John Todd Jr.
(1763-1793)
BIRTH
1763
PLACE
DEATH
October 24, 1793
PLACE
FAMILY
WIFE
Dolley Madison
(1768-1849)
HOMES
RELIGIOUS VIEWS
CHRISTIAN
QUAKER
MEMBERSHIPS
AWARDS
John Todd Jr. was a Philadelphia Quaker lawyer and the first husband of Dolley Payne, later Dolley Madison. They married in January 1790 and moved into a house at Fourth and Walnut Streets in 1791, where he could keep a law office close to the courts. Their sons were John Payne and William Temple. Todd and the infant William died in the city’s yellow fever epidemic of 1793. The surviving elder son later became James Madison’s stepson.
EARLY LIFE
The exact date and place of John Todd’s birth have not been established in the source used for this entry. The surviving biographical summary provides only limited evidence about childhood, schooling, and the daily circumstances of the household, so those details are not reconstructed here without documentation. What can be stated securely is that this person belonged to the interconnected family world from which HistoryGPS traces participants, relatives, and later descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
The available biographical record identifies John Todd with work or public activity as a lawyer. Those roles provide the clearest documented basis for including this person in the database and should be read in the political, military, professional, or household context of the period. John Todd died on Oct 24, 1793. Additional claims about employment, public service, or accomplishments have been omitted where the consulted source did not support them.
CAREER
DEATH
John Todd Jr. died of yellow fever in Philadelphia on October 24, 1793, at the age of thirty. During the epidemic he remained in the city with his parents and his law clerk while his wife, Dolley, and the rest of the family went to Gray's Ferry. The National Park Service's historical furnishing study places his death at his brother James's house, 103 Chestnut Street. His infant son William Temple died on the same day, leaving Dolley to face the loss of both husband and child. The older boy, John Payne Todd, survived. John's death ended a marriage begun in January 1790 and a legal practice based near the city's courts. His will left his estate and possessions to Dolley. These facts establish the epidemic setting and the immediate family catastrophe, but do not provide a complete clinical chart or a reliable sequence of the treatments he received. General accounts of yellow fever in the city should not be mistaken for a personal account of his symptoms. Dolley's later marriage to James Madison belongs to the aftermath of the bereavement, rather than to Todd's final illness itself.
POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES
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