Mary Ball Washington

by Craig Shirley

  There were emancipators and abolitionists, George Washington among them, who viewed slavery more as a necessary evil for society. In 1790, several Quakers petitioned the United States Congress to abolish the slave trade and, ultimately, to abolish slavery itself. “Because they did not believe that God discriminated between blacks and whites,” wrote historian Ron Chernow, “many Quakers had freed their own slaves and even, in some cases, compensated them for past injustices.”31 But the institution continued, unabated.

  Still, slaves and slavery as an institution created no moral dilemma in many plantation owners’ minds. They were an essential part of their lives. They were as essential as the crops they harvested or the livestock they raised. Announcements of their trade were as frequent and mundane as the sale of land.

  Besides the abuse or neglect that slaves received, besides the fact that their emancipation would not come for over a century, they adapted. Some attended religious services, though one Anglican minister noted that they “cannot understand my language nor I theirs.” There was one story of an unnamed slave to an unnamed master in Virginia, whose relationship to an English indentured servant created a hybrid language. With a mix of an African dialect and the servant’s native Warwickshire English, the slave learned words like “his’n,” “her’n,” “howsomdever,” “yarbs,” “pearts,” “ooman,” and other slang from central England.32

  WHILE MARY’S PEDIGREE WAS AS COMMON AS THE VIRGINIAN SOIL, HER POSITION in society was the closest thing America had to an aristocracy. As the colonies evolved, a “planter elite” began to emerge in the South. “The planter elite was the nearest thing to a European aristocracy that America produced.” However, unlike in the royal elites of Europe and its strict caste system, including the notion of divinity, there was social mobility in the American planter elite. One could, through the sweat of his brow, rise up into the new planter class—but also just as easily fall out of it.33 As the planter culture evolved, so did entertainment among the upper classes. These big plantations were often far from cities, towns, and even other plantations; hence, parties and entertaining often lasted a week, with guests staying for extended periods of time. Said historian Ferguson, “Plantation mansions, built to accommodate many guests, were the scene of frequent parties, which sometimes stretched out to over a week of lavish entertainment. Both sexes studied conversation as an art and cultivated their ability to dance. Gentlemen gambled at cards and horse racing and rode to the hounds after the English manner. Beneath the apparent frivolity and leisure of plantation life was a utilitarian core of duties involved in administering its economic and human activities, but the outward face of planter culture was aristocratic in its dedication to luxury and gracious living.”34 Weddings were just as much a time to socialize as a time to wed a couple, with no honeymoon. Instead of the newlyweds going to faraway paradise islands, they and the guests would often stay overnight in the same house.

  MARY WAS A MEMBER OF THE ESTABLISHMENT RELIGION—ANGLICANISM—IN a period full of new denominational diversity. Slowly, the Great Awakening in the colonies—a spiritual movement—united the Carolinian with the New Yorker. It had started in the 1720s, in England, and quickly spread through the eighteenth century to the colonies.35 It was decidedly anti-elitist and pro-populist, the notion that “emotion, not doctrine, was the crux of its message.” It elaborated that religion “was a matter of the heart, not the head, and that simple, ordinary men were more likely to be touched by the divine spirit than were the sophisticated upper class or an educated clergy which was dead to spiritual values.” The Great Awakening was emblematic of the colonies themselves and their attitude toward Europe generally, Great Britain specifically, and most authority at the time. Indeed, it was, according to Ferguson, “anti-intellectual in spirit and rejective of authority, preaching the spiritual worth of the common man.”36

  THE ENLIGHTENMENT’S VERY NAME MATCHED THE MOVEMENT. INTELLECTUALS saw the status quo of absolute monarchy, absolute authoritative religion, and an absolute caste system, and rejected it all. John Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” in 1689 rewrote what it meant to be human. Science and reason were placed on a pedestal, rejecting religion and the superstitions of old. Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and Voltaire—all names that are easily recognizable today and were as famous in their own day—spoke out.

  Among the new “religions” coming from the Enlightenment was deism, a belief of reason over the unexplained, a “natural religion” versus a supernatural religion, where God created the world and played a passive role in its everyday occurrences. There is a Creator, but he did not stick by for miracles or divine intervention, they believed. As such, it directly contradicted essential Christian tenets from all denominations, including the divinity of Jesus Christ and his resurrection.37

  That put it at odds with the established Church of England.

  As English colonies under English law and an English parliament, the official state religion of Anglicanism—literally, “English-ism”—recognized the sovereignty not just of the Crown but of the Church. It was a distinction going back centuries to the days of Tudor king Henry VIII, who decided that the pope of Rome was not to have any authority over his native church. In the pope’s stead, Henry placed himself as the head of the Church, the supreme authority and Defender of the Faith.

  Before 1776, the dominant religion in America was the Church of England. From tithes—compulsory taxes that paid for ministers’ salaries and the construction of new churches—to its official status as the colonial religion, the Anglican Church was the spiritual arm of the Crown. Advertisements were frequently nailed to church doors on the latest news of the day, making the church structure not just spiritually but practically necessary.38

  It was not all-powerful, though, which the colonists would come to realize in the late eighteenth century. There was no separate bishop of the colonies; they fell under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. With such far-off leaders in both the episcopacy and royalty, some of the Anglican churches took a distinctly American tone as decades moved forward. “The colonial church,” said Mary Thompson, historian at Mount Vernon, “saw its purpose as a practical one of providing spiritual sustenance and teaching to individual members, as opposed to a more intellectual involvement in theology and philosophical theorizing.” Obedience to God’s law—and thus the church and the state—was taught above all.39

  But still, despite the laws in place mandating compulsory Sunday worship, the practicality of rural Virginia “meant that church attendance, while important, was emphasized less than private devotions, which could be done at home.”40 It was not a rejection of the clerical arm of the Church to worship at home, but the sheer inability of the already low number of ministers to cover the colony that made it necessary. Thus, formal catechism classes did not exist, instead moving to the home plantation under the thumb of the parents, where biblical and moral lessons were taught alongside a secular education.

  CATHOLICISM WAS ANOTHER MATTER. THERE WEREN’T MANY ADHERENTS in the colonies at the time—maybe a few thousand, mostly in Maryland. Chesapeake Bay Catholics would have found relative sanctuary in Maryland. The first Mass in the thirteen colonies was said on the shore of Maryland by Father Andrew White, Society of Jesus, in 1634. King Charles I of England had previously given George Calvert, a Catholic convert, a land grant north of Virginia, a charter that continued under his son Cecilius. Still, anti-Catholicism took hold in Maryland, leading to the repeal of the Act of Toleration in 1654 and the death sentence of ten Catholics (of which four were carried out), and the destruction of Jesuit property. Soon after, the Church of England was established as the only official church of the colony, and Catholics were forced into hiding.41 There would be no public Catholic churches until the repeal of the penal laws in 1776; within a couple of decades, there were hubs of Catholic churches such as Saint John the Evangelist in Frederick, Maryland; Saint Mary’s Parish in then Barnstown (now Barnesville) in 1807; and Mount Saint M
ary’s Seminary in 1808—all founded by the same Father John Dubois, an asylum seeker fleeing the violent and anticlerical French Revolution.

  Other colonies with other predominant religions placed more emphasis on doctrine, often harshly. The capital crimes of Massachusetts in 1660 listed anyone who “shall have or worship any other god, but the lord god . . . [to] be put to death.” Puritanism had a much stronger hold in the North than in the other states. If anyone was accused of being a witch, or “blaspheme the name of god, the father, Sonne or Holie ghost,” he would be executed. Murder, bestiality, sodomy, adultery, theft, lying, and rebellion were all capital crimes, listed after the religious crimes.42

  Virginia was also intolerant. Lancaster County in particular was more severe than other Virginian counties. In 1685, John Chilton was fined five guineas for profanity on a Sunday; and several women were publicly whipped, such as one unnamed woman who received eighteen lashes for fortune-telling. She was afterward ordered to attend the next religious service at her parish, “draped in a white sheet with a wand in her hand to beg for forgiveness of some person she has slandered.” For capital crimes, Lancaster County was again blinkered. Before their death by hanging, the sentenced were given new clothes and a hearty breakfast of chicken, fried oysters, cakes, and coffee.43

  NOT ALL WAS AWFUL IN RURAL VIRGINIA IN THE 1700S. AMONG THE FAVORITE activities were sporting and horse racing and equestrianism, the last of which the young maiden Mary Ball was said to have loved. Horses were of course necessary for transportation and they were a sign of wealth, but horse racing was important, and the Virginia Gazette was full of advertisements for and the results of these races. These were often major social functions. Horses were either bred or imported from England, often the best of the best; only the wealthy could afford them.44 It was very much a holdover of European society that continued even through the Revolution.

  Taverns, too, were hot spots of gossip and socializing. These were primarily a man’s place, with women—usually the wives—segregated to a smaller room. In every major and minor town throughout the colonies, taverns were safe havens and overnight stops for travelers. They were in every shape and size depending on need, with multiple tavern boys and tavern wenches assisting. One tavern near River Road between Richmond and Williamsburg, advertised for rent, was described as “commodious, having four Rooms below and two above Stairs. There are Outhouses, Garden, Pasture, and Land also, if required, sufficient to work two or three Hands.”45 At others, it was common for guests to dispose of lice and other parasites.

  SUCH WAS THE WORLD OF MARY BALL WASHINGTON, HER HUSBAND, HER ANCESTORS, her descendants. Such was colonial Virginia, making up the totality of Mary’s life and the majority of her son George’s. Such was the world, predominantly run by men, in which a woman, named for her mother, was born and raised, whose oldest son eventually changed not just the land on which she lived but the world.

  Chapter 2

  “To Look to the Sky”

  GEORGE WASHINGTON’S GENEALOGY

  1600‒1708

  “The word Ball means bold, courageous. . . .”

  Not much is known of Mary Ball’s ancestors,” wrote Charles Moore in his 1926 work The Family Life of George Washington.1 Another source admitted, “Little is known of her ancestors, except she inherited an unimpeachable name.”2 A greater emphasis over the years had been placed mainly on the paternal ancestors of our nation’s first president, leaving much of the maternal studies to the wayside and unknown.3

  But that does not mean there was nothing.

  George Washington’s earliest maternal relative, some speculate, was Drogo de Montacute, a close ally of King William the Conqueror, formerly known as Duke William the Bastard of Normandy. William invaded the Kingdom of England as one of the contested heirs to the throne upon the death of King Edward the Confessor in 1066.

  IT’S POSSIBLE TO TRACE THE EVOLUTION OF THE BALL NAME THROUGH THE years. “Ball” was originally “Baldwin.” According to Earl Leon Werley Heck, genealogist and historian, “The surname Ball, according to the best authorities, dates from Norman times and is a shortened form of Baldwin, which family were for many generations Counts of Flanders.”4 He pointed to two sources for this: William Camden of the sixteenth century and Charles Bardsley, both of whom give an etymological origin of Baldwin to mean “bold victor.”5

  Through the centuries, the Baldwins eventually became the Bals (the first of these appeared in the thirteenth century with landowner Vice-Comes Bal6), the Bales, the Balles, the Baells, each etymologically different from the other—one is pure Saxon, another Anglo-Saxon, some Norman. “We find the Baell corresponds to the Anglo-Saxon word Báel, which means a funeral pile; and Ball approaches the Saxon word Báld, denoting bold, audacious . . . Ball is a diminutive of Baldwin, which latter name is an Anglo-Saxon word, meaning bold in battle (win-battle). I am of the opinion,” said Leonard Bradley, a descendant of a Ball family in Connecticut “that the word Ball means bold, courageous, and implies that the first owner of the name showed himself to be possessed of these qualities in a remarkable degree.”7

  BY CONTRAST, THE WASHINGTON NAME, WHICH CAN BE TRACED TO A TOWN in northeast England from the late twelfth century, has a well-documented history. “The Washington family is of an ancient English stock,” able to be traced to the 1100s, wrote historian and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”–famed author Washington Irving.8 Though variations of the name “Washington” go back centuries, the lineage can be traced relatively smoothly. Even before George, the Washington name was noteworthy both abroad and in the colonies. This added a certain sense of almost divinity and royalty to the man. “Many of the most illustrious benefactors of mankind have been not less remarkable for the obscurity of their origin than for the greatness of their destiny; but Washington sprung from a family whose name had already become known to history.”9

  In 1183, within the Boldon Book, a survey of landholdings as ordered by the bishop of Durham and so named due to the parish Boldon being listed first, was mention of William de Hertburn, who received a manor in Wessyngton. It read, in Latin,

  Begins the book which is called the Boldon Book, in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1183 . . . William de Hertburn has Wessyngton (except the church and the land around the church), for exchange for the village of Hertburn.

  It is possible that Hertburn was from Norman French stock, thus putting a further possible connection between the Balls of medieval England and the Washingtons and giving a foreign edge to a purely American figure. From there, William de Hertburn took the name of his manor, Wessyngton, and became known as William Wessyngton. His family lived in modern-day Washington Village, in what’s called “Washington Old Hall,” which was rebuilt in the seventeenth century and today on occasion flies the Stars and Stripes.

  Successive generations changed the town of Wessyngton to Weshington in the middle of the fourteenth century, and again to Wasshington and then eventually to the now-familiar Washington. Irving believed that the town of Wessyngton and its variation of Wassengtone “is probably of Saxon origin,” and was cited in Anglo-Saxon chronicles in the tenth century. Another source speculated its etymology came from the Old English “hwaes,” meaning “sharp” or “keen.”

  A sensational headline in an article written in the New York Times from 1911 by Professor Bernard Cigrand of the University of Illinois screamed, “WASHINGTON NOT REAL NAME OF OUR FIRST PRESIDENT.” Factually correct and unnecessarily dramatic, the article continued to say that the descendants of the Wessyngton/Washington manor persevered through Scottish raids and attacks, demonstrating the family’s loyalty to the English Crown and kingdom.10

  NOTABLE BEARERS OF THE SURNAME “BALL” TENDED TO LIVE UP TO ITS ETYMOLOGICAL meaning: “bold.” For instance, the priest John Ball, who led the anti-establishment and reform revolt of peasants in 1381, was a Lollard—a sort of proto-Protestant. He deemphasized hierarchical Christianity as seen in the ecclesiastical system and the ritualistic liturgy in th
e Church. His views were summarized in a famous saying, “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?” When earth was populated with but two humans, they were equal. There was no king, no nobility, no priestly class, and no popes or cardinals or bishops. Just two humans, on equal footing. It was provocative and insulting for both the Church and the Crown.

  The Peasants’ Revolt against the fourteen-year-old King Richard II ultimately failed and Ball, called “the mad priest of Kent,” was hanged, drawn, and quartered on July 15, 1381, at Saint Albans Abbey.

  Other Balls through the centuries and through the English country existed, some who may or may not have been directly related to the Balls of Virginia. These included Francis Ball, an early settler of Springfield, Massachusetts; Frances Ball, a Dublin nun; and many others, some of whom came from eastern England, and some of whom came from the western part of the country.11

  But bold they all were. “Possibly,” speculated prominent nineteenth-century historian Benson Lossing, “the democratic spirit of our beloved patriot was inherited through a long line of ancestry . . .”12