Patrick Henry / Dorothea Dandridge

Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry is best known for the speech he made in the House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, in Saint John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. The more militant American “Founding Fathers” — such as Patrick Henry — had begun urging local colonial governments to create militias that could be mustered to defend against or attack British troops. With the House undecided on whether to mobilize for military action against the encroaching British military force, Henry argued in favor of mobilization and ended his speech with words that have since become immortalized: "Give me Liberty of Give me Death!"

Dorothea Dandridge: Patrick, It’s been more than a year since we were married and I feel that I know very little about your youth.

Patrick Henry: I was a scatter-brained child. Adults called me willful—too polite to say that I was bull-headed in front of my parents. My mother pulled me in one direction and my father in another. I obeyed both in my own way.

Dorothea: I know you were born in Studley, in Hanover County.

Patrick: Yes, in the glorious year of Our Lord, 1736 on May 29th. My father, John Henry, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. As immigrants go, he was a bright and intelligent man.

 

Dorothea Dandridge

Dorothea: Of course I’m not surprised. I think my mother learned that your father was in attendance at King’s College before coming to America. Were your parents devout?

Patrick: Oh yes. Although my parents attended different churches, I was eager to learn as much as I could about how other people worshiped. My guiding principle, in both my political and private life, was to ascertain what course of action would best fulfill my Christian obligations. While still a young man, I would tell my friends that the Bible was worth all of the books that ever were printed.

Dorothea: How old were you when you began to play the fiddle?

Patrick: I played the fiddle before I got interested in girls. And it seems that I’ve always been interested in girls. I married you when you were still quite young.

Dorothea: A twenty-two-year old female is called a woman not a girl. Maybe I should call you an elderly boy.

Patrick. Yes, sometimes I act like a boy but I think forty-one is not too old. What do you think?

Dorothea: I married you didn’t I? Perhaps that unfortunate matter of your first wife gave you a few gray hairs before your time.

Patrick: Sally Shelton and I were children when we were married. She was my first love and I’ll always cherish her memory. When she told me that she was expecting a child, I was flustered beyond imagination. My great fear was to tell Mr. Shelton that I wanted to marry his daughter. But I was surprised that he immediately treated me like a son. In 1754, we were married Sally Shelton and I, in the parlor of her family house.

 

Dorothea: Perhaps Mr. Shelton saw more in you than you did in yourself.

Patrick: As a wedding gift, her father gave us six slaves and a three hundred acre farm near Mechanicsville. I had become a husband and a landowner.

Dorothea: And a farmer.

Patrick: I worked hard on the land but could not get the results I had hoped for. It was a small property and had been exhausted from tobacco planting.

Dorothea: Seeing you today, I can hardly imagine you working a farm.  When did Sarah begin to show signs of mental illness?

Patrick: In 1771, Sarah and I moved to Scotchtown plantation with our children Patsy, Betsy, John, William and Edmund. It was then that Sarah started to show signs of disturbing behavior. In just under a year, her condition deteriorated considerably. It became necessary to restrain her from hurting herself or others.

Dorothea: What a terrible tragedy for someone with so many children to look after. What could you do?

Patrick: Dr. Thomas Hinde recommended she be moved to the public hospital in Williamsburg. But I could not do that to my dear, sweet Sally. I looked at the facilities but would not exile my wife to such horrible fate — a windowless brick cell, a dirty mattress on the floor and a chamber pot in the corner of the room. Day and night she would have to be chained to a wall.

Dorothea: What then did you do?

Patrick: We took care of her in a two-room apartment within the plantation. With the help of a slave woman, we bathed her every day, prepared her meals and fed her, changed her bedding and let her look out a window during the day at the beautiful country scenery. I would speak to her morning and evening and make sure she needed nothing. We made the remaining four years of her life as comfortable as we could. In the spring of 1775, Sarah died.

Dorothea: My dear Patrick, what a terrible ordeal you have lived through!

Patrick: I knew my Sally was pure of heart and not possessed by the devil as many believed. It was this belief that denied her a Christian burial, so I brought her to a spot within thirty feet of our plantation home and buried her myself and planted a lilac tree next to her grave. I pray for her every day.

Dorothea: If ever I had any doubts, and I had none at all, that you were the man I should marry, I would have no such doubts now.

Dorothea Dandridge is known to us today because she was the second wife of Patrick Henry, but she was an extraordinary woman of her times. In her lineage was Baron de la Warr, after whom the state of Delaware was named. Dorothea’s mother’s father was the Governor of the Colony of Virginia.

After the Revolution, Henry was a leader of the anti-Federalists Virginia. He opposed the United States Constitution fearing that it endangered the rights of the States as well as the freedoms of individuals; he helped gain adoption of the Bill of Rights. However, by 1798 he supported President John Adams and the Federalists.