Meriwether Lewis Randolph purchased many tracts of land in Arkansas. Much of it he quickly assigned to wealthy friends who gave him the money to make the purchases. He kept for himself lands in southeastern Clark County. Born on January 31, 1810, Randolph was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson. He spent his childhood and youth at Monticello, his grandfather's home near Charlottesville, Virginia, and studied law at the University of Virginia. By the early 1830s, he was in Washington where he met Elizabeth Martin of Tennessee, a pretty young niece of Andrew Jackson's wife and his future wife. Jackson liked the young man and appointed him the last Territorial Secretary of Arkansas in 1835. After statehood, he continued to serve in this capacity until mid-September 1836. Hoping to recoup the failing Jefferson/Randolph fortunes, the young planter was at his new plantation in the wilderness of Clark County by November 1836. He died there less than a year later on September 24, 1837, of "bilious congestive fever"--now known as malignant malaria. He was four months short of his 28th birthday. He is buried there, a largely forgotten figure from early Arkansas history.
Directions: take hwy 53 south out of Gurdon Ark to Kansas Rd. Go 9.3 miles to Stroud Rd. Turn left. Grave is .6 miles in the woods down Stroud rd. GPS N 33.51.942, W -93.01.157
Family Members
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Thomas Mann Randolph
1768–1828
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Patsy Jefferson Randolph
1772–1836
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Elizabeth Anderson Martin Randolph Donelson
1815–1871 (m. 1835)
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Anne Cary Randolph Bankhead
1791–1826
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Thomas Jefferson Randolph
1792–1875
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Eleonora Wayles Randolph
1794–1795
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Eleonora Wayles Randolph Coolidge
1796–1876
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Cornelia Jefferson Randolph
1799–1871
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Virginia Jefferson Randolph Trist
1801–1881
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Mary Jefferson Randolph
1803–1876
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James Madison Randolph
1806–1834
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Benjamin Franklin Randolph
1808–1871
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Baby Randolph
1811–1811
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Septimia Anne Cary Randolph Meikleham
1814–1887
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George Wythe Randolph
1818–1867
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Lewis Jackson Randolph
1836–1841
Flowers
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Records on Ancestry
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