Here also are the portraits of George Steptoe, and the "gay fox-loving squire," Samuel Washington, his father, the loving husband of five wives, who laid them one by one in the little family burying plot near by, where now he himself and many of his descendants sleep the last sleep.

"In ancient graves, where trailing vines
And tender wild flowers grow."

In 1807 a great grief came to Dolly in the loss of her beloved mother, who did not live to see her mistress of the White House. Mary Coles had been a belle and beauty during her girlhood.[49] At the home of her cousin, Colonel John Coles, of Enniscorthy,[50] in Albemarle county, she had met men who were destined for grave responsibilities in later years. John Coles and his son, Colonel John, who inherited this estate, entertained with lavish hospitality. They had a fine stock of horses, and for the hunting season such men as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, Patrick Henry, Wirt, Edmunds, and many others, were guests here for weeks.

Shortly after her mother's death Dolly writes:

"Deep affliction, my dear friend, has for some time past arrested my pen! My beloved & tender Mother left us forever on the 20th of October last—She was in Virgia with my youngest sister when she died without suffering or regret. The loss is only ours, & for that only ought we her children to mourn.

Mr. Madison unites with me in best wishes & regard for you and yours.

D. P. Madison[51]."

The following unpublished letter[52] from James Madison to his brother-in-law, George Steptoe Washington, is interesting as giving an account of the early troubles with Great Britain that finally led to the War of 1812:

Washington, Decr 7, 1807.

Dear Sir

Having lately rec'd a few nos of Cobbets[53] Register, I enclose them with a few newspapers of our own for your amusement, by a winter's fire side.

The business with England has come to a stop there, and is to be transferred to this place. The British Govt. would not admit, even formally, into the case of the Chesapeake, a discussion of the general principal of impressments; and the inefficacy of any arrangement not embracing the whole subject, for placing the two countries in the relation of secure & permanent friendship, was thought to require a joint provision. It had been calculated with great confidence here that the offer authorized for putting an end to the general practice of G. B. was so favorable to her interest as well as so liberal in itself, that it would be instantly embraced, and that the great difficulty on the general subject being surmounted, the affair of the Chesapeake would be met on both sides with dispositions which would render it the more manageable. The different course insisted on will necessarily leave around the subject all the thorns which mutual pride and honor, wise and false, will have planted there; and even in case the parties shall succeed in removing this ground of contest, the old one, on which a species of contest tending to rupture has been commenced, will remain. From the sensibility produced in this country by the British practice of taking seamen, and ours in greater number than their own, it can hardly be supposed that the practice will be tolerated after a refusal of the liberal & conciliatory substitute proposed on our part. Let us not however despair that things may take a better turn. If the new envoy brings as sincere disposition to remove obstacles to peace & harmony as he will find here, this cannot fail to be the case.

Inclosed are a few lines for Mrs. Washington from her sister, to whom I beg you to offer my sincere affection.

With great esteem & regard I remain

Dr Sir yr. friend & bror
James Madison

Capt G. S. Washington

Benjamin H. Latrobe,[54] having been made architect of the capitol with the title of Surveyor of the Public Buildings, removed his family to Washington in 1807. To him we owe the corn-stalk columns with capitals of ripened ears in the vestibule of the Capitol, which Mrs. Trollope declared the most beautiful things she had seen in primitive America. He also designed the capitals of tobacco leaves and flowers crowning the columns in the vestibule of the old Senate Chamber, now the Supreme Court Room. He was likewise the architect of the St. John's Church.

At the beginning of Madison's administration, in 1809, Congress appropriated $6,000 towards furnishing the White House, of which work he had charge; and mirrors, china, household linen, knives and other necessaries were bought, as were also sofas, chairs and hangings, not forgetting a pianoforte, for $458, and a guitar, for $28.