Her studies included dance lessons. When she was seven years of age, her father became the governor of Virginia. He was elected on June 1, 1779, and the family first lived in Williamsburg. They relocated to Richmond when the government moved there in 1780. British troops advanced to Richmond in May 1781 and, due to advance warning, the Jeffersons escaped to their country home, Poplar Forest. Randolph was almost 10 years of age when her mother died on September 6, 1782, four months after the birth of the Martha Jeffersons' last child. Randolph later wrote about this period and her father's grief, stating "in those melancholy rambles I was his constant companion, a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief." Philadelphia Randolph went to Philadelphia with her father in 1782 and again in the fall of 1783 when he represented Virginia at the Congress of the Confederation. The largest city in America at the time, Philadelphia was the center of American Enlightenment. Randolph's father did not believe in public education for girls, but arranged for his daughter to receive a private education. Between December 1782 and May 1784, she boarded with a family and studied French, dancing, drawing, and music with private tutors, who received prescribed, strict daily schedules and instructions regarding how her education should be conducted from Thomas Jefferson. His intention was to make her an esteemed, well-read lady. He was particularly focused on cleanliness and spelling, both of which were important to create the image of a proper lady with moral behavior and diction. In the meantime, her father worked in Philadelphia and awaited Congressional orders to go to France. Paris Her younger sisters, Mary and Lucy Elizabeth, remained in Virginia with family members as Randolph and her father traveled to Boston with James Hemings. They set sail for Paris on the ship Ceres on July 5, 1784, and arrived in France on August 6, 1784. Randolph lived in Paris from age 12 to 17 while her father served as U.S. Minister to France. In October 1784, her youngest sister, Lucy, died of whooping cough. Jefferson enrolled her at the Pentemont Abbey, an exclusive convent school, after receiving assurances that Protestant students were exempt from religious instruction. At this boarding school Randolph learned arithmetic, geography, world history, and Latin, as well as music and drawing. She was deeply influenced by the four years at the