Margaret Bayard Smith
From Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia
Margaret Bayard Smith (1778-1844) was a friend of Thomas Jefferson and chronicler of early life in Washington D.C. She met Jefferson through her husband, Samuel Harrison Smith, a Republican newspaperman and founder of the National Intelligencer.
The couple moved when the capitol moved from Philadelphia to Washington in 1800. Jefferson urged them to relocate and create the Intelligencer. Her books began to appear in the 1820s. As members of high society, she wrote letters and notebooks on events that became the book The First Forty Years of Washington Society (1906).
She visited Jefferson at Monticello in August 1809.
Books Published
- A Winter in Washington, or Memoirs of the Seymour Family (Novel, 1824)
- What is Gentility? A Moral Tale (1828)
- Godey's Lady's Book
- National Intelligencer, the Southern Literary Messenger, and Peter Parley's Annual (1835-1837)
- First Forty Years of Washington Society (1906)
Further Sources
- Peterson, Visitors, 45-54.
- Margaret Bayard Smith Papers. Library of Congress
- First Forty Years of Washington Society. Full text at American Memory
