Mary Ball Washington

by Craig Shirley

  Those intervening months while the world moved on were the best parts of her retirement. Ferry Farm was where she was to stay, if she wanted.

  But her son thought otherwise.

  THE YEAR 1770 WAS AN ACTIVE YEAR FOR MARY. ON JUNE 25 AND 26, JULY 31, and August 1 and 9, her eldest son dined and visited with her, before going elsewhere on to other business with his brother-in-law or others.63 Many times, when seeing her, he gave her money or a gift as she requested, no more than 40 pounds at a time.64

  Clearly, he wanted to talk to her about something.

  Specifically, moving out of Ferry Farm—Home Farm, as it was known. The previous decade he had tried to get her to move out, but she steadfastly refused.65

  Mary had continuously lived at this farm since its purchase by her husband in 1738. Though the farm was legally George’s, he clearly did not mind her occupying the space. By 1770, thirty-two years had passed here, comprising a majority of her life.

  In September of 1771, George surveyed half of Ferry Farm, noting the size, acreage, landmarks, roads, neighbors, boundaries, and other points of interest. He stayed a couple of days with Mary before heading out again to Fredericksburg, seeing Fielding Lewis to discuss the selling of the lands.66 No original survey exists. It was, however, reconstructed based on existing notes, in The George Washington Atlas in 1932, published by the government-owned and historically keen George Washington Bicentennial Commission. The survey marks fences, such as the cornfield fence about halfway through the property, running north and then northwest. To the right was, George noted, “some pretty good land.” The rest of the land has no explicit praise, perhaps a note of its decline in quality and production. Thirty-plus years on the same land did deplete nutrients in the soil.

  Here, over the years, formed Rappahannock’s ferry lane, which was unusually close to the plantation house. As Fredericksburg became more and more popular, so too did the ferries and its cargo of passengers, passing close by to the elder Mary.67 It was time for her to move on.

  A scary bout of illness in December of 1771, treated by Hugh Mercer, probably influenced the decision more than her pleading son. From December 20 to December 31, Mercer tended to Mary for some disease. He bled her; he gave her pills for vomiting; he gave her enemas, some “purging pills,” and other remedies. The cost was, in total, 2 pounds, 18 shillings, and 6 pence.68 (Genevieve Bugay at the Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop in Fredericksburg believed it was the flu: a curable disease now, a scarier ailment three hundred years ago.) It is unknown why Mary went to Mercer and not her usual doctor, Charles Mortimer, but Mercer had helped her son Charles earlier that year on several occasions. In June, he helped Charles with “a Pectoral Electuary,” indicating a chest muscle issue. In early October, he treated Charles for an unknown ailment by “purging” him, which could have been bleeding, vomiting, or laxatives. All visits from Mercer—eleven in total—perhaps provided a sense of comfort for Mary. Mercer had met George Washington in the French and Indian War, as part of the Pennsylvania regiment, and, when things settled down, took the surgeon’s path. He had also gone to Mount Vernon to assist in Patsy Custis’s epilepsy treatment. There was a Washington connection here, certainly, but why she went to Mercer for this one time is ultimately speculation.69

  All her children, of course, had lives of their own. “Mary’s out there by herself.” It wasn’t necessary for her to be there. Betty, too, helpful as she was, was unreliable for travel back and forth, having just given birth to her eleventh, her final, child, Howell.70

  Further, to make it more apparent how secluded she was, in late January of 1772, a blizzard of two to three feet of snow hit the region. Now called the Washington-Jefferson Blizzard, the weather isolated Mary across the Rappahannock.71 January 27 was “dreadfully bad,” according to Washington’s diary, as constant snow and wind pummeled the region.72 What chance he had to leave his Mount Vernon house was nearly impossible without the greatest strength or difficulty to himself and his horse. Mary, then, was in even worse shape. If another storm were to come in her years at Ferry Farm, at an even more advanced age, she could suffer from the cold and/or deprivation.

  Illness, lack of proximity to children, and isolating weather: for a lady her age at that time, it was clearly a bad idea to be alone.

  By the spring of that year, she departed from Ferry Farm, and moved into a two-story house close to her daughter Betty. She had been offered a chance to live with Betty and Fielding, as was customary. It was normal for a widowed mother to be living under the roof of a child. All her property was appraised, and she was given an allowance by George, totaling 215 pounds.73 Her evaluated items at her Ferry Farm plantation included seventeen hogs, valued at 5 pounds, 13 shillings, and 4 pence total; twenty-six shoats (young pigs) and older pigs at 5 pounds, 4 shillings; six sheep “very indifferent” at 4 pounds; three oxen, “one old” at 11 pounds; and other livestock. Overall, her total property at both Ferry Farm and elsewhere was appraised at 215 pounds, 11 shillings, and 8 pence.74

  George had purchased a house on two lots on Charles Street, Fredericksburg, slightly on the outskirts of the city itself. Total payment was to Michael Robinson, the previous owner, for 275 pounds, the first payment of 75 pounds delivered in May of 1771. The sum was quite a bit, requiring borrowing money from Fielding Lewis. Everything was settled by the end of 1772, but Mary had moved in that previous May, per an agreement with Robinson and Washington.75 In November of that year, George Washington formally placed Ferry Farm and a nearby plantation up for sale.76

  THE CITY HAD CHANGED GREATLY SINCE MARY, AUGUSTINE, AND THE young children had moved there in 1738. It had become the tenth-largest port city in the colonies, with over two hundred ships passing by each week, an average of twenty to thirty per day.77 Locals had become more prosperous as well. On Caroline Street, very much the “main street” of Fredericksburg, was the Indian Queen Tavern, built in 1771 and expanded in 1790 to include a billiards hall and stable. The spot proved popular, and many locals unknown and famous paid a visit. It would remain open until l832, when a fire destroyed everything.

  In 1752, on Princess Anne Street, was organized the Masonic society of Fredericksburg Lodge #4. Fielding Lewis, George Washington, William Woodford, George Weedon, Hugh Mercer, and so many other gentry joined this prestigious institution. A nearby cemetery, starting in 1784, offered a refuge for the Lodge’s dead.

  The 1750s also saw the operation of Hunter’s Iron Works, just south of the Rappahannock River, founded by James Hunter. The plantation of Chatham, also built in 1750 by the influential William Fitzhugh, sat on the east side of the Rappahannock, overlooking the growing town.

  Other buildings and shops opened in and around the town of Fredericksburg: Fielding Lewis took ownership of his father’s store on Caroline and Lewis Streets in 1749; meanwhile, by the time of Mary’s move, construction on the future “Kenmore” plantation home had commenced and would not be completed until the Lewises’ move in the autumn of 1775. At least seventy servants and slaves built it, a major undertaking for four years that included intricate plaster work and material. The plantation, which was never called Kenmore (or anything, which was unusual) until the nineteenth century, would tower over all of the town, a major family seat that rivaled the Fitzhughs’ Chatham Manor across the Rappahannock.78

  ALSO FOR SALE IN 1772, IN AUGUST, AFTER MARY MOVED FROM FERRY FARM, but before the land was for sale, was another tract of land near Fredericksburg. About three hundred acres was for sale in accordance with the will of its previous owner Roger Dixon, who had recently died. For a to-be-negotiated amount, the advertisement noted that it was “adjoining the Town, several unimproved lots, the Ferry opposite to Mrs. Washington’s, and a Lot, with Houses.”

  Three articles down, in the same column of the Virginia Gazette, with as much normalcy as a note about selling land, was the notice of a runaway slave from Tappahannock, about fifty miles to the southeast—a “well made, light colored Mulatto Wench named PHEBE,” as it said. T
wenty-two or so years old and about five feet four, Phebe, it was suspected, ran away months prior after being punished by her master for “a Propensity of Pleasures in the Night.” Archibald Ritchie, the owner, offered 40 shillings for her whereabouts.79

  Business as usual for the times.

  MARY’S NEW HOUSE WAS TWO STORIES, SITUATED ON CHARLES STREET OF Fredericksburg, consisting of a small room and bedroom and a small attic. George stayed up in the attic, and at over six feet tall would have needed to duck and crouch down. It was new, built sometime in the mid-1700s, and contained a basement of brick and stone and wood, the same material of the walls. It was—and is, even with the additions through the centuries—a modest house. Facing northeast, the property also contained a small separate kitchen to the east, which had centuries later been expanded into the main building. It was within literal shouting distance of her daughter Betty.

  Mary hated it. She hated the move, feeling it was forced upon her by her son. She had been comfortable at Ferry Farm. “There is a pain in moving out of an old home, bag and baggage, that stands all by itself in the catalogue of human agonies, a pain that this woman, of all people, must have felt to her inmost being,” wrote author Nancy Turner in the early twentieth century.80

  Ferry Farm plantation passed from history, and from the Washingtons, in 1774, when Dr. Hugh Mercer, physician, neighbor in Fredericksburg, fellow Fredericksburg Masonic member, and friend to George, bought it all for 2,000 pounds, to be paid in five annual installments.

  Moving away from her home, even a mile away, could prove no small feat. But in Fredericksburg, despite being closer to her daughter, she said she was living “in great want.”81She even borrowed food and money from a neighbor and son’s friend, Edward Jones, who was charged of overseeing Mary’s needs and, previously, that of Ferry Farm’s. In late 1772 he noted that he gave her lamb, shoats, and corn.82 She was being a headache not just to George, evidently. George, after Mary’s death, later wrote to Betty that she “took every thing she wanted from the plantation for the support of her family, horses &ca.”83 There is even a tradition that Mary would drink only water from Ferry Farm, she so refused to settle down.84

  Yet, there was a sense of humility here. Few artifacts remain of hers, but those that do are telling. A small, tinted mirror, now glazed over and unviewable, decorated a wall. It’s simple, not ornate. Another, a teapot, was imported from China, with rich decorative designs. One shows a man riding a bull, a curious but fun decoration.

  She would stay here for the rest of her life. Perhaps this was as intended by George, to have her settle down for her last years.

  Finally.

  Chapter 9

  Before the Revolution

  THE COLONIES AND GREAT BRITAIN

  1763‒1775

  “If this be treason, make the most of it.”

  The New World was beginning to tremble . . . and soon, within four short years, a political, social, and religious quake would shatter the colonies, making them unrecognizable to the earliest settlers. From simple and separate entities a century earlier, they would soon become a new unified nation with a new constitution, and a new system of government that marked the beginning of the end of an empire.

  Life may have gone on as normal for Mary Ball Washington at Ferry Farm in the 1760s, and things may have been settled for her; but as she managed the acres of land and her servants and slaves, and as she pestered her son for money, material, anything, the colonists whispered in hushed angry tones at the increasingly demanding laws and restrictions from across the ocean. This was not something new—it had gone on for decades—however, in recent years, tensions had become increasingly strained between England and the colonies. It was inevitable, like a child rebelling against his or her parents. By the 1770s, that fight was about to rise to a crescendo.

  THE THIRTEEN COLONIES OF AMERICA WERE NEAR-PERFECT EXAMPLES OF royal obedience ever since Jamestown was settled in 1607. They had fought wars for the Crown, had sweated and bled for imperial expansion. Colonists by legions volunteered in the militias and the armies. “God save the king!” was a proclamation of subservience to the king and queen, who, by the grace of God, ruled. George Washington himself had fought under the British Crown, as had his stepbrother, Lawrence.

  Due to its distance, the colonies were granted relative independence from the inner workings of England’s Parliament. Some governors and acting governors were effectively semi-autonomous rulers of their respective regions. Virginia, in a way, set a precedent for independent rule, as the House of Burgesses, of which many Washingtons and Balls were members (including George, in 1758), was an elected legislative body of local planters, lawyers, and clergymen, the first of its kind in English colonies.

  To be sure, independence did not mean outright disloyalty to the Crown. And independence did not mean that no conflicts existed between the Mother Country and her children. Colonists were still colonists, whether they were on the other side of the world or not. Governors, especially of Virginia, were directly appointed by the king, and often never even visited the colonies, instead allowing the lieutenant governors to rule in their stead.1 Yet the colonies still “cherished the most tender veneration for the mother country,” wrote John Corry in 1809. In return, there would be the “protection of Britons, and [they] witnessed their valour with admiration.”2 It was a relationship certainly advantageous to both parties, but it was clear which one was in charge.

  In law, the colonies were purely English. Common law was, well, common, affirmed by experts through centuries of thought. One man, Richard West, lawyer of the Board of Trade in London, said in 1720 that colonists and their lands were not subjected peoples and enjoyed the same rights as others. Likewise, all laws of England were to affect the laws of the colonies—that was the idea, at least.3

  But that was in 1720—many things were to change in subsequent years.

  THE CROWN CHANGED HEADS ON OCTOBER 25, 1760. THE PRINCE OF WALES, George William Frederick, of the House of Hanover, became king of Great Britain and Ireland on that Saturday, becoming George III, after the death of his grandfather, King George II, who had reigned for over thirty years. George III was twenty-two years old upon his ascent.

  Unlike his grandfather and his great-grandfather, this new king was born and raised in England. His predecessors rarely if ever visited their kingdom, instead spending their days on the European continent. So when George III was announced as the new royal, the news was met with celebration both at home and abroad.4 He even felt pride in it, as noted in his ascension speech to Parliament.5 In 1766, Virginians were called to celebrate the sixth anniversary of his ascension to the throne at the governor’s palace in Williamsburg. The late-October date was in lieu of the celebration of the king’s birthday in June, a move that the Virginia Gazette noted was “a more agreeable and convenient season for the company to pay their compliments, and show their respect, to his Majesty, than the heats of summer.”6

  King George III was raised mostly by his mother, Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg by birth and of Wales by marriage. His mother would often remind him to “be a king, George,” no small task but a vague enough suggestion to make or break his reign.7 How different from Mary Washington’s determination to inhibit her son’s rise.

  He would reign until his death in January 1820, at the advanced age of eighty-one. But forty-four years of his kingdom would be troubled, as the colonies divorced him and the British Empire.

  IRONICALLY, THE WAR THAT BROUGHT GEORGE III INCREASING POPULARITY and fame, the war that distinguished the colonies as vast lands worth keeping, more than just backwater frontiers, was the same war that began the unraveling of England’s American empire. The French and Indian War was a catalyst. In 1763, when the war ended, the colonies became increasingly intolerant of England’s rules.

  In previous years, these abusive acts or laws were endurable. Colonists accepted England’s demands during the French and Indian War. Some did more than others. “The colonists i
n Alexandria [Virginia] like Anglo Saxons everywhere,” said William Carne in the mid-1800s, “had a profound respect for law. They submitted to these restrictions because they were accustomed to them, and as they were pressed by French power, and in constant dread of the Indians, who still lingered near, they expected British aid, and thought the profits, which England made by a monopoly of their trade, was a high price to pay.”8 The French and Indian War was still a war, one that the colonists weren’t ready to fight alone.

  But that would change.

  King George III immediately made his thoughts known, calling the French and Indian War—and the greater Seven Years’ War—a “bloody and expensive war,” which shocked some of the ministers and members of Parliament, who were sure of English dominance. Men died in wars, and wars cost money and materiel, this was obvious—but the success brought so much more than what was lost, they thought.9 George thought otherwise.

  The war doubled Britain’s debt from the decade prior, an increase of more than 70 million pounds. It was an impossible number. How would England repay that debt?

  With the colonies’ help, clearly. After all, it was their doing that got England into this mess, they reasoned in England. Prime Minister George Grenville and King George III would see to that.

  IN 1763, THE SAME YEAR THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR ON AMERICAN SOIL and the Seven Years’ War in Europe ended, King George III issued a proclamation forbidding all settlement of the newly acquired land. It coincidentally followed a rebellion of Indian tribes in the Great Lakes region, the Pontiac Rebellion, which resulted in a stalemate. The proclamation deemed that the large strip west of the Appalachian Mountains and east of the Mississippi was to be left to the Native Americans as a reserve to protect and calm them, lest they attack incoming English settlers. This voided any promise of land to those who wanted to expand westward.