Martha Washington

by Patricia Brady

  Lear dealt with much of the correspondence, drafting her replies or simply answering letters himself. Nelly also answered some letters from close family friends. The expense of this barrage of mail grew so heavy that Congressman Henry Lee and Secretary of State Timothy Pickering arranged for Martha Washington to enjoy the privilege of franking—mailing free—letters and packages for her lifetime, a right previously enjoyed only by government officials.

  The widow responded generously to requests for mementos of the great man, whose memory she tended so faithfully. For example, Paul Revere’s Grand (Masonic) Lodge of Massachusetts wrote in early January 1800 requesting a lock of Washington’s hair to be preserved in a gold urn with the jewels and regalia of the lodge. Two weeks later, Lear responded on her behalf with a letter enclosing the requested hair and assuring them that Mrs. Washington “views with gratitude, the tributes of respect and affection paid to the memory of her dear deceased husband, and receives with a feeling heart, the expressions of sympathy contained in your letter.”

  But a far greater demand was made on her public-spiritedness. Congress requested that Washington’s body be removed from the family tomb to be interred in the new capital city, and she agreed. Abigail Adams wrote, “She had the painfull task to perform, to bring her mind to comply with the request of Congress, which she has done in the handsomest manner possible in a Letter to the President which will this day [January 7, 1800] be communicated to congress.”

  William Thornton enlarged on Martha’s views on this matter to John Marshall. “The body of her beloved friend and companion is now requested and she does not refuse the national wish—but if an intimation could be given that she should partake merely of the same place of deposit it would restore to her mind a calm and repose that this acquiescence in the national wish has in a high degree affected. You, who know her, are not unacquainted with her high virtues, and know that her love for the departed would be the only reason why such a wish could be entertained.” Despite Martha’s assent, however, her husband’s body was never moved. Any final decision about the erection of a monument remained mired for years in political wrangling and infighting, while George Washington rested peacefully at Mount Vernon.

  Alone among the founding fathers, Washington freed his slaves. During his later years, he had become convinced that holding human beings in bondage was wrong and determined to free his own slaves in his will. Many of the slaves at Mount Vernon, however, were not his to free. Besides those rented from a neighbor, more than half the estate’s slaves were included in the Custis dower holdings. Martha was legally entitled to their labor during her lifetime, but she could neither sell nor liberate them, even had she wished to, because they were part of the family estate, which would eventually go to her grandchildren.

  During the past forty years, the laborers at Mount Vernon had married or cohabited, and their numbers now included generations of their children as well. The status of these descendants depended entirely on whether their mothers belonged to Washington or to the Custis estate, because a slave’s status was derived from her or his mother. Thus, a woman and her children could be freed while their father remained in slavery; conversely, a husband could become free while his wife and children remained enslaved. One family could be freed, while their first cousins were kept in bondage, and so on with grandparents, aunts, and uncles, splitting families apart through the generations. The emotional ramifications of these separations were dreadful to contemplate and could not be effected without considerable pain to all the enslaved residents of Mount Vernon.

  To spare his wife, Washington had directed that the emancipation of his slaves take place after her death. But the coming separations hung over everyone’s heads, and Martha grew convinced that some of the blacks wished her dead. As her legal adviser, Bushrod Washington suggested she free Washington’s 123 slaves promptly, which she did on January 1, 1801. Some of the freed people continued to live at Mount Vernon with their families, others migrated to nearby black settlements, and the rest set off to discover what freedom could offer in other parts. In so much else influenced by her husband’s thinking, Martha had never come to believe that slavery was wrong.

  The habit of visiting Mount Vernon as a secular shrine did not cease with Washington’s death. Visitors continued to flock there to pay their respects, not only to the memory of the first president, but also to his much admired consort. With the assistance of Nelly, Martha received them graciously, often bestowing small mementos of her husband. Visitors usually found Martha and Nelly, and sometimes Nelly Stuart, Eliza Law, or Patty Peter, in the small parlor, reading, knitting, or chatting. Martha offered hospitality to all callers—breakfast, dinner, tea, lodging for the night, a walk around the house and garden, long conversations about the nation’s history.

  Among the several parrots in cages on the riverside portico was her favorite cockatoo, which she fed, talked to, and caressed every day. Visibly aged by sorrow, she was a short, stout figure dressed in black with a ruffled white cap. Although she was still fair and smiling, age and grief had etched wrinkles on her face. She had seemed almost immortal, and now visitor after visitor seemed shocked to discover that she had aged overnight. As one visitor put it, “The zest of life has departed.”

  Henrietta Liston, the former British ambassador’s wife, wrote that “Mrs. Washington received us with her usual kindness, and not without tears . . . our spirits were much dampened, and I listened with tender interest to a sorrow, which she said was truly breaking her heart; it was really doing so.”

  But with strangers, she kept up appearances. In the summer of 1801, New York politician John Pintard recorded that “[we] were received very friendly by Mrs. Washington who bears her age remarkably well. She converses without reserve & [with] seeming pleasure on every subject that recalls the memory & virtues of her august consort. . . . Mrs. W. was very attentive at table. . . . The conversation was quite free easy & familiar.”

  Besides the admirers, Martha also tenaciously remembered those who had hurt her husband. When Thomas Jefferson was elected in 1800, she commented freely and acidly on his presidency. She never forgave the former intimate who had wounded her husband so cruelly for political ends.

  As widow of the first president, she was often visited by Federalists, with whom she enjoyed talking about politics. One visitor recorded in 1802: “We were all Federalists, which evidently gave her particular pleasure. Her remarks were frequently pointed, and sometimes very sarcastic, on the new order of things and the present administration. She spoke of the election of Mr. Jefferson, whom she considered as one of the most detestable of mankind, as the greatest misfortune our country had ever experienced.”

  Martha decided to make her own will nearly a year after George’s death. The land and slaves were not hers to leave, but she did own a town lot in Alexandria (her husband’s gift), cash, bonds, investments, and the quite valuable contents of Mount Vernon. Attorney General Charles Lee, one of George’s appointees, made a testamentary draft and sent it to her in September 1800. Like many people of the time, she tucked it away until she felt her health starting to fail. Month by month throughout the last half of 1801 and early 1802, she passed more and more time in her third-floor retreat, meditating, praying, and resting as she felt the increasing burden of old age. Finally, she had Nelly recopy Lee’s draft, perhaps with some revisions. During a visit from Patty and Thomas Peter, she signed her will on March 4. The witness were Patty and Lawrence and two strangers—perhaps visitors—following Lee’s advice to select “two or more disinterested Witnesses.”

  The most valuable furnishings, silver, and her one personal slave went to Washington Custis, with Nelly Lewis receiving only slightly less; she and Lawrence had inherited nearly half the Mount Vernon acreage from George. These grandchildren were, of course, also her adopted children. Eliza Law and Patty Peter came into considerably less. A substantial portion of the house’s contents were set aside for sale to fund other legacies, and all the grandchildren
bought freely at that sale.

  With a number of needy nieces and nephews, Martha looked after the Dandridge clan. Although she was the eldest, she had outlived her seven siblings and felt responsible for their children. Knowing the importance of a dowry, she left five hundred pounds each to her four nieces, all as yet unmarried—the three daughters of Bat Dandridge and the daughter of Betsy Dandridge Henley. Smaller amounts for remembrance were left to Maria Washington, her grandniece; Nelly Stuart; and Elizabeth Washington, Lund’s widow and her longtime friend. The junior Bat Dandridge was left the Alexandria lot, and Benjamin Lear, Tobias’s son, received a hundred pounds. She also left Pohick Parish a hundred pounds toward the purchase of a glebe, land for the support of the rector.

  The primary charge on the estate was paying for the education of her sister Betsy’s youngest sons, Bartholomew and Samuel Henley, and her brother Bat’s grandson John Dandridge. A hundred pounds also awaited each of them when they began their careers. The residuary legatees were then to be Maria Washington, John Dandridge, and any living great-grandchildren.

  In the first week of May, she fell seriously ill with one of her frequent stomach upsets, called bilious fever, and sent to Alexandria for the family doctor and friend, James Craik, himself now seventy-one years old. Feeling the end approaching, she prevailed upon him to remain with her. During this final illness, uninvited visitors continued to arrive. One reported: “The pleasure which we had anticipated in this visit was greatly diminished by the illness of Lady Washington.” But the group questioned Dr. Craik very closely indeed on Martha’s appearance, way of life, and likelihood of survival. Instead of sending them packing, he satisfied their curiosity with the same sense of duty that the residents of Mount Vernon showed toward other sightseers. He even pointed out her favorite cockatoo, observing that “being neglected since her sickness, he seemed quite lost & dejected.”

  Martha had at least three weeks to prepare for death—taking communion and bidding her dear ones farewell. The Laws, Peters, and Stuarts joined the Lewises and Wash Custis in attendance, spending most of the month of May at Mount Vernon, seeing her daily. Shortly before her seventy-first birthday, she died of old age, weakened by her illness, at noon on May 22, surrounded by her grandchildren. As Thomas Law described her attitude, “Fortitude & resignation were display’d throughout, she met death as a relief from the infirmities & melancholy of old age.”

  For three days, her coffin rested in the large dining room, the body clad in a white gown she had chosen “for the last dress.” On May 25, in a quiet Episcopal ceremony in marked contrast with her husband’s more formal obsequies, her coffin was placed beside his in the family tomb. Nelly Stuart again presided over the rites and the subsequent gathering of family members and a few friends.

  Her obituary in the Alexandria Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer summed up her life: “On Saturday the 22nd of May at 12 o’clock P.M. Mrs. Washington terminated her well spent life. . . . She was the worthy partner of the worthiest of men, and those who witnessed their conduct could not determine which excelled in their different characters, both were so well sustained on every occasion. They lived an honor and a pattern to their country, and are taken from us to receive the rewards—promised to the faithful and the just.”

  George Washington had passed on the office of the presidency, setting the standard for the peaceful succession of American administrations in the years to come. But no future president could achieve his almost mythical status as the founding and first president. Nor could any future First Lady replace Martha Washington as the first First Lady, the woman who had stood at Washington’s side, supporting him throughout the founding of the American nation.

  EPILOGUE

  The Real Martha Washington

  Searching for the real Martha Washington didn’t seem at first to promise much drama, romance, or adventure. Compared to the tart-tongued and opinionated Abigail Adams or that unrivaled political hostess, Dolley Madison, the dignified elderly lady pictured by Gilbert Stuart seemed yawningly dull—her only possible claim to fame being her marriage to George Washington.

  By destroying all the letters she and her husband exchanged, she prevented any future generation from knowing them through their own words. Worse yet, only the barest outlines of her childhood, girlhood, and first marriage were known—a document here, a fact or two there, all generously larded with two and a half centuries of speculation, unreliable family lore, and romantic fabrication. Martha Washington was frozen in the American historical imagination, famous as a symbol yet completely unknown as a woman.

  Stripping away the myths and falsehoods, reinterpreting what was already known, and discovering bits and pieces of new information, I began to glimpse and then to see clearly the real Martha Washington—a woman whose story I wanted to tell.

  In 1758, Martha was twenty-six years old, a mature woman with a fully formed character—and a strong, formidable character it was. On her mother’s side, she came from several generations of women who lived in York and New Kent counties in the Virginia Tidewater. They survived all that life offered—from frontier conditions to genteel prosperity, continuous pregnancies, the painful births and frequent deaths of their children, endemic and incurable fevers and dysenteries, feeding and clothing large families in crowded houses. Her mother was orphaned, most of her foremothers were widowed. The lives of these colonial women—their experiences, family history, memories, traditions, lore, and attitudes—all shaped Martha Dandridge’s character. Virginia was bred in the bone, and however far she traveled in the world, it remained with her.

  As the eldest of a large family, she was accustomed to considerable responsibility from childhood on, and her experiences as an adult made her even stronger and more capable. After Daniel Custis proposed to her, she and her family were publicly attacked by his snobbish father. It must have been deeply mortifying to have John Custis insult them at his favorite tavern and up and down the streets of Williamsburg, but Martha was determined enough for two and brought about the marriage she desired.

  By 1758, she had been through tragedies sufficient to make a weaker woman take permanently to her bed. From her eighteenth year on, she suffered a series of devastating losses. Her closest brother died in 1749; in 1754, her eldest son died at two and a half; her father dropped dead in 1756, leaving her mother with a newborn baby and a houseful of children; her eldest daughter died in 1757 just before her fourth birthday; three months later, her remaining son fell gravely ill, while her husband died a sudden and painful death; and in 1758, her adolescent sister died. Martha Custis kept on coping as she would throughout the losses that lay ahead for her.

  When Daniel Custis died, leaving his widow in charge of an enormous estate held in trust for their children, including the dower third that was hers for life, she might have thrown up her hands, hiring someone to oversee her financial affairs or making foolish decisions on her own. But she was both intelligent and shrewd, asking for advice, taking what seemed wise to her, rejecting the rest, and carefully studying her husband’s records. Her financial correspondence is coolly businesslike. She made it clear to all the Custis merchants and lawyers that she would continue business relationships with them as long as she was satisfied with their services but wouldn’t hesitate to make changes otherwise. Her orders for the plantation and records of loans are models of efficiency.

  What about the marriage to George Washington that eventually made her famous? For biographers, that’s a two-part question. Were they in love when they married, and did they love each other later? There’s really no room for doubt about the answer to either question in regard to Martha Custis. Very pretty, charming, entertaining, and rich, she could pick and choose among her present suitors or wait for those whom the future would bring. But after George’s first call on her, she immediately invited him back. She wanted him from the beginning. Every bit of contemporary evidence shows that she adored him throughout their lives together—he knew it, their friends knew it, and the
general public knew it.

  What did he feel for her? As nineteenth-century writers rein-vented Washington to suit their own ideas, they seized on Washington Custis’s description of a chance meeting at a neighbor’s house. According to Custis, Washington immediately fell in love with the charming widow and pursued her wholeheartedly. The discovery of two letters that Washington wrote to Sally Cary Fairfax during his engagement to Martha Custis knocked out the story of love at first sight. There’s no credible way to read the letters he wrote in the fall of 1758 other than as those of a young man suffering from a forbidden love; they’re practically incoherent, the outpouring of a sorely troubled heart. He was infatuated with Sally and distraught at her criticism of his coming marriage to Martha Custis.

  Does that mean he married Martha only for her money? Just as false as Custis’s accidental love tale is the idea that the Washingtons’ marriage was affectionate but cool and that George pined for Sally Fairfax until he died. Sally was unattainable by the mores of his class and time—neither of them wanted to run off and live outside society’s reach somewhere on the frontier. If Martha, despite her wealth, hadn’t been lovely and appealing, George had plenty of time to look around. There were always attractive young ladies with respectable dowries and wealthy widows. Neither George nor Martha had to marry just at this time.

  George was given to musing on love and marriage in later life, criticizing coquettes who toyed with men’s affections (Sally?) while waxing lyrical about the pleasures of marriage with the right partner. He warned Martha’s young granddaughters not to “look for perfect felicity before you consent to wed.” He asserted that “more permanent & genuine happiness is to be found in the sequestered walks of connubial life, than in the giddy rounds of promiscuous pleasure.”