 When the British set fire to it in 1814, she was credited with saving the classic portrait of George Washington; she directed her personal slave Paul Jennings to save it.In widowhood, she often lived in poverty, partially relieved by the sale of her late husband's papers.The first girl in her family, Dolley Payne was born on May 20, 1768, in the Quaker settlement of "New Garden" within (present-day Greensboro), , to Mary Coles and John Payne, Jr., both Virginians who had moved to North Carolina in 1765.