Salon Music of President Monroe’s Family

By Patricia P. Norwood

Recently new evidence about the musical tastes of early nineteenth-century America emerged when the staff of the James Monroe Museum and Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia, discovered a music book once owned, apparently, by Maria Hester Monroe (1803–50), President James Monroe's younger daughter. The cover of the music book attests to her ownership as it bears her initials (MHM). The date engraved into the cover, 1818, appears to indicate the completion date of the collection. The book disappeared sometime before 1850 because it was not identified in Maria Hester's papers at her death. Neither was it mentioned in a memoir of her daughter-in-law Marian (Campbell) Gouverneur. Not until the late 1990s was the volume located at the museum.