Invitation to Washington Assemblies, 1845

This 1845 engraved invitation to Dolley Madison requests her presence at the Washington Assemblies, an elite social gathering in the nation's capital. Dolley Madison was then a widow living in Washington, D.C. Among the organizers of the event listed on the invitation are James Buchanan, the future fifteenth president of the United States (1857–1861), and Hamilton Fish, who would serve as the governor of New York (1849–1850), as a U.S. senator from New York (1851–1857), and as the U.S. secretary of state (1869–1877).

Citation: Papers Concerning Dolley Madison, 1810–49, Accession #8607. Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.