Lucy Ludwell Paradise


Lucy Ludwell Paradise was a Virginia-born American who lived much of her life in London. She was the wife of the Anglo-Greek linguist John Paradise and the daughter of Philip Ludwell III.

Life

Lucy Ludwell was born in Virginia as the third surviving daughter of Philip Ludwell III and his wife Frances Grymes Ludwell. John Blair, mayor of Williamsburg and former member of the House of Burgesses, recorded in his diary that Lucy was baptized on November 8, 1752.
She sailed to London in 1760 with her father and two older sisters, Hannah and Frances. In their first years in London, the three daughters were received into the Orthodox Church in April 1762. Their father Philip died in London in 1767, leaving his friend Peter Paradise as guardian of his daughters. In 1769, Lucy married Peter's son, John Paradise.
In 1787, John and Lucy came to the United States of America, where they visited their brother-in-law William Lee who was living at the Ludwell's Green Spring Plantation near Williamsburg. They also visited with George Washington at Mount Vernon.
Lucy was a correspondent with many eminent Americans of the time, including Thomas Jefferson, for whom she acted as a book purchasing agent in Europe. By 1801, as noted in a letter to President-Elect Thomas Jefferson, Lucy's husband and two daughters had died, circumstances which led to her return to the United States in 1805. She lived in her father's townhouse on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg - a house which is now called the Ludwell-Paradise House. Plagued by increasing mental instability, she was placed in the Eastern Hospital in Williamsburg, America’s first mental asylum. She died on April 24, 1814.