Mary Cutts

Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts (September 16, 1814 – July 14, 1856) was an American socialite, amateur
historian, and memoirist. She exchanged letters frequently with Dolley Madison and after Madison's death
in 1849 spent the last seven years of her life writing two memoirs and attempting to get them published.
The memoirs included biographical information on Madison and were published in 1886 as the heavily
edited Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, Wife of James Madison, President of the United States by
Lucia B. Cutts. The work was the standard on Madison's life until 2003.

Contents
Biography
Memoirs
Citations
References

Biography
Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts was born in Washington, D.C., on September 16, 1814,[1] to Anna Payne
Cutts and Richard Cutts, a congressman from Massachusetts living in what is now Maine. She was the
sixth of seven children and would grow closest to her younger brother, Richard, and sister Dolley.[2][3][4]
Anna's sister was Dolley Madison, the wife of James Madison, and Mary was her "favored niece".[3] Mary
never married and spent her life living with the Cutts family in Washington, Boston, and on Cutts Island in
present-day Maine. As children, the Cutts wrote the Madisons and lived at their home in Montpelier,
Virginia, during the summer.[5][6] By the 1820s Dolley viewed Mary as a daughter.[7] Mary spent that
decade living with her father in a new home on Lafayette Square in Washington. Towards the end of the
month she met her cousin Annie Payne. The two got along well.[8]

Throughout the 1830s, Mary and her sister, Dolley Payne Cutts,
lived in Washington, D.C., and spent much time with their aunt.
The historian Catherine Allgor describes Madison as "mother and
best friend" to the girls. She assisted Mary Cutts in getting
signatures in an autograph book and advised them on the proper
conduct in social situations and life in general.[9] The Cutts girls
wrote Madison numerous letters and sent her gifts and news.[1][10]
Mary was homeschooled and was an amateur artist, drawing
figures including her aunt.[11] Anna Cutts, Mary's mother, died in
August 1832. She was devastated at the news.[11] Two years later
Mary was involved in Margaret Bayard Smith's effort to produce a
biographical sketch of Dolley. Mary assisted James Madison in
dealing with his papers before his death in 1836.[12] Cutts was Dolley Madison painted by Mary
further devastated when her sister, Dolley, died in 1838.[13] Cutts c. 1840
By the 1840s Mary, her father and brother Richard were living on 14th Street in Washington with a free
black woman. Mary accompanied Madison on a trip to New York City in early 1842. Cutts visited John
Quincy Adams and his wife Louisa Adams often and was with Louisa upon her husband's death in
1848.[13] She visited the Adams in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1852 and relatives in Virginia in July 1856.
While there she fell ill around the fourth of July and died on July 14 of tuberculosis.[14]

Memoirs
Mary Cutts transcribed and saved many of her letters with Dolley Madison.[3] After Dolley Madison's
death in 1849, she had instructed that her private papers be burned, though how much she actually desired
be destroyed is unclear. Cutts and her sister, Annie, "confiscated" Madison's letters from an agent of
Madison's estate and burned many of them.[15][16]

Cutts wrote two memoirs about Dolley Madison after Madison's death.[3][16] It is unclear the relationship
between the two—they may have been sections or different drafts.[17] Her first was written in the early
1850s and was thirty-two or fifty seven pages long.[3][18] It covers Madison's life from her ancestry to
1812, skipping 1801 to 1809.[19] The second, written at the request of editors for a "more conventional"
memoir, was sixty-one or ninety five pages.[3][18] This memoir goes from 1801 to Madison's death.[19]
These two memoirs span all of Dolley Madison's life, and Allgor notes that "it is not illogical to assume that
Dolley herself was the source of the information." However, it is unknown what materials Cutts used in
compiling her memoirs and is clearly intended to show Madison in "the best light possible."[20] Allgor
considers the second memoir to have "lost sight of Dolley" and overly focus on other historical events.[18]
In 2015 Allgor described the memoir as possibly "the closest form of Dolley's autobiographical voice left to
history."[16] Historian Ralph Ketcham, in a biography of James Madison, describes Cutts work as "the
most authentic, intimate sketch known of their [the Madison's] family life".[21] They contain distortions or
inaccuracies about Dolley's life.[19][22]

Cutts found an interested publisher, Jared Sparks, who demanded inclusion of "important men and
masculine subjects", according to Allgor, that he thought would ensure the memoir was taken seriously.[18]
This did not work out, and Henry D. Gilpin, who published James Madison's memoirs was contacted.
However, Cutts died in 1856 before she could finish her work.[18]

In 1888 the Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, Wife of James Madison, President of the United
States, a work edited by Lucia B. Cutts (Dolley's grandniece), was published by Houghton Mifflin and
Company. It made use of the unpublished memoirs and transcribed letters Mary Cutts had put together.
According to the historian Richard N. Côté, Lucia Cutts "heavily edited, rewrote, and Bowdlerized many
of the letters Mary Cutts had transcribed."[3] Mary Cutts was not attributed in the volume.[19] This book
was the standard text on Dolley's life until 2003.[18]

In 2012 Cutts' original memoirs were republished as The Queen of America: Mary Cutts's Life of Dolley
Madison. The book was edited by Allgor and published by the University of Virginia Press and include
essays contextualizing Cutts's work.[19] In the publication Allgor describes Cutts memoirs as "without
question... the most significant account of Dolley Madison's life" and "the foundation for all subsequent
work."[23]

Citations
1. Taylor 2012, p. 70.
2. Taylor 2012, pp. 70–71.
3. Côté 2004, p. 375.
 4. Allgor 2006, p. 105.
5. Taylor 2012, p. 71.
6. Allgor 2012, p. 10.
7. Taylor 2012, p. 72.
8. Taylor 2012, p. 73.
9. Allgor 2006, p. 354.
10. Allgor 2006, p. 355.
11. Taylor 2012, p. 74.
12. Taylor 2012, p. 75.
13. Taylor 2012, p. 77.
14. Taylor 2012, pp. 79–80.
15. Allgor 2006, p. 402.
16. Kierner & Treadway 2015, p. 204.
17. Allgor 2012, p. 15.
18. Allgor 2006, p. 403.
19. Leibiger, Stuart (2014). "The Queen of America: Mary Cutts's Life of Dolley Madison. Edited
by Catherine Allgor . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. 240 pp" (https://onlin
elibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/psq.12125). Presidential Studies Quarterly. 44 (2): 376–
377. doi:10.1111/psq.12125 (https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fpsq.12125). ISSN 1741-5705 (http
s://www.worldcat.org/issn/1741-5705).
20. Allgor 2006, p. 395.
21. Ketcham 1990, pp. 618–619.
22. Kierner & Treadway 2015, pp. 205–206.
23. Allgor 2012, p. 8.

References
Allgor, Catherine (2006). A perfect union : Dolley Madison and the creation of the American
nation (http://archive.org/details/perfectuniondoll00allg). Internet Archive. New York : Henry
Holt & Co. ISBN 978-0-8050-7327-0.
Kierner, Cynthia A.; Treadway, Sandra Gioia (2015). Virginia Women: Their Lives and
Times, Volume 1 (https://books.google.com/books?id=CdrdCgAAQBAJ&newbks=0&printse
c=frontcover&hl=en). University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-4741-7.
Côté, Richard N. (2004). Strength and Honor: The Life of Dolley Madison (https://books.goog
le.com/books?id=zL6CSPr6E7kC&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA375&dq=%22ma
ry+cutts%22&hl=en). Corinthian Books. ISBN 978-1-929175-09-3.
Ketcham, Ralph (1990). James Madison: A Biography (https://books.google.com/books?id=
hCAjgs4mmQ4C&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA618&dq=%22mary+cutts%22&hl=
en). University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-1265-3.
Cutts, Mary Estelle Elizabeth (2012). Allgor, Catharine (ed.). The queen of America : Mary
Cutts's life of Dolley Madison (http://archive.org/details/queenofamericama0000cutt).
Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-3298-9.
Taylor, Elizabeth Downing (2012). "Miss Cutts". In Allgor, Catharine (ed.). The queen of
America : Mary Cutts's life of Dolley Madison (http://archive.org/details/queenofamericama00
00cutt). Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press. pp. 70–81. ISBN 978-0-8139-3298-9.
Allgor, Catharine (2012). "The Lady Vanishes". In Allgor, Catharine (ed.). The queen of
America : Mary Cutts's life of Dolley Madison (http://archive.org/details/queenofamericama00
00cutt). Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0-8139-3298-9.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mary_Cutts&oldid=1041419539"

This page was last edited on 30 August 2021, at 12:29 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using
this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.