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U.S. President’s Daughter to Be Reburied After Being Found in Unmarked Grave Overseas

It comes thanks to the relentless work of a retired teacher.

The remains of a former president’s daughter are to be reburied in the U.S. after nearly 200 years in an unmarked grave in France. President James Monroe’s child, Eliza Monroe Hay, will be laid to rest at a cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, with her family on October 23. It comes after years of painstaking investigation and campaigning from retired teacher Barbara VornDick. She learned about Hay while working at a home of the fifth president near Charlottesville in 2018. Her research unearthed a letter from Hay written in 1839 pleading, “I am now in distress, in ill health, and in a foreign country... Save me from utter ruin,” The Washington Post reports. Hay spent years caring for her ailing loved ones after they left the White House, including Monroe, who died in 1831. Allegedly starved of inheritance by her sister’s husband, Samuel Gouverneur, she sailed for France in 1838 to seek help from friends in Europe. By 1840, she was dead. VornDick received a tip that French officials previously wrote to the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia. They warned her graveyard was crumbling and her remains may have to be exhumed and placed in an ossuary. The Bringing Eliza Home Project was launched in 2023.