Monroe Administrations - Family Life
Family Life
Monroe married Elizabeth Kortright on February 16, 1786, when he was 27 years old and she was 20. Elizabeth Monroe has been described as a person who, in public, seemed cold and reserved, but in private, "she was a devoted wife and a doting mother, possessing to the full the domestic virtues then so highly prized—a complete absorption in the affairs of her family and household and a total detachment from the world of politics and business" (Ammon, p. 62). The two were married in New York, where they met while Monroe was serving as a member of the Continental Congress, the precursor to the U.S. Congress. The two stayed there only a short time. In October of 1786, when Monroe's term in Congress was over, the two moved to Virginia. In December of that same year they had their first child, Eliza. Their other two children, a son who died as an infant, and their second daughter, Maria, were born more than a decade later. The...
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