Virginia Randolph Cary

Virginia Randolph Cary (January 30, 1786 – May 2, 1852) was an American writer. She was the author of Letters on Female Character, Addressed to a Young Lady, on the Death of Her Mother (1828), an influential advice book.

Virginia Randolph Cary was born on January 30, 1786, most likely in Goochland County, Virginia, at Tuckahoe, the plantation owned by her parents, Thomas Mann Randolph (1741–1794) and his first wife, Ann Cary (1745-1789). Her twelve sisters and brothers included Mary Randolph (1762–1828), author of the influential cookbook The Virginia House-Wife (1824), and Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr. (1768–1828), who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1803 to 1807 and as Governor of Virginia from 1819 to 1822.

After her mother died in 1789, the three year old Cary lived at Monticello in Albemarle County, Virginia with her brother and sister-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. and Martha Jefferson (1772–1836), the daughter of Thomas Jefferson. Her sister Judith married William Randolph's great-grandson, Richard Randolph of Bizarre. His paternal ancestors included Pocahontas, the youngest daughter of Chief Powhatan and her English-born husband John Rolfe.

After the death of her husband in 1823, as a widow, she published four major works:

On August 28, 1805 she married her cousin Wilson Jefferson Cary (1783-1823), of Fluvanna County, Virginia. They had six children:

Cary died in Alexandria, Virginia, and is buried in Saint Paul's Episcopal Church Cemetery.

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