Jane Randolph Jefferson

Randolph was born in one of the Tower Hamlets, Shadwell, a poor maritime neighborhood of London. It is most likely that she emigrated to Virginia as a child with her family and that her education was received entirely at home. Little is known of her, for Jefferson rarely mentioned his mother in his extensive writings. According to the 20th-century biographer Merrill Peterson, she represented "zero quantity" in her son Thomas's life, although more recent scholarship questions Peterson's conclusions. Read Less