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Dolley Madison, by Evert A. Duyckinick, engraving by Wilson & Company, 1873. In the Portrait Gallery of the Perry-Castañeda Library of the University of Texas at Austin |
A
First Lady flees to the sanctuary of Dumbarton House
On August 24,
1814, Dolley Madison was forced to flee from the White House as
the British were approaching. Charles Carroll, the owner of Belle
Vue, as Dumbarton House was then named, called on her in his carriage.
Dolley recalled the events in a letter to her sister Lucy Payne
Washington Todd:
Our
kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and
is in a very bad humour with me because I insist on waiting
until the large picture of General 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 canvas taken out. It is done!
and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen
from New York, for safekeeping.
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 to you, or where
I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell!
[Dolley
Madison Papers, Manuscript Division,The Library of Congress]
Navy Secretary
William Jones had been overseeing preparations to set fire to the
Navy Yard, lest its stores fall into the hands of the enemy. He
later wrote:
I
left the Navy yard at about half past three o'clock accompanied
by Mr. Duval and not long after learned that our army was rapidly
retreating and that of the enemy advancing rapidly. We proceeded
to Georgetown where I met my family and that of the Presidents
at the house of Charles Carrol [sic] Esq of Belle Vue and received
a message from the President requesting that I would join him
at Foxalls works. At about 5 oclock I set out in company with
the family of the President, of Mr. Carrols [sic] and my own,
with Mr. Duval and proceeded through Georgetown to join the
President but found he had crossed at Masons ferry.
[William
Jones Papers, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania]
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