Elizabeth Kortright was the daughter of a retired captain in the British Army, who, after the peace of 1783, remained in New York. She married Mr. Monroe there during a session of Congress, but later the seat of government was removed to Philadelphia, where they resided until 1794, when Monroe was made Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to France. Her husband’s several foreign positions of trust obliged them to live much abroad. She saved the life of Madame de Lafayette, who, upon the very day of Mrs. Monroe’s call at the prison, was to have been beheaded; but the powerful support of the American Minister’s wife caused her liberation. Mrs. Monroe was elegant, accomplished, dignified and charming, and her “drawing rooms” were more ceremonious than those of Mrs. Madison. She died suddenly, one year before her husband, who spent the remainder of his life with his daughter Mrs. Gouverneur in New York.