Near the end of her life, Martha Washington described her most painful experience—aside from the death of her iconic husband—as being the day Thomas Jefferson came calling at Mount Vernon, ostensibly to pay his respects. Martha’s expression of distaste for the newly elected third president was both political and personal, and it hints at posterity’s loss when she burned nearly all of her correspondence with her husband upon his passing. Yet a substantial body of Martha’s general correspondence survives and is soon to be published in two annotated volumes.