Mary Ball Washington

by Craig Shirley

  Interesting, indeed, but infuriating. George was irate. He had just returned to New Windsor, New York, from Hartford, to get word of this. The British advance into Virginia was bad enough; this was just as bad for an entirely different matter.

  In a short but biting letter (he noted it was “written in much haste to go by the present mail, which is on the point of closing”), George wrote back immediately:

  True it is, I am but little acquainted with her present situation, or distress, if she is under any. . . . Before I left Virginia, I answered all her calls for money; and since that period, have directed my Steward to do the same. Whence her distresses can arise therefore, I know not, never having received any complaint of his inattention or neglect on that head. . . . Confident I am that she has not a child that would not divide the last sixpence to relieve her from real distress. This she has been repeatedly assured of by me: and all of us, I am certain, would feel much hurt, at having our mother a pensioner, while we had the means of supporting her; but in fact she has an ample income of her own.

  In this same letter, perhaps cathartic to George, he wrote the many pains that he went through to get her comfortable in Fredericksburg, including the allowance, being so close to Betty and Fielding, and every other imaginable thing she may want. He continued,

  I lament accordingly that your letter, which conveyed the first hint of this matter, did not come to my hands sooner; but I request, in pointed terms if the matter is now in agitation in your assembly, that all proceedings on it may be stopped, or in case of a decision in her favor, that it may be done away, and repealed at my request.83

  In other words, “If she asks again—do nothing.”

  WHATEVER REPUTATION SHE HAD IN THE PUBLIC EYE, MARY DID STILL have friends and acquaintances in high places. Her most distinguished guest, perhaps the highlight of her life, was in April 1781. His full name was Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier. More commonly, he was known as the Marquis de Lafayette.

  Lafayette, the young grand French ally who had come to Virginia to assist colonial troops, purposely diverted his path to Fredericksburg to see Mary. While in Head-of-Elk, Maryland, he wrote to “my dear General” that “I could not resist the ardent desire I had of seeing your relations, and, above all, your mother, at Fredericksburg. For that purpose I went some miles out of my way, and, in order to consolidate my private happiness to duties of a public nature, I recovered by riding in the night those few hours which I had consecrated to my satisfaction.”84

  Such a difference in age, in customs, in beliefs. Here, a twenty-three-year-old dashing young man, French and European in culture, a veteran of wars and battles, an ally close to Mary’s son at Valley Forge, sitting with a seventy-plus-year-old woman who had never left her Virginia Colony, who had been widowed for decades, and raised on a plantation. Here was a Frenchman whose friendship with her son was so great that he named his son Georges Washington Lafayette. General Washington returned the affection in kind by treating Lafayette as if he were his own son. Here was a man whose cause for liberty extended not just to the French but to the Americans. In many ways, they were sharp contrasts: young versus old, active versus deliberative, but their friendship and affection for each other knew no bounds.

  Lafayette left within a day, heading back north to Maryland, leaving Mary pleased, no doubt, with his visit. Whatever conversations they had, it left an impression on the young fighter as well. “Be so kind, my dear general, to remember me to your much respected mother: her happiness I heartily partake of,” he wrote to George in early 1783.85

  WITH THE AID OF FRENCH AND SPANISH ALLIES, THE SIEGE OF YORKTOWN, months later into 1781, was the final blow to the British forces in America. Lord Cornwallis surrendered his forces, bringing any hope of vanquishing these rebels to an end. The Continental Army, commanded by George Washington himself, who lost more battles than he won, whose military training proved invaluable to the present crisis, had bested the greatest empire in the world. Cornwallis, bitter, did not present his sword in person to Washington. He sent his military aide; so Washington, tit for tat, sent his own military aide to accept it.

  Hearing of Cornwallis’s surrender, Mary was said to have clasped her hands in that ancient form of prayer, looked upward to God, and exclaimed, “Thank God! War will now be ended, and peace, independence and happiness bless our country!”86 This demonstrated a marked change from Mary’s earlier apathy. Years earlier, as she was gardening, a young courier announced, “Madam, there may have been a battle.” He was greeted with a two-word reply: “Very well.”87

  Perhaps her praise at the surrendering British would mean an end to the constant couriers and messengers. Peace for the country, and peace and quiet for her.

  GEORGE, HEADING BACK NORTH, DID NOT ARRIVE AT FREDERICKSBURG UNTIL November 11, nearly a month after Cornwallis’s capitulation. He paid her a visit, hoping to see her after all these years.

  She was not at home.

  Historian Douglas Freeman waved it all away: “He stopped in Fredericksburg to see his mother, but as she was absent on a visit, the party pushed on towards Mount Vernon.” Ron Chernow provided some more detail, explaining that she was in western Virginia with Betty and Fielding Lewis.88 Historian James Thomas Flexner only speculated on the move and motives. “I learn from very good authority that she is upon all occasions, and in all Companies complaining of the hardness of the times, of her wants and distresses,” George wrote to younger brother John Augustine two years later, a complaint that Flexner felt weighed on Washington’s mind while riding up to the Fredericksburg reunion. Ultimately, Flexner believed, George “was probably not heartbroken to find that his mother was not home.”89 Evidently while he was there, he dropped off 10 guineas before leaving. Mary wrote to him some months later sincerely yet dramatically apologetic. Dated March 13, 1782, to the misspelling of “my dear Georg,” her letter said: “I was truly unesy [sic] by Not being at hom [sic] when you went tru fredirceksburg [sic] it was a onlucky [sic] thing for me now I am afraid I Never Shall have that pleasure agin [sic].”

  It was her characteristic misspelling; that was nothing new and certainly nothing new for a woman in the 1780s, given the educational norms and habits of the time. Perhaps the misspelling of his own name warranted a quiet sigh from George, maybe a shake of the head in disbelief. But it was just like his mother. She thanked him for the “2 five ginnes you was soe kind to send me i am greatly obliged to you for it.”90

  It’s important to note that Mary’s absence should not be considered a snub to George. She was away from Fredericksburg with Betty and Fielding, not on some vacation or family-bonding “trip,” as one wrote. She was not away because she wanted to be away from her war-distracted eldest son. She fled with Betty and Fielding from the potential colony-wide battlefield. Cornwallis was on the move toward Fredericksburg itself. The Marquis de Lafayette told General George Weedon, a Fredericksburg native, to “collect the militia” and evacuate all nonessential civilians. That included the Lewises and Mary.91

  At the very north of Virginia, bordering Maryland, to which they fled, was Frederick County, created in 1743. Fredericksburg and Frederick County were both named for the then prince of Wales. George was the representative of the county for the House of Burgesses for several years.

  The distance between Fredericksburg and Frederick County was about seventy miles, but these seventy miles were as far north as Mary would have ever gone, as much as can be known. The vast Shenandoah Valley, with the massive Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountains stretching hundreds of miles away, offered a different view than that of the comparatively small Rappahannock River. But it was not an easy ride. “This trip over the Mountins [sic] has almost kill’d me,” she wrote to George. She possibly stayed at Fairfield, the house of her distant relative Warner Washington. Despite the journey, she apparently loved it there.

  Her time there may have been spent praying—or complaining, perhaps. For a woman of advanced age, as she was at this time, a perilous an
d uneasy journey like that would have taken its toll.

  When George read her letter, he perhaps chuckled—or gasped, when he read that if she were to “be driven up this way agin [she] will goe in some little hous of my one if it is only twelve foot square[.] Benjamin Hardesty has four hinderd akers of Land of yours jis by George Le[e] if you will lett me goe there if I should be abliged to come over the Mountaine again.”92

  But that was an unnecessary request, even for her. And it was a request that was never answered. Some months after her son had passed through and with the threat of war over, she returned to Fredericksburg.

  There, she resumed her life. She could meet her neighbors; she could shop and buy material she wanted or needed. On September 8, 1783, a mere five days after the formal end of the Revolutionary War, she received a bill from Captain Marban for 16 shillings for her purchase of two old blankets.93 Why she needed them, or why she wanted them, who knew. But it was a sense of normalcy that she hadn’t seen for the past eight years.

  There, in Fredericksburg, to the day she died, she stayed.

  ANY JOY OF VICTORY OVER THE BRITISH WAS DAMPENED BY THE DEATHS OF some very dear to her. For they did not die of their wounds or illness contracted from the war.

  On September 26, 1781, at the age of forty-seven, her third child, her second son, Samuel, died at his home at Harewood, present West Virginia, built about twelve years earlier. Made of limestone, the Georgian manor was an oft-visited site of his older brother. It was unknown whether Mary herself visited, but that was unlikely due to her age. Samuel was the second child to pass away, after baby Mildred four decades earlier. He was the first of her adult children, which probably made it the most stinging. Samuel had followed the Washington “tradition” of dying early—his half brother Lawrence and father, Augustine, being testament to this.

  Samuel was buried at Harewood, leaving behind at least five children.

  Two months later, another heartache: Fielding Lewis, the husband of Betty, died of tuberculosis. He had moved away from his Fredericksburg mansion (completed in 1775) briefly in hopes of finding a cure, but returned soon after, dying in debt on December 7. He had been sick, as many at that time knew, and was deep in debt from pouring his fortune into the munitions plant at Fredericksburg. At one point, he had advanced over 7,000 pounds for its manufacturing.94 He had seen Mary’s own health failing fast, offering to manage her affairs. She initially declined, but soon met halfway. “Do you, Fielding, keep my books in order . . . but leave the executive management to me.”95

  And now he was dead and had left Betty in debt. As a dearly loved member of her extended family, Mary saw the toll that this war had taken.

  THE REVOLUTION, WHICH WOULD FORMALLY END AT THE SIGNING OF THE Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783, was practically over. The surrender of Cornwallis’s army was the end of any substantial fighting in the colonies, and British forces slowly retreated back to England.

  The deed was done.

  What was to be done with the Loyalists, those traitors to American freedom—yet those loyal to the Crown? “For the most part, open Loyalists had disappeared long ago.” Those who left had all holdings confiscated. They fled to the West Indies, or England, or Canada.96 Those who remained tried to save face, claiming that they were actually spying for the Americans. (In one case, for James Rivington, this was true.)97 Mary, the supposed greatest Loyalist of all, as some may want to paint her, did not flee. Nor was she tarred and feathered or financially punished. In fact, quite the opposite. She remained home in Fredericksburg.

  Before the end of the war, in mid-February of 1783, a baby girl was born of Burgess Ball, captain of the 5th Virginia Regiment and later colonel of the 1st, and his wife Frances Thornton Washington, daughter of Charles and granddaughter of Mary Ball Washington. She was the third child of the couple. In honor of her great-grandmother, she was christened Mary Washington Ball. This little Mary, like so many infants at the time, died within two years, on August 27, 1784, in Loudoun County, Virginia.98

  All the while, from 1781 to 1783, George traveled around the colonies. He went to Philadelphia. He went to New York. Peace talks began in Paris in the spring of 1782 and continued on for the remainder of the year. Before he addressed the Continental Congress, on December 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, he bid farewell to his generals. Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge wrote his account in 1830, several decades later, in which he writes of the incident:

  The time now drew near when the Commander-in-Chief intended to leave this part of the country for his beloved retreat at Mount Vernon. On Tuesday, the 4th of December, it was made known to the officers then in New York, that Gen. Washington intended to commence his journey on that day. At 12 o’clock the officers repaired to Francis’ Tavern, in Pearl Street, where Gen. Washington had appointed to meet them and to take his final leave of them. We had been assembled but a few moments, when His Excellency entered the room. His emotions, too strong to be concealed, seemed to be reciprocated by every officer present. After partaking of a slight refreshment, in almost breathless silence, the General filled his glass with wine, and turning to the officers, he said: “With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.”

  After the officers had taken a glass of wine, Gen. Washington said: “cannot come to each of you but shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.”

  Gen. Knox being nearest to him, turned to the Commander-in-Chief, who, suffused in tears, was incapable of utterance, but grasped his hand; when they embraced each other in silence. In the same affectionate manner, every officer in the room marched up to, kissed, and parted with his General-in-Chief. Such a scene of sorrow and weeping I had never before witnessed, and fondly hope I may never be called to witness again.99

  Later that month, speaking to the Continental Congress in Annapolis, and to the shock of many, he resigned his commission.

  He could finally go home to Martha, returning to the lovely mansion of Mount Vernon, so close to the Potomac River. There, he was determined, he would stay.

  And in Fredericksburg, close to the Rappahannock, the now seventy-five-year-old mother would stay.

  Chapter 11

  A Separate Peace

  THE UNITED STATES AND POSTWAR PEACE

  1784‒1786

  “If such are the matrons in America, well may she boast of illustrious sons!”

  Though the war against the British was over, another battle would soon engage George Washington: the battle to get back to a normal life. That included, unfortunately, in some ways, his mother.

  But fortunately, it also meant returning to his love, Martha Dandridge Washington.

  The War for Independence was the first time, since their marriage in January of 1759, the two were separated for any length of time. His letter to her before leaving for his command showed great grief.

  There was no such grief or lamenting for his own mother, however, either when he left for Mount Vernon in 1754 or when he went to war in 1775. This would not necessarily have been unusual considering he had his own wife and family. Perhaps a letter or more existed and became lost; perhaps not. He did return to domestic life, though, having sorely missed his wife and his land.

  GEORGE HAD ALWAYS BEEN A PLANTER. “AGRICULTURE IS THE FAVORITE employment of General Washington,” wrote his official biographer, David Humphreys.1 James Thomas Flexner included a lengthy chapter in his third volume on Washington entitled, simply and humbly, “Farmer Washington.”2 “George perhaps saw himself as a simple farmer, away from the fame of war and revolution and independence, tending to his crops. Since his retirement in 1759, he shifted his life back, from soldier to farmer. He loved the tranquil calm that the Mount Vernon estate, that he received so long ago, brought him. Besides Martha, it was his true love, and as he wrote a decade after the war, ‘No estate in United America is more pleasantly situat
ed than this.’”3

  During the war, George had placed Mount Vernon’s eight-thousand-acre plantation in the hands and care of Lund Washington, his cousin. Five years George’s junior, Lund kept the general apprised of all news of the plantation, good and bad. In 1781, he listed the seventeen slaves (fourteen men, three women) who escaped on board the sloop HMS Savage, commanded by British captain Richard Graves, who docked on April 12 on the Potomac River near Mount Vernon. There, slaves took flight.4 George was furious at his cousin’s failure, writing to Lund that same month: “It would have been a less painful circumstance to me, to have heard, that in consequence of your non compliance with their request, they had burnt my House, & laid the Plantation in Ruins.”5 The British also took off with some of the mansion’s valuables.

  Lund’s management was overall a failure, a failure that George would deal with for years after he returned. To Henry Knox, he wrote in 1785 that Mount Vernon and all his business “require infinitely more attention than I have given, or can give, under present circumstances. They can no longer be neglected without involving my ruin.”6 To his sister’s son, thirty-three-year-old Fielding Lewis Jr., he was even more blunt: “I made no money from my Estate during the nine years I was absent from it, and brought none home with me.”7

  All problems aside, George was finally going home to tend to his own fields. It was his refuge. It was his sanctum sanctorum. He had lived there for twenty-nine years, actually owning it for over twenty. Here he tended to the fields and gardens. Here in the 1750s he had expanded the initial one-story house to include a second story; in the early 1770s, before the Revolution and before the colonies were turned upside down, he expanded it again, with a two-story addition on the south end of the mansion and a similar, as yet incomplete, addition to the north. Here George built a larger gristmill to replace the previous one built under his father.

  Here was home.