January 3
Today in the History of Love. In 1783, John Marshall, future Chief Justice of the United States, married Mary Willis Ambler, the daughter of a prominent and wealthy Yorktown family.
After fighting in the American Revolution, Marshall returned to his legal studies and was admitted to the Virginia bar. He began to seek a wife—and his eye fell on Polly Ambler, daughter of the state treasurer. Marshall later recalled: “I saw her first the week she attained the age of fourteen and was greatly impressed with her…. To a person which, in youth, was very attractive, to manners uncommonly pleasing, she added a fine understanding and the sweetest temper.”
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The story is told that when John Marshall proposed to Polly, she was so flustered that she said no—and had to send a cousin running after him, with a lock of her hair, to say she meant yes. Marshall returned the gift in a locket, which she ever after wore around her neck. “She became, at sixteen, a most devoted wife,” said Marshall. “All my faults, and they were too many, could never weaken this sentiment.”
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After Polly’s death on Christmas Day 1831, Marshall reflected on their long marriage of 48 years: “Not a moment passed in which I did not consider her a blessing from which the chief happiness of my life was derived. This never dying sentiment, originating in love, was cherished by a long and close observation of as amiable and estimable qualities as ever adorned the female bosom.”
To the reader: Above are some notes towards a book, forthcoming this year. Suggestions for similar entries should be sent to theloversalmanac-at-gmail-dot-com. Documentation required. Reasonably happy marriages only (though not necessarily happy lives). No weddings after 1950. Also welcome are: unusual words or terms of love; songs or poems about love; and quotations about love, marriage, children, and family, Nothing that is still copyrighted.
The New Year’s Day launch of this Substack was delayed by a catastrophic computer collapse.