She spoke four languages and was greatly influenced by the education she received in a Paris convent school with daughters of the French elite.

[7] As a young child, Randolph saw her mother suffer during difficult pregnancies and both parents mourn the deaths of four infant children.

[16] Between December 1782 and May 1784, she boarded with a family and studied French, dancing, drawing, and music with private tutors, who received prescribed, strict daily schedules and instructions regarding how her education should be conducted from Thomas Jefferson.

[2] Her younger sisters, Mary and Lucy Elizabeth, remained in Virginia with family members as Randolph and her father traveled to Boston with James Hemings.

[2] Jefferson enrolled her at the Pentemont Abbey, an exclusive convent school, after receiving assurances that Protestant students were exempt from religious instruction.

At this boarding school Randolph learned arithmetic, geography, world history, and Latin, as well as music and drawing.

Her peers were the French elite who provide a model of "female intelligence, capacity, and energy" and experienced the "rich pageantry of Roman Catholic liturgies".

It gave her the ability to conduct witty, intelligent conversation and thought about how she would manage the education of her future children.

"When she socialized at the Abbey, she learned about women's role in political affairs, the dissension leading to the French Revolution, and palace intrique.

[2] After Randolph expressed a desire to convert to Catholicism and said she was considering religious orders, Jefferson quickly withdrew her and her younger sister Polly from the school.

[2] Wayson says that she was able "to observe firsthand the collective power of French women as they marched to the king's palace at Versailles and forced the royal couple's return to Paris under the escort of the Marquis de Lafayette, a Jefferson family friend.

"[15] In September 1789, after the beginning of the French Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, his daughters, and James and Sally Hemings sailed for America,[2] arriving in 1790.

[39] I feel every day more strongly the impossibility of becoming habituated to your absence; separated in my infancy from every other friend, and accustomed to look up to you alone, every sentiment of tenderness my nature was susceptible of was for many years centered in you, and no connection formed since that could weaken a sentiment interwoven with my very existence.For ten years, she was the mistress of Monticello, building a social life that supported Jefferson's political life.

She knew the most influential women in America, like Dolley Madison, and eight of the first nine presidents of country, excluding George Washington who she never met.

[40] Thomas Jefferson sold the couple land for the Edge Hill plantation so that they could be nearer to him at Monticello in Albemarle County.

Winter was known as the social season in Washington, D.C., as it was the time when the annual Congressional session brought legislators to the city.

[2] From 1803 to 1807, her husband Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. served in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.[2] He had campaigned against "an ardent supporter" of Jefferson.

"[51] Biographer Billy L. Wayson states that she was not a hostess or a confidant, but was a close companion to her father and "was the emotional foundation" that supported Jefferson's role as president.

"[52] A few years before becoming president, Jefferson said: When I look to the ineffable pleasures of my family society, I become more and more disgusted with the jealousies, the hatred, and the rancorous and malignant passions of this scene, and lament my having ever again been drawn into public view.Randolph was devoted to her father.

[10] Concerned about the family's finances and loss of income if her husband served in the military during the War of 1812, Randolph convinced President James Monroe to give him a more lucrative, temporary tax collectorship post.

[62] Edge Hill plantation, along with its crops, buildings, animals, and slaves, was foreclosed in 1825 and the sale proceeds failed to pay back all the family's creditors.

[69] For instance, Nicholas Trist, her son-in-law, was secured the position with Henry Clay, the Secretary of State under President John Quincy Adams.

[14][71] A school was established at Edge Hill by her unmarried daughters, Mary and Cornelia, and Patsy, who taught music there at times.

[2] While in Boston, Randolph wrote her final will on January 24, 1836, and returned to the Edge Hill estate in July 1836.

[72] In 1773, when Randolph had been married one year, her grandfather died and she inherited 135 slaves, which included her half-aunts and uncles of the Hemings family, and 11,000 acres (4,500 hectares).

[57] When Randolph lived in Paris, she learned that there were countries where slavery was not legal and said to her father, "I wish with all my soul that the poor Negroes were all freed".

In 1833 Randolph's daughter Cornelia described an instance where she held a woman down while her mother whipped her, inflicting the flagellation "pretty severely.

"[74] In 1831, her son Thomas unsuccessfully lobbied for a plan for Virginia to abolish slavery gradually and colonize slaves in Africa, a proposal that Randolph supported.

[2] Martha Jefferson Randolph is the subject of the historical novel America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie, published in March 2016.

[76] In the 2000 four-hour CBS miniseries Sally Hemings An American Scandal written by Tina Andrews, Martha Jefferson was portrayed by actress Mare Winningham.