James Madison had been Jefferson’s right hand man for twenty years.  He was smart, did his homework, was always well prepared and had a bawdy sense of humor.  He was the first president to ask Congress for a Declaration of War, here in 1812 against Great Britain for interfering with trade, harassing American merchant ships, impressing American sailors into the British navy, and inciting Native American attacks on western territories.  The U.S.S. Constitution, nicknamed Old Ironsides, captured numerous British merchant ships and defeated five British warships in the War, and the American defense of Fort McHenry in Baltimore inspired Francis Scott Key to write America’s national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.

Described by an internet sage as “America’s puniest President,” James stood 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed less than 100 pounds.  He nevertheless, at the age of 43, was able to marry a lovely, vivacious, 26 year old widow, Dolley Payne Todd. Washington Irving described Dolley, who came from a devout Quaker family, as “a fine, portly, buxom dame who has a smile and a pleasant word for everybody,” but said “Poor Jemmy Madison” was “but a withered little apple-john.” A guest described dinner at Dolley Madison’s table: “Last night I was bid by our President to the White House, and it was a most unusual affair.  Mrs. Madison always entertains with Grace and Charm, but last night there was a sparkle in her eye that set astir an Air of Expectancy among her Guests. When finally the brilliant Assemblage – America’s best—entered the dining room, they beheld a Table set with French China and English silver, laden with good things to eat, and in the Centre on a silver platter, a large shining dome of pink Ice Cream.”

James said that he “knew less about cooking than eating,” but by most accounts his interest in eating was minimal.  At her lavish dinner parties Dolley sat at the head of the table and carved and served, seating her husband on the side to draw attention away from the fact that he would take only a few spoonsful of the comestibles on offer. (His meager appetite may have had something to recommend it, though.  He lived to the age of 85.)  There was one food James enjoyed, ice cream.

Ice cream was introduced to the new world in 1744.  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were big fans of the expensive frozen treat, which was only accessible to the wealthy before the mid 1800s when refrigeration and electric power arrived.  Washington paid nearly $200 in 1790, a small fortune at the time, for ice cream equipment and recipes, and Abigail Adams notes in a letter written the same year that Martha Washington served ice cream at her Friday drawing rooms in New York City, the country’s first, temporary capital.  Jefferson had his own personal recipe for vanilla ice cream and, in 1802, he became the first president to serve ice cream at the White House.

Dolley Madison, well known for her entertaining, famously served a “magnificent strawberry ice cream creation” at her husband’s second inaugural banquet in 1813.  While she neither introduced ice cream to the White House nor to America as a whole, she created a rage for ice cream in Washington D.C. and Virginia, where hot, steamy, unairconditioned summers were the norm. James had a two story underground ice house built at his Virginia estate, Montpelier, so they could have ice cream all summer long.

When President Zachary Taylor eulogized Dolley at her funeral in 1849 he called her “the First Lady of the Land for half a century.”  It was the first time a president’s spouse was referred to as a First Lady.

Dolley’s reputation as a leader of Washington society became a marketing opportunity after her death.  Her name began appearing to advertise manufactured goods in the 1880s when American industry was entering an era of mass production. The increase in standardized products for table and home created a need for what today would be called branding, and to the public Dolley epitomized American style and elegance.  In 1928 the Tri-State Ice Cream Corporation adopted the name Dolly Madison for ice cream it sold for decades in the United States during the mid twentieth century.  In 1937 Ralph Leroy Nafziger developed a snack cake brand in Georgia called Dolly Madison that boasted “cakes and pastries fine enough to serve at the White House.”  The bakery brand had an association with characters from Charles M. Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip from the 1960s through the 1980s.

WHISKEY (MADISON DRANK A PINT OF WHISKEY DAILY.  THAT’S NOT AS EXTREME AS IT SOUNDS TODAY.  CLEAN WATER WAS SCARCE IN COLONIAL TIMES AND MEN COMMONLY DRANK 2 SMALL BOTTLES OF WHISKEY DAILY.  MADISON ALSO FOUND CHAMPAGNE “DELIGHTFUL” BUT COMPLAINED THAT OVERINDULGENCE RESULTED IN A HEADACHE THE FOLLOWING MORNING.)