In an age before it was socially acceptable, Margaret Bayard Smith was known and respected as a journalist, biographer, and novelist, giving the world an almost exclusive look into the social scene of Washington’s elite.

Wife of the newspaperman Samuel Harrison Smith, who founded the National Intelligencer, Smith moved to Washington with her husband in 1800, where she soon became a confidant, admirer, and defender of Thomas Jefferson. Also friends with both Dolley Madison and Federalist Anna Maria Thornton, Smith believed in a social world without regard to political biases, “accustoming us to see those who differ from us.”

She was, however, a participant in society rather than an unbiased observer, and her personal opinions often colored her observations. As she confessed about her biography of Dolley Madison, “all I say is true—but I have not of course told the whole truth.”