Irresponsible Passions By Alan Pell Crawford - 1584 Words

Unwise Passions by Alan Pell Crawford, first starts by introducing the issue that this novel is centered around, Richard Randolph and Nancy Randolph. Who were accused of killing â€Å"their† child in the middle of the night, a child created out of wedlock who was buried in the backyard. As the novel opens up, it introduces the two families caught in the middle of this controversy. Nancy Randolph was born Anne Cary Randolph, named after her mother and was born on September 16, 1774 at her family’s plantations. Colonel Thomas Mann Randolph and his wife had a total of thirteen children, six boys and seven girls. The Randolph family were great friends with the Jefferson family because of Nancy’s grandfather who implored his good friend Peter Jefferson to assist his son with the plantation upon his death; this resulted in the Jefferson family living on the plantation for seven years. The Randolph family descended from the John Rolfe and Pocahontas relationship which is something that they took great pride in. Around the summer of 1788, Judith and Richard fell in love leading Richard to ask for Judith’s hand in marriage. The couple simply waited for Judith’s mother to change her mind of her disapproval on the marriage, however; Ann Carry died before this could happen and the couple married at the age of seventeen and nineteen. Soon Nancy’s father could no longer stand being a widower and decides to marry Gabriella who at the time was the same age as Nancy. The two couldn’t get along