Jean Skipwith

Jean Skipwith, Lady Skipwith (February 21, 1747 or 1748 – May 19, 1826) was a Virginia plantation owner and manager who is noted for her extensive garden, botanical manuscript notes, and library. At the time of her death, her library was perhaps the largest existing library assembled by a woman. Early life Born Jane Miller, February 21, 1747 or 1748, in Prince George County, Virginia, youngest of four children of Hugh and Jane (Bolling) Miller, tobacco grower, merchant, and vestryman of Old Blandford Church of Bristol Parish, Petersburg, VA.; Mr. Miller returned to Scotland with his family before December 8, 1760. Family and marriage Jean's older sister, Anne, had married Sir Peyton Skipwith, 7th Baronet, in 1765. Anne died in childbirth in 1779. While it is unclear where or with whom Jean Miller was living in Scotland between 1760 and 1786, the Skipwith Family Papers show bills and receipts for Miller's book purchases in Edinburgh in 1781, and Miller was back in Virginia by 1786. On September 7, 1788, Sir Peyton wrote to Jean Miller (then living at Sir Peyton's Elm Hill Plantation), expressing his wish "to complete a union on which my future happiness so much and so immediately depends." He requested her permission to tell his daughter that, on a journey to Cototoman, he would be accompanied by "Lady Skipwith and not Miss Miller . . . by their [new] mother and not their aunt." They were married on September 25, 1788, in Granville, North Carolina, and by April 1789, Lady Skipwith was corresponding with Samuel Goode regarding hop roots. Lady Skipwith's first daughter, Helen, was born June 25, 1789, at Elm Hill Plantation.