SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
For nearly 200 years, Eliza Monroe Hay, daughter of the fifth U.S. president, James Monroe, lay in an unmarked grave in Paris, forgotten until a retired schoolteacher started researching Eliza's life. Barbara VornDick's research turned into a yearslong journey through archives and genealogic records that revealed a very different story and ultimately brought a first daughter home.
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BARBARA VORNDICK: Eliza, we have done our best to restore your reputation and repatriate your remains to your home, the United States of America.
DETROW: Last month, Eliza's remains were reburied in Richmond, Virginia, at Hollywood Cemetery, joining her father, mother and sister. Barbara VornDick joins us now. Welcome.
VORNDICK: Thank you. It's my pleasure.
DETROW: Take me back to how all this began. I understand you were working at the historical center at President James Monroe's home. Why did you start looking into Eliza Monroe Hay?
VORNDICK: Well, couple of things - very little was written about her...
DETROW: Yeah.
VORNDICK: ...So very little was known. The little bit that was written about her did not make sense to me, and that was the main thing. The standard narrative was that she had abandoned her family later in life and went off to live out her life and die in Paris. And at that time, she was a grandmother, and I'm a grandmother. So that didn't make sense...
DETROW: Yeah.
VORNDICK: ...To me and just sounded kind of fishy, to be honest with you. So I just started digging.
DETROW: And how did you start digging?
VORNDICK: Well, one of my first stops was the College of William & Mary Swem Library. The special collections there had some of Eliza's letters. So the letters that really grabbed my heart were the ones she wrote at the very end of her life - her last letters - and they were so poignant. She was pleading for help. She was destitute. She was sick, alone in Paris. And she wrote about some things that had happened and how she came to be in those tragic circumstances.
DETROW: Let's get to how we began this story. When did you realize that she's buried in an unmarked grave in Paris, and how did you begin to do something about that?
VORNDICK: Well, it was always known that she was buried in Paris. The circumstances though came to light through research and study and some documents that were extraordinarily discovered by a archivist in the National Archives who found them for me. And at that point, those documents revealed to me that she had not set up a residence even though she had been there a year and a half at the time of her death. She was living in what appears to be a boarding house kind of situation. Her letters, as I said, mentioned that she was destitute. She had - actually in debt. And when I realized all of that, it seemed to me it strongly suggested, if not proved, that she did not intend to live out her life and die there. Her last inventory of effects that was done after she died, there was not one household item. She just had two traveling trunks of dresses and papers and things that you travel with. She had not set up house. So it became clear to me that we needed to bring her home. It was the right thing to do.
DETROW: How long did that process take, and what was the feeling at the end of it at the reburial ceremony?
VORNDICK: Oh. Well, my research spanned about six years. There was some overlap with the publishing of my book, but it was two years solid of repatriation. That included things like I had to find every living descendant of Eliza Monroe today, and every one of them had to approve - appoint me as their representative. It was my honor to do this for them. I handled the logistics for it, so funeral service here in America, also an exhumation - international exhumation company in Paris and, you know, getting all that set up. So it was - between the paperwork and arrangements, it was two years.
DETROW: That is Barbara VornDick, a retired schoolteacher and Eliza Monroe Hay's biographer. Thank you so much.
VORNDICK: Thank you.
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