Nicholas Philip Trist, student at West Point, 1818-1821; Louisiana planter, 1821-1824; United States State Department clerk, 1828-1834; consul to Havana, Cuba, 1834-1840; State Dept. chief clerk, 1845-1847; and chief negotiator of treaty ending Mexican War, 1847. Trist was also a lawyer and worked as paymaster for the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company, and postmaster at Alexandria, Va. He married Virginia Jefferson Randolph (fl. 1818-1875), Thomas Jefferson's granddaughter, in 1824 and lived at Monticello. Other Trist family members were his grandmother, Elizabeth House Trist (d. 1828); his brother, Hore Browse Trist (1802-1856), sugar planter of Lafourche Parish, La.; Virginia's mother, Martha Jefferson Randolph (1772-1836); and Nicholas and Virginia's children, Martha Jefferson Trist Burke (Pattie) of Alexandria, Va.; Thomas Jefferson Trist of Philadelphia, Pa., who was deaf; and Hore Browse Trist, physician of Baltimore, Md., and Washington, D.C. The collection contains chiefly family correspondence of the Trist and Randolph families. Especially prominent among the correspondents are Elizabeth Trist and the Randolph women, Martha Jefferson and her daughters and her granddaughter, Martha Jefferson Trist Burke. Most letters relate to family life, but Nicholas Trist's career as a West Point cadet; the functioning of the family plantations in Lafourche Parish, La.; the education of the Trist children, including that of Jefferson, who attended the Philadelphia Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, and Nicholas's various professional activities are covered to varying degrees. Also included are letters between Virginia's sister Cornelia and her literary agent, Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867). Correspondence also documents life in the various locations where the Trists lived: from 1765 to 1828 in Louisiana and Charlottesville, Va., including Nicholas and Virginia's early married life at Monticello; from 1828 to 1833 in Washington, D.C.; from 1834 to 1845 in Havana, Cuba; and, in later years, in New York, Philadelphia, and Alexandria, Va. There are also some letters addressed to Thomas Jefferson. In addition to correspondence, the collection contains small numbers of financial and legal papers, school materials, genealogical information, and other items.
