which quotation has been made, he was energetic and devoted in the service of his country. In May, 1776, he entered the Virginia Convention, thus beginning the career that led him to eight years in the White House. And after he retired from the Presidency much of his time and thought was given to the affairs of the nation. During all these years the thought of his Virginia home gave him new strength in the midst of his tasks.

That home meant more to him than ever when, in September, 1794, he entered the doors of Montpelier with his bride, Dorothy Todd, the young Philadelphia widow whom he had married at Harewood, Virginia.