Presidental Families: Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson second surviving daughter, Martha was the beauty of the family, but very frail. Polly as she was called, married John Wayles Epps in 1797 and on April 17, 1804, shortly after childbirth she died at her home in Virginia. Polly most likely died of childbed fever, a common infection in that period, for which there is no cure, and which often took the lives of women who had just given birth. President Jefferson's own wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson died after childbirth many years before. The president arrived at Polly's home just before she died, and was grief stricken at her death. She was only twenty-five years old.