Mary Ball Washington

by Craig Shirley

  Washington’s Farewell to his Mother, 1789 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris © Virginia Museum of History & Culture

  Dedication

  Dedicated to some of the strong and smart and capable and resilient women I’ve come to know, love, and respect . . .

  Barbara Shirley Eckert, Taylor Shirley Gillespie, Rebecca Shirley Sirhal, Diana Banister, Laura Ingraham, Gay Hart Gaines, Joanne Herring, Karin Andrews, Brittany Singer, Torrence Harman, Georgette Mosbacher, Mari Will, Callista Gingrich, Susan McShane, Soonalyn Jacob, Candy Bhappu, Carmen Bhappu, Ruby Jamshedi, Chris Kabanuk, Ellen Shirley, Amy Mauer, and Erin Mauer, but most especially for . . .

  my best friend, my soul mate, my best editor, my love, my wife, Zorine Bhappu Shirley.

  Epigraph

  I was often there with George, his playmate, schoolmate, and young man’s companion. Of the mother I was ten times more afraid than of my own parents. She awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was indeed truly kind, . . . and even now, when time has whitened my locks, and I am the grand-father of a second generation, I could not behold that majestic woman without feelings it is impossible to describe.

  —LAWRENCE WASHINGTON ESQ., OF CHOTANK, COUSIN OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Washington Family

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Virgin Land and Virgin Love

  Chapter 2: “To Look to the Sky”

  Chapter 3: The Rose of Epping Forest

  Chapter 4: The Marriage of Mary Ball and Augustine Washington

  Chapter 5: In the Shadow of the Empire

  Chapter 6: Fredericksburg

  Chapter 7: Matriarch

  Chapter 8: Lieutenant Colonel Washington

  Chapter 9: Before the Revolution

  Chapter 10: Off to War

  Chapter 11: A Separate Peace

  Chapter 12: Honored Madam

  Chapter 13: Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return

  Epilogue: A Monumental Legacy

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Index

  About the Author

  Also by Craig Shirley

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The Washington Family

  News of Yorktown, 1781 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris © Virginia Museum of History & Culture

  Prologue

  When General George Washington successfully led the American Revolution against the most powerful military force in the world, that of the British Empire, King George III reportedly said that if Washington laid down his sword after his stunning, startling, and world-altering victory, he would be regarded as the greatest man in the world.

  That is precisely what Washington did.

  At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, he went before the Continental Congress in Annapolis, Maryland, on December 23, 1783, laid down his weapon, and made a brief speech. After celebrations and after commemorations, he left and went home to become, again, Planter Washington.

  He was eager to return to his beloved wife, Martha, and his cherished Mount Vernon—which he hadn’t been to in seven years, except briefly to entertain some French officers while on his way to Yorktown and a date with destiny against General Charles Cornwallis—to get back to the life of the gentleman farmer he so loved. In character, he gave the credit for the miracle of the American Revolution to others.

  “Your excellency is retired like [another] Cincinnatus,” wrote the Marquis de Chastellux at the close of the Revolutionary War.1 Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, about 2,250 years earlier, having won against the fierce Aequians as a Roman general, refused absolute power and instead went back to his farm and his plow. One of Washington’s generals, the redoubtable and later secretary of war Henry Knox, formed the Society of the Cincinnati in 1783, comprising Washington’s commanders in the field from the Revolution and their descendants. The Society exists today and has a national office in Washington, D.C.

  WASHINGTON DID NOT JUST ARRIVE WITHOUT CAUSE AT HIS EXALTED STATUS, beloved by his fellow countrymen for over two hundred years, with children, cities—including Washington, D.C., in 1791—monuments, mountains, schools, even states and holidays named in his honor. And later, as the standard by which all future presidents would be measured, recorded as also the greatest president by most historians—a man who would be widely revered for his integrity, grace, manners, charm, Christian faith, and humility. His devout mother played a key role in the development of his character. While he was sometimes described as having little genuine affection for Mary, the reserved Washington still credited her with his principled and moral upbringing. Indeed, this was inevitable, for when George was eleven, his father died, leaving Mary Washington a single mother.

  “The relationship with his own mother was laden with difficulty for both of them. Self-centered and acquisitive, Mary Ball Washington was preoccupied with her eldest son to the virtual exclusion of her other [four] children. That preoccupation expressed itself in fears for George’s safety, pleas not to put himself at risk in military action, and demands for assistance, usually monetary, even though she continued to occupy and enjoy the profits of his property on the Rappahannock,” said Patricia Brady in Martha Washington: An American Life.2 Another book described her as “cantankerous and demanding.”3

  HIS FATHER, AUGUSTINE (“GUS”), HAD A “NOBLE APPEARANCE AND MANLY proportions.”4 As a youngster, George traveled far and wide visiting friends and relatives, and he was away when he learned that his father was dying. He returned immediately to Ferry Farm on April 12, 1743, the day his father died—“His father was stretched out on a bed pending his burial. He may have been an absentee parent, but his sudden loss left an emptiness in George’s life, a vacuum that needed to be filled.”5 George was just eleven years old. Augustine’s will was shortly probated and he left his son George the plantation of Ferry Farm, an equal division of slaves and estate, and a lot in the newly formed and nearby town of Fredericksburg. Mary was to supervise the children until they came of age.

  George’s fourteen-years-older half brother, Lawrence, went off to fight in the amusingly named War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1740, “leaving George consumed by his loneliness.” When Lawrence returned, to the admiration and hero worship of his younger half brother, he settled fifty miles north from the family, away at a plantation named Epsewasson, high above the Potomac River. Lawrence later renamed it Mount Vernon, after the famed British admiral Edward Vernon, whom he deeply admired.6

  Mary Washington, née Ball, Augustine’s second wife, lived at Ferry Farm and raised George, tutoring him, admonishing him, driving him to distraction often, loving him, and also fashioning the boy who would eventually become one of the greatest men in history. One historian wrote of young George’s and his mother’s strength of wills as “incompatible,” but this, said Dorothy Twohig, “fostered young Washington’s independence and self-reliance.”7 Later, control of Ferry Farm, which Augustine had left George, became a source of irritation between the son and his mother.

  MARY WAS BORN AROUND 1708 OR SO—THE EXACT DATE IS NOT KNOWN. (Many ages in this book are approximated.) Much of her life was a mystery, sometimes placing her in some historical studies as less of a person and more of a mythic figure. Her family, the Balls, were prominent in the Millenbeck and Epping Forest parts of Virginia’s Northern Neck, jutting out into the Chesapeake Bay, adjoining the Potomac on one side and the Rappahannock River on the other.

  Though she was well provided for by her husband, it was tough going for Mary Ball Washington after Augustine’s passing. She was a widow in her late thirties, raising six children all by herself, supervising farms, supervising slaves, sup
ervising her family. She never remarried, though she would have been an attractive catch, at a still desirable age and very wealthy. But it was well known around Fredericksburg, Virginia, that she was a handful and at times frustrating. Her son, by contrast, was equally legendary for his reserve.

  However, his resolute reserve in adulthood had not always been so. In his youth, George Washington had a fearsome temper. This was observed not just by his mother, but by people such as Thomas, Lord Fairfax, in a note to Mary: “I wish I could say that he governs his temper. . . . He is subject to attacks of anger on provocation, sometimes without just cause.”8 Perhaps he learned something from his mother.

  George’s capacity for rebellion may have been prompted by Mary’s overprotective care. His later language describing the Revolution evokes a mother and son. The Mother Country, George wrote, “thought it was only to hold up the rod, and all would be hush!”9 and Great Britain “did not comprehend America—She meant . . . to drive America into rebellion, that her own purposes might be more fully answered.”10

  Through the following decades, from adolescence to adulthood, Mary was a near-constant irritant to the maturing George. Financial demands were but one of the many issues plaguing the relationship between mother and son, though her supposed loyalty to the English Crown during the most important chapter of American history may have also angered him. She was probably a royalist, at least initially. “Mary Ball Washington . . . never expressed support for the Colonies’ cause,” declared one historian, Bonnie Angelo. In this fashion, she was like another revolutionary’s mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson (who was also skeptical of independence for the colonies), though her son Thomas cowrote the most important revolutionary document in history.11

  But in a hotbed of revolutionary fervor such as Fredericksburg, where munitions were made for the colonies by Mary’s son-in-law Fielding Lewis, this would have been cause for concern—risking ostracization and being outcast—except that her son was leading the Revolution, and this protected Mary from any acts the local citizens might have contemplated taking against her. At least none were reported or recorded at the time, and she continued to be seen around town—shopping, going to church—untouched.

  IN POST–REVOLUTIONARY WAR VIRGINIA, MANY THOUGHT MARY, NOW AT AN increasing age, could no longer live at her Fredericksburg home. One of the many included George, who wrote to his mother urging she leave and choose one of her children to live with—though not him. He wrote, “Candour requires me to say” that moving to Mount Vernon (which he’d owned since 1761) “will never answer your purposes, in any shape whatsoever—for in truth it may be compared to a well resorted tavern, as scarcely any strangers who are going from north to south, or from south to north do not spend a day or two at it.” He continued, “Nor indeed could you be retired in any room in my house; for what with the sitting up of Company; the noise and bustle of servants—and many other things you would not be able to enjoy that calmness and serenity of mind, which in my opinion you ought now to prefer to every other consideration in life.”12 Washington was clearly giving his mother unsolicited advice while also telling her there was no room in the inn, in this case, the Mount Vernon inn, his home. In this matter, she took his counsel and never moved to Mount Vernon.

  Two years later, Mary died around the ancient age of eighty, in late August 1789, at her home in Fredericksburg, the town near where she lived for a majority of her life. Through these decades, she saw her eldest son become almost a god to many American citizens. He addressed her mostly with respect in his few letters to her, no matter his personal feelings. Through anger and resentment, financial worry, and updates on her health and well-being in times of war, George always addressed his letters to his mother as “Honored Madam.” This salutation served two purposes: it showed his respect for her while holding her at arm’s length.

  WITH MARY BALL WASHINGTON, THE IMAGE IS A MIX OF THE UNKNOWN AND whispers of history, the facts and the legends. She was the real mother of George Washington; she certainly existed; yet as part of the mythos and mythology of the era of the Founding Fathers, of revolution and renewal, much has been lost to the ether of history. Was she part helicopter mother, part “Mommie Dearest,” or was she a saint and a joy for George? Historians through the years have portrayed her as both.

  Mary Ball Washington remains often misunderstood. She does appear to have been a thorn in George’s side ever since he was a teenage boy—but also a cherished rose.

  There is frankly a lot of conflicting information on George’s feelings about his mother, even as an adult. “Added years and understanding brought no improvement in his relations with her. . . . Apparently he did not write her even once during the war,” wrote eminent biographer Douglas Southall Freeman. Although this comment is in dispute, as it had been previously reported that she did get at least one piece of correspondence from her son during the Revolutionary War. Others may have been lost by Mary or from George. The same historian noted that Washington, while possessing “magnanimity and patience in dealing with human frailty,” unlike his mother, did not extend such grace to his mother, as “he felt she had been grasping and unreasonable.”13

  Many histories have tended to focus on only one or the other side of Mary’s character. She is seen as a saint or a villain, nothing in between. But in fact, taken together, Mary’s seemingly contradictory character traits complemented each other. Mary’s kindness and control were one and the same. Mary Washington was a woman who used a facade of motherly virtue to cover her desire to control her son. In the same way that he led a country to break away from its overbearing imperial matron, George had to struggle to find independence in his own life, to step away from the power of his demanding mother. It was a struggle that lasted all her life. Even after Mary died, George was left dealing with her tangled affairs.

  THIS BOOK IS JUST AS MUCH A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF MARY WASHINGTON AS IT is a biography. Very few correspondences exist about this important woman. It was also the nature of the period that it often placed her on the sidelines, being a woman and not being married to a famous man. Opinions of the relationship between Washington and his mother vary. There were a number of hagiographies written in the 1800s and early 1900s such as The Mother of Washington and Her Times and The Story of Mary Washington, both by women. The latter of these books was reviewed by the American Monthly Magazine as “a warm welcome” for those interested in early American history.14 Indeed, while it was certainly a delayed canonization compared to her son’s, some early biographers of the mother of Washington—it sounded saintly, like the Mother of Christ, with no more qualifiers needed—almost painted her as a goddess. “Roman matron” came up sometimes, an appropriate title in light of the Cincinnatus George. One called her “the ‘Hero’ to a Spartan matron” and further a “Christian Matron.”15 These books and many more from that era had her as less a woman and more a deity who could do no wrong.

  But slowly, a new image of Mary Ball Washington began to emerge in the opposite direction, aided by some harsh letters from Washington himself to his own mother that were cataloged and widely studied. Very few exist, but those that do paint a nasty relationship. This image of Mary in historical circles shifted entirely from whispers to shouts with the publication, between 1948 and 1957, of the massive and unyielding seven-volume biography of the first president, from cradle to death, by Douglas Southall Freeman. In an about-face of how previous biographers treated her, Freeman, in the first volume, called her a “mistress of much or of little, mistress she was resolved to be.”16 It wasn’t protection that she gave her eldest son, who at one point in his youth wanted to risk everything for a dangerous life at sea; it was authority.

  Describing Mary, George’s cousin Lawrence said, “I was ten times more afraid [of her] than I ever was of my own parents; she awed me in the midst of her kindness.” That kindness, and Lawrence did call her “truly kind,” was subsumed in Mary.17

  As a teenager, young George had wanted to join the British navy as a cabi
n boy, so Mary wrote a letter to her half brother, Joseph, in London, asking his advice. Within a short period of time, he wrote back, telling her that under no circumstances could George, an American, be allowed to join, where he would be treated like a “dog.” A caste system existed in the British navy, as it did throughout the English culture. First came the British royalty, then British subjects, and finally, at the end of the list, came Americans. It was also a time when a substantial number of cabin boys died at sea—they developed scurvy, they were washed overboard, they were killed in battle. It was a risky and dangerous existence for young boys. While she had previously approved the venture, she vetoed it now. It was the first of several attempts to keep George from entering dangerous undertakings.

  James Thomas Flexner’s four-volume biography of George from the 1960s and early 1970s, also unmistakable for its importance in Washington scholarship, derided Mary’s overcontrolling parenting. In his romantic teenage boyhood, George was in love with Sally Fairfax, a young woman two years his elder. When he was sixteen, Flexner said, “he was still, however resentfully, tied to his mother’s apron strings, in a rundown farm, full of younger children, which he would have undoubtedly been ashamed to show the elegant Sally.”18

  Thus the fickleness of the history of Mary Ball Washington.

  It should also be noted that authors, from both the history and hagiographical sides of the debate, when approaching Mary Ball Washington, sometimes simply got facts wrong. Flexner, for instance, mistakenly called George’s only sister, Betty Washington Lewis, “Mary Lewis.”19 A slip of the finger, sure, that is bound to happen in such massive works. On the other hand, Lydia Sigourney, in a small book published in 1866 for schoolgirls about powerful women through history, said that Mary died after George, over a decade in error.20