April 1, 2010
In 1836 Sally McDowell was fifteen years old – and like many fifteen year old girls, she was something of a flirt. Her father, the governor of Virginia, sent her to live with her Uncle Benton (a US Senator from Missouri) in Washington, D.C., so that she could attend a “female academy” there. One of the boarders at Senator Benton’s house, was the 36-year old bachelor congressman, Francis Thomas of Maryland.
Thomas fell in love with her – and his attentions were not objectionable to Sally either. They married on June 8, 1841, when she was 20 and he was 42 (over the objections of Governor McDowell – who prophesied trouble, but permitted the match because of the insistence of his daughter). Five months later, Francis Thomas was elected governor of Maryland.
But the marriage was already in danger. Francis Thomas had a jealous streak a mile wide. Any man who dared to look at his charming young wife was suspect. He accused her of multiple affairs within the first four months of their marriage – including one with his own dentist (a close relative of his). He would tell her that if she would only confess and admit it, then he would forgive and everything would be okay – and the poor girl did. But the accusations only got worse (he accused her of having an abortion at one point – claiming that she was trying to get rid of the evidence of her unfaithfulness: but the only evidence he could produce was her “confession” that he coerced!).
For all practical intents and purposes, the marriage ended on January 28, 1842, in the drawing room at “Uncle Robert’s” in Baltimore, Maryland. Uncle Robert J. Breckinridge (Sally’s mother and RJ’s wife were sisters) had been enlisted by Governor McDowell to “rescue” Sally from Governor Thomas – a delicate maneuver in antebellum southern society, where the husband’s authority over his wife was pretty near absolute.
I’ll spare you all the gory details (once he realized that he was never going to get her back, Governor Thomas published a pamphlet detailing his allegations against Sally – but when the matter went to court, he couldn’t prove any of it). Suffice it to say that RJB played an important role in helping Sally realize that Governor Thomas was not going to change.
Now, I know that my story is about RJB – but some of you will no doubt wonder, “what happened to Sally?” Divorce was exceedingly rare in antebellum Virginia. And while a divorcee had the legal right to remarry, who would want to marry a woman who had been at the center of such a scandal? whose ex-husband continued to harass her for years, periodically renewing his request for reunion?
The divorce was granted in 1845 (when she was 24). In 1846 ex-Governor Thomas accused his dentist of trying to poison him (the same man he had accused of having an affair with Sally), he called on Sally to testify against his dentist. She came to Frederick, Maryland, (with her parents) and testified before the grand jury (thankfully the judge kept Thomas on a short leash and refused to allow any questions beyond the precise point in the case! And, no, the grand jury did not indict the dentist – in fact, Thomas’s own lawyers quit as soon as they realized that Thomas was utterly deluded and probably insane). But while in Frederick, she went to church. The pastor of the Presbyterian church was John Miller (whose sister had married RJB’s brother).
Eight years later, now a widower with two small children, John Miller wrote to Sally McDowell. Her parents had both died, leaving her as the functional head of the McDowell family, and the owner of the family estate near Lexington, Virginia. He was now a pastor in Philadelphia. Their correspondence between 1854-1856 now fills nearly 900 pages of a volume entitled, “If You Love That Lady, Don’t Marry Her” – the nearly unanimous advice given to him. Indeed, Sally herself told him that if he married her, he would be ruined – no church would want her as a pastor’s wife. For two years they wrote non-stop about everything (including quite a bit about “Uncle Robert” and “the Witch of Danville” – I’ll save that one for a future epistle!). Finally, she yielded – against her fears that he would turn out to be like Governor Thomas, and against his fears that she would be too much like her cousin Virginia Shelby (the aforementioned “Witch of Danville”) – and in 1856 they married.
I would like to say that John Miller’s congregation welcomed this much maligned and falsely accused woman – but they didn’t. They immediately and peremptorily demanded his resignation. It was true: no church would call a man who was married to Sally McDowell. So he moved with his two children to Virginia, where he supplied vacant churches in the Shenandoah Valley. (I believe that after the Civil War he was able to find a call)
But while I cannot say much for the Presbyterian church’s response to this – I will say that John and Sally appear to have had a truly happy marriage. They added two more children – and lived affectionately for thirty-nine years together, dying only one week apart in 1895.
And Governor Thomas? He never remarried – but his political career was ruined. For twenty years he remained in retirement, only returning to political office during the Civil War (curious how the War seemed to wash away all prior blemishes…). He died in 1876 when a train ran over him.
