Mary Ball Washington

by Craig Shirley

  39. Smith, Inside the Great House, 155.

  40. Eubank, The Authentic Guide Book of Historic Northern Neck of Virginia, 155.

  41. Smith, Inside the Great House, 162.

  42. Harland, The Story of Mary Washington, 45–46.

  43. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 141.

  44. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 1, 45.

  45. Washington, “The Mother and Birthplace of Washington,” 838.

  46. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 126–28.

  47. Moore, The Family Life of George Washington, 25.

  48. Letter from Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur to George Washington, February 12, 1781, manuscripts/mixed material, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  49. Diary entries, February 11, 1798, February 12, 1798, DGW, ed. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, vol. 6 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1979), 282; letter from Henry Knox to George Washington, February 11, 1790; manuscripts/mixed material, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  50. Turner, The Mother of Washington, 114.

  51. Joshua Hempstead, Diary of Joshua Hempstead of New London, Connecticut (New London, Connecticut: New London County Historical Society, 1901), 57.

  52. Smith, Inside the Great House, 29–30.

  53. Smith, 28.

  54. William Meade, Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1861), 170.

  55. Irving, Life of George Washington, vol. 1, 16.

  56. Benson J. Lossing, The Home of Washington (New York: W. A. Townsend, 1865), 34.

  57. Elbridge S. Brooks, The True Story of George Washington (Boston: Lothrop Publishing, 1895), 16–17.

  58. Pryor, The Mother of Washington and Her Times, 80–81.

  59. J. Paul Hudson, George Washington Birthplace: National Monument, Virginia (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1956), 13.

  60. Frost, Pictorial Life of George Washington, 16.

  61. Flexner, George Washington: The Forge of Experience, 12.

  62. Smith, Inside the Great House, 28–29.

  CHAPTER 5: IN THE SHADOW OF THE EMPIRE

  1. Harland, The Story of Mary Washington, 36–37.

  2. Brown, “General Washington,” 1–4.

  3. Mason Locke Weems, The Life of George Washington (Philadelphia: Joseph Allen, 1837), 7–8.

  4. John Stevens Cabot Abbott, George Washington: Or, Life in America One Hundred Years Ago (New York: Dodd & Mead, 1875), 12–13.

  5. David Humphreys, Life of General Washington, ed. Rosemarie Zagari (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 6–7.

  6. Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Charles E. Merrill, 1892), 14.

  7. Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1914), 4–5.

  8. Chernow, Washington: A Life, 6.

  9. James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen Volo, Family Life in 17th- and 18th-Century America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 193.

  10. Jacqueline Howard, “These Are the States Where Infant Mortality Is Highest,” CNN, January 4, 2018.

  11. Volo and Volo, Family Life in 17th- and 18th-Century America, 193; Judith Waizer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1759–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 15–16.

  12. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 128.

  13. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: T. Tegg and Son, 1836), 36.

  14. John F. Walzer, “A Period of Ambivalence: Eighteenth-Century American Childhood,” in Lloyd deMause, ed., The History of Childhood (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 1974), 358.

  15. Diary entries, May 18, May 21, May 22, 1783, Ethel Armes, ed., Nancy Shippen: Her Journal Book (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1935), 146–47.

  16. Linda Baumgarten, Eighteenth-Century Clothing at Williamsburg (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1986), 72–74.

  17. Baumgarten, 43.

  18. Baumgarten, 15–16.

  19. Turner, The Mother of Washington, 115.

  20. Eubank, The Authentic Guide Book of Historic Northern Neck of Virginia, 93–94.

  21. Conway, Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock, 56–57.

  22. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 1, 49.

  23. Smith, Inside the Great House, 45.

  24. Janet Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11–13, 19.

  25. Lengel, First Entrepreneur, 12.

  26. Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America, 25.

  27. Virginia Gazette, December 23, 1775 and April 18, 1777, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  28. Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America, 25.

  29. Thompson, “In the Hands of a Good Providence,” 20.

  30. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 141.

  31. George Washington, “Letter to the Hebrew Congregations of Newport,” 1790.

  32. John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington, vol. 27 (Washington, DC: United States Printing Office, 1938), 1.

  33. Thompson, “In the Hands of a Good Providence,” 21.

  34. Thompson, “In the Hands of a Good Providence,” 192; Edward Charles McGuire, The Religious Opinion and Character of George Washington (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1836), 47–48.

  35. Irving, Life of George Washington, vol. 1, 22.

  36. Thompson, “In the Hands of a Good Providence,” 21–22.

  37. Robert Shackleton, The Book of Washington (Philadelphia: Penn Publishing, 1923), 332.

  38. William Jones Rhees, Visitor’s Guide to the Smithsonian Institution and United States National Museum in Washington (Washington, DC: Judd & Detweiler, 1885), 26.

  39. Helen M. Richardson, “George Washington’s Christening Robe,” The Churchman, February 20, 1904, 24.

  40. “Washington’s Baptism,” Time, September 5, 1932.

  41. Washington family Bible; Mount Vernon Archives, Mount Vernon, Virginia.

  42. Letter from Hannah Fairfax Washington to George Washington, April 9, 1792, PGWPres, ed. Robert F. Haggard and Mark A. Mastromarino, vol. 10 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 240–42.

  43. Philip Levy, Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013), 39.

  44. Luke Pecoraro, in discussion with Scott Mauer, March 15, 2018.

  45. Augustine Washington, “Articles of Agreement and Copartnership,” April 15, 1737, George Washington papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, the New York Public Library, New York City, New York.

  46. Conway, Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock, 57–64.

  47. Truro Parish Colonial Vestry Book, 47, Pohick Episcopal Church Archives, Lorton, Virginia.

  48. John Brooke, King George III (London: Constable, 1972), 1.

  49. Virginia Gazette, June 9, 1738, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  50. Turner, The Mother of Washington, 124–25.

  51. Letter from Buckner Stith to George Washington, March 22, 1787, PGWCon, ed. W. W. Abbot, vol. 5 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997), 99–101.

  52. Chernow, Washington: A Life, 7.

  53. Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith, The Story Hour: A Book for the Home and Kindergarten (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), 116–17.

  54. Randall, George Washington: A Life, 18.

  55. Turner, The Mother of Washington, 122.

  56. Virginia Gazette, July 22, 1737, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  57. Smith, Inside the Great House, 49–51.

  CHAPTER 6: FREDERICKSBURG

  1. Virginia Gazette, April 21, 1738, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  2. Conway, Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock, 71.
>
  3. George H. S. King, “Washington’s Boyhood Home,” William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 2, April 1937, 269–73.

  4. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 1, 58.

  5. Turner, The Mother of Washington, 128.

  6. Turner, 129.

  7. Diary entry, January 16, 1760, DGW, ed. Donald Jackson, vol. 1 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976), 224–25.

  8. Virginia Gazette, November 5, 1772, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  9. Silvanus Jackson Quinn, The History of the City of Fredericksburg, Virginia (Richmond, Hermitage Press, 1908), 43.

  10. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 1, 58; King, “Washington’s Boyhood Home,” 268.

  11. Paul Wilstach, Mount Vernon: Washington’s Home and the Nation’s Shrine (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page, 1916), 14.

  12. Virginia Gazette, August 28, 1746, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  13. Felder, Fielding Lewis and the Washington Family, 83–84; William A. Kretzschmar Jr., et al., eds., Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 310.

  14. Philip Levy, Where the Cherry Tree Grew, 42.

  15. Weems, The Life of George Washington, 14.

  16. Levy, Where the Cherry Tree Grew, 214–17.

  17. Weems, The Life of George Washington, 16–17.

  18. Turner, The Mother of Washington, 131.

  19. Smith, Inside the Great House, 82–83.

  20. Smith, 103.

  21. Smith, 84.

  22. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, January 2, 1814, PTJRet, ed. J. Jefferson Looney, vol. 7 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 100–104.

  23. Pryor, The Mother of Washington and Her Times, 148–49; Virginia Gazette, August 11, 1774, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  24. Virginia Gazette, May 16, 1745, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  25. Letter from Robert Douglas to George Washington, May 25, 1795, PGWPres, ed. Carol S. Ebel, vol. 18 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015), 173–75.

  26. Levy, Where the Cherry Tree Grew, 191.

  27. Levy, 204–5.

  28. Levy, 83.

  29. Harland, The Story of Mary Washington, 56–57.

  30. Smith, Inside the Great House, 249–50.

  31. Smith, 262.

  32. Lossing, Mary and Martha: The Mother and the Wife of George Washington, 31.

  33. Levy, Where the Cherry Tree Grew, 55.

  34. Sparks, The Life of George Washington, 5.

  35. Toner, Wills of the American Ancestors of General George Washington, 13–16.

  36. King, “Washington’s Boyhood Home,” 269–73.

  37. Laura J. Galke, “The Mother of the Father of Our Country: Mary Ball Washington’s Genteel Domestic Habits,” Northeast Historical Archaeology, vol. 38, 2009, 31; Thompson, “In the Hands of a Good Providence,” 16.

  38. Brown, “General Washington,” 5.

  39. Pryor, The Mother of Washington and Her Times, 51.

  40. Washington, “The Mother and Birthplace of Washington,” 833.

  41. Michelle Hamilton, in discussion with Scott Mauer, March 2, 2018.

  42. Lois Green Carr and Lorena S. Walsh, “The Planter’s Wife: The Experience of White Women in Seventeenth-Century Maryland,” William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 4, October 1977, 560.

  CHAPTER 7: MATRIARCH

  1. Pryor, The Mother of Washington and Her Times, 93.

  2. Richard Norton Smith, Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), xx.

  3. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 129–30.

  4. Ford, The True George Washington, 17.

  5. Letter from George Washington to the Citizens of Fredericksburg, February 14, 1784, PGWCon, vol. 1, 122–23.

  6. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 131.

  7. Smith, Inside the Great House, 241.

  8. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 1, 57.

  9. Turner, The Mother of Washington, 137–38.

  10. “Washington Guided by Jesuit Rules,” American Catholic Historical Researches, vol. 21, no. 4, October 1904, 151–53.

  11. Meade, Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, vol. 2, 89.

  12. Humphreys, Life of General Washington, 6.

  13. George Washington’s school copybook, George Washington Papers, Series 1, Exercise Books, Diaries, and Surveys, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  14. Lillback and Newcombe, George Washington’s Sacred Fire, 115.

  15. Sparks, The Life of George Washington, 6.

  16. Angelo, First Mothers, 404.

  17. “Washington’s Copy of Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation—Transcription,” The Papers of George Washington, University of Virginia, http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents_gw/civility/civility_transcript.html.

  18. Carson Holloway, “It’s Time to Rediscover George Washington’s Greatness,” Daily Signal, February 16, 2015.

  19. John Frederick Schroeder, ed., Maxims of Washington; Political, Social, Moral, and Religious (New York: D. Appleton, 1859).

  20. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 131–34; Pryor, The Mother of Washington and Her Times, 36–38.

  21. Virginia Gazette, January 18, 1740, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  22. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 1, 66–71.

  23. Peter R. Henriques, “Major Lawrence Washington versus the Reverend Charles Green: A Case Study of the Squire and the Parson,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 100, no. 2, April 1992, 233–64.

  24. Moore, The Family Life of George Washington, 5.

  25. Conway, Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock, 238.

  26. Humphreys, Life of General Washington, 8; Irving, Life of George Washington, vol. 1, 27.

  27. Conway, Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock, 235–40.

  28. Harland, The Story of Mary Washington, 79–80.

  29. Arthur N. Gilbert, “Buggery and the British Navy, 1700–1861,” Journal of Social History, vol. 10, no. 1, Fall 1976, 74.

  30. Sparks, The Life of George Washington, 15.

  31. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 131.

  32. Chernow, Washington: A Life, 18.

  33. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, 130.

  34. Lossing, Mary and Martha: The Mother and the Wife of George Washington, 41.

  35. William Quentin Maxwell, “A True State of the Smallpox in Williamsburg, February 22, 1748,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 63, no. 3, July 1955, 269–74.

  36. Diary entry, November 17, 1751, DGW, ed. Donald Jackson, vol. 1 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1976), 82.

  37. Diary entry, November 4, 1751, DGW, vol. 1, 72–73.

  38. Virginia Gazette, September 19, 1777, Colonial Williamsburg Archives.

  39. As quoted in John Corry, The Life of George Washington (New York: McCarty & White, 1809), 7.

  40. Lengel, First Entrepreneur, 17.

  41. Lengel, 19.

  42. Diary entries, March 15 and March 16, 1748, DGW, vol. 1, 6–16.

  43. As quoted in Mitchell, The Youth of Washington, 76–77.

  44. Cash account book, July 15, 1748; John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., George Washington, Colonial Traveller, 1732–1775 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1927), 17; Freeman, George Washington, vol. 1, 228.

  45. Deed for Ferry Farm land, July 7, 1748, PGWCol, ed. W. W. Abbot, vol. 1 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1983), 5; letter from George Washington to Lawrence Washington, May 5, 1749, PGWCol, vol. 1, 6–8.

  46. For example, she lent 3 pounds, 9 shillings to his music master on September 10, 1748; cash account book, July 15, 1748; Fitzpatrick, ed., George Washington, Colonial Traveller, 18.

  47. Bill from Dr. John Sutherland to Mary Washington, April 27, 1752, W-1310/A, Mount
Vernon Ladies’ Association, Mount Vernon, Virginia.

  48. Account with Mary Washington and James Buchannen, May–July 1765, W-1310/A, Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, Mount Vernon, Virginia.

  49. Letter from George Mason to George Washington, July 29, 1752, PGWCol, vol. 1, 52–53.

  50. Letter from George Washington to Lawrence Washington, May 5, 1749, PGWCol, vol. 1, 6–8.

  51. Toner, Wills of the American Ancestors of General George Washington, 16–19.

  CHAPTER 8: LIEUTENANT COLONEL WASHINGTON

  1. Randall, George Washington: A Life, 68–69.

  2. Carmichael, Mary Ball Washington, 25.

  3. Letter from Daniel Campbell to George Washington, June 28, 1754, PGWCol, vol. 1, 151–53.

  4. Letter from William Fairfax to George Washington, June 28, 1755, PGWCol, vol. 1, 319.

  5. Letter from George Washington to John Augustine Washington, May 31, 1754, PGWCol, vol. 1, 118–19.

  6. Turner, The Mother of Washington, 171.

  7. Chernow, Washington: A Life, 53.

  8. Pryor, The Mother of Washington and Her Times, 118.

  9. Harland, The Story of Mary Washington, 87–88.

  10. Letter from George Washington to Robert Orme, April 2, 1755, PGWCol, vol. 1, 246–48; Chernow, Washington: A Life, 53–54.

  11. Irving, Life of George Washington, vol. 1, 142.

  12. Brockett and Rock, A Concise History of the City of Alexandria, Va., 14.

  13. Letter from George Washington to Mary Ball Washington, May 6, 1755, PGWCol, vol. 1, 268–69.

  14. Letter from George Washington to Mary Ball Washington, June 7, 1755, PGWCol, vol. 1, 304–5.

  15. Humphreys, Life of General Washington, 18.

  16. Letter from George Washington to John Augustine Washington, July 18, 1755, PGWCol, vol. 1, 343.

  17. Letter from George Washington to Mary Ball Washington, July 18, 1755, PGWCol, vol. 1, 336–38.

  18. Letter from George Washington to Robert Orme, July 28, 1755, PGWCol, vol. 1, 347–48.

  19. Letter from Joseph Ball to George Washington, September 5, 1755, PGWCol, vol. 2, 15–16.

  20. Freeman, George Washington, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 114.

  21. Letter from George Washington to Mary Ball Washington, August 14, 1755, PGWCol, vol. 1, 359–60.

  22. Irving, Life of George Washington, vol. 1, 193.

  23. Letter from George Washington to Mary Ball Washington, September 30, 1757, PGWCol, vol. 4, 430–31.