Daughter of former president to be buried in Virginia 200 years after dying alone in France
Hay, who was the eldest daughter of former President James Monroe, died while stranded in France and was buried in an unmarked grave. wikimedia.org/Frick Art Library
The daughter of President James Monroe will finally be laid to rest beside her father this Thursday in a Virginia cemetery—two centuries after dying alone and being buried in an unmarked grave overseas.
Eliza Monroe Hay, the eldest daughter of America’s fifth president, died in France in 1840 at the age of 53. Unknown to most of her friends and family, she had been struggling to return home to the United States after falling into poverty and illness.
Her story, long obscured by history, came to light when retired teacher and author Barbara VornDick uncovered a pair of letters written by Hay in 1839, now preserved in the archives of the College of William & Mary. In those letters, Hay pleaded for help, writing, “I am now in distress, in ill health, & in a forreign [sic] country.”
VornDick’s research—compiled in her book “Eliza’s True Story: The First Biography of President Monroe’s Eldest Daughter”—challenges the common portrayal of Hay as a spoiled socialite who abandoned America in pursuit of wealth abroad. In truth, she was a devoted daughter and caretaker who spent her later years fighting to survive after being denied her rightful inheritance.
During President Monroe’s time in office, Hay served as a stand-in for her mother, Elizabeth Monroe, who was often too ill to perform the duties of First Lady. Eliza helped shape the early image of the presidential family, hosting events and managing social affairs in Washington.
Her strong will and sense of propriety, however, sometimes sparked controversy—most famously when she restricted invitations to her sister Maria’s wedding, angering many in political circles. Louisa Adams, wife of future President John Quincy Adams, once described Hay as “so full of agreeables and disagreeables… so proud, and so mean, I scarcely ever met such a compound.”
Despite those harsh opinions, Hay’s letters reveal a woman devoted to family and duty. She had cared for her parents and husband during their final illnesses, and after her own daughter’s death, she took responsibility for raising her grandchildren.
But by the late 1830s, her finances had collapsed. Control of the Monroe estate had passed to her brother-in-law and cousin, Samuel Gouverneur, who reportedly had gambling issues and refused to sell the late president’s papers—the only means by which Hay could claim income. She was left destitute and eventually sailed to France, hoping old family connections might offer relief. Instead, she died there in obscurity and was buried in Paris’s famed Père Lachaise Cemetery without a marker.
In 2018, French officials notified the James Monroe Museum that Hay’s neglected burial plot was due for clearance. VornDick and other historians then launched the Bringing Eliza Home Project to repatriate her remains and finally grant her the dignity she had been denied in death.
“This shows that even the daughter of a president could lose everything and die far from home,” VornDick told The Washington Post. “It’s an important reminder of how vulnerable women were during that era.”
On October 23, Eliza Monroe Hay will be reinterred at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia—beside her parents, President James Monroe and Elizabeth Monroe—closing a long and painful chapter of American history.
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