Wife of Governor Morris of New York. She was one of the loveliest and most sought after young women in Virginia, but she was accused of incest, infanticide, and miscegenation. She was exciled from Virginia plantation society and eventually turned up in New York.



Ann "Nancy" Cary Randolph Morris, born on Tuckahoe Plantation in Goochland county near Richmond, Virginia and was the eighth child of Ann Cary and Thomas Mann Randolph (Sr.). From childhood Nancy was close to her cousin, Martha Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson's daughter), and the two women corresponded intermittently throughout their lives.

Following her mother's death in March 1789 and her father's subsequent remarriage in September 1790, Nancy was invited to move in with her sister, Judith. Judith had wed their cousin, Richard Randolph, and resided at the Randolph plantation known as "Bizarre", near Farmville, Virginia. In April 1793, Judith's husband Richard was accused of "feloniously murdering a child said to be borne of Nancy [Ann] Randolph."(The Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser, March 29, 1793; Commonwealth v. Richard Randolph, Cumberland County Order Book, April 29, 1793). Defended by Patrick Henry and John Marshall, Richard was acquitted of any crime. Nancy remained at Bizarre after her brother-in-law's death in 1796, but her sister asked her to leave in 1805.

Nancy returned to Tuckahoe briefly, stayed with friends in the vicinity, visited for extended periods at Monticello, where her brother, Thomas Mann Randolph (Jr.) and her now-sister-in-law, Martha Jefferson Randolph, lived, and then moved on to Richmond.

Nancy found it difficult to stay in Virginia as a she was, by this time, considered a pariah. Having no husband, she existed on limited means, however, so she decided to travel north to Rhode Island and then to Connecticut in hopes of improving her circumstances. Finally, in 1809, she agreed to work as housekeeper for Gouverneur Morris, whom she had met in Virginia in 1788. He was a wealthy, life-long bachelor of 57 years, and 22 years her senior, but, after she moved in his mansion in April, he wooed her, and they were married by December of that year; their son Gouverneur Morris, Jr. was born in 1813, thus dashing the hopes of Morris's nephews for a substantial inheritance.

Gouverneur Morris died in 1816 and Nancy remained at Morrisania, the Morris estate in the Bronx, looking after the welfare of their son, until her own death in 1837.