Martha Washington

by Patricia Brady

  178 “Living in small Houses”: Fields, 261.

  180 “agitated with a warmth & intemperance”: PGWPS, 5:525.

  181 “Every eye full of tears”: Decatur, 133.

  181 “From total despair”: DGW, 6:76-77; PGWPS, 5:396.

  181 “During the President’s sickness” and “the exercise, relaxation”: Fields, 225-26.

  182 “a rather weak woman”: R. W. G. Vail, ed., “A Dinner at Mount Vernon: From the Unpublished Journal of Joshua Brookes (1773-1859),” The New-York Historical Society Quarterly (April 1947): 81-82.

  183 “a very agreeable Tour”: Adams Family, 51.

  184 “very fine looking Men”: Adams Family, 56.

  184 “Mrs. Washington appeared greatly affected”: Decatur, 150.

  185 “Hospitality indeed seems”: Robert A. Lancaster Jr., Historic Virginia Homes and Churches (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1915), 362.

  186 “that I am much better off”: Decatur, 161.

  187 “Philadelphia may be considered”: Echeverria, 253.

  189 “Do not touch the birds.”: David R. Brigham, Public Culture in the Early Republic: Peale’s Museum and its Audience (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Pres, 1995), 12.

  191 “as yellow as a mulato”: Fields, 232.

  193 “a shadow of what he was”: Ibid., 241.

  193 “I hope you will now look forward”: Ibid., 244.

  194 “was extremely affected”: Flexner, 3:361, 392-93.

  194 “spirit of party”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER TEN: The Torments of the Second Term

  198 “like a philosopher”: Fields, 250.

  198 “Bring out your dead”: Larkin, 83.

  199 “Mrs. Washington was unwilling”: Writings of George Washington, 33:104.

  199 “excessive alarm” and “courage of which he has the reputation”: Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 449-50.

  199 “to soften the sorrows”: Fields, 247.

  199 “They have suffered so much”: Ibid., 254.

  200 The Washingtons arrived there: The house had been General Howe’s headquarters during the Battle of Germantown. Now called the Deshler-Morris house, the building is owned by the Independence National Historical Park and is open to the public. Roger W. Moss, Historic Houses of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 136-39.

  200 “so full of Ice”: Ibid.

  203 “I hope when Nelly”: Ibid., 282.

  203 “In this city everyone complains”: Ibid., 281.

  203 “The old gentleman”: Ibid., 259.

  203 “I have been so unhappy”: Ibid., 270.

  204 “It has fallen heavily”: Ibid., 291-92.

  205 “It gives me pain”: Ibid., 293-94.

  207 “No one believed”: George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly, 19-22.

  207 “as housekeeper, Nurse”: Ibid., 23-25.

  209 “the ministers of France, Great Britain, and Portugal”: Writings of George Washington, 35:99.

  209 “I shall make my last journey”: Ibid.

  211 “May the members”: Ibid., 35:397.

  211 “as she never expects”: Bradford Perkins, ed., “A Diplomat’s Wife in Philadelphia: Letters of Henrietta Liston, 1796-1800,” The William and Mary Quarterly (October 1954): 608.

  211 “The winter has been very sevear”: Fields, 297.

  212 “to see, & be seen”: George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly, 31.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: “Under Their Vine and Under Their Fig Tree”

  214 “We once more”: Fields, 304.

  214 “deputy housekeeper”; “The opinion of the wise”: George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly, 32.

  215 “she retains strong remains”: Edward C. Carter II, ed., The Virginia Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1795-1798, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 1:168.

  215 “Mrs. Washington is one”: Metchie J. E. Budka, ed., Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Under Their Vine and Fig Tree (Elizabeth, N.J.: Grassman Publishing, 1965), 103.

  215 “The extensive knowledge”: quoted in Miriam Anne Bourne, First Family: George Washington and His Intimate Relations (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 195.

  216 “Were I drowning”: George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly, 41.

  219 “Is he gone?”: Tobias Lear, Letters and Recollections of George Washington (New York: Doubleday, 1906), 135.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: The Widow Washington

  222 “First in war, first in peace”: Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, George Washington: A Funeral Oration on His Death (December 26, 1799) (London: J. Bateson, 1800).

  223 “the most lovely and engaging little Girl”: George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly, 65.

  223 Besides the little Lewis girls: Patty Peter’s eldest daughter, Eleanor, died in 1800; soon afterward, Patty gave birth to a son, another of George Washington’s namesakes.

  224 “views with gratitude”: Fields, 344.

  224 “She had the painfull task”: New Letters of Abigail Adams, 227.

  224 “The body of her beloved friend”: Papers of William Thornton, 1:527.

  225 Any final decision: Many years later, Congress finally proposed building a monument and transferring the first president’s remains, but Washington’s great-nephew John Augustine Washington, by then the owner of Mount Vernon, refused permission for the transfer.

  226 “The zest of life has departed”: George Gibbs, ed., Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, Edited from the Papers of Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury (New York: 1846), 380-81.

  226 “Mrs. Washington received us”: “Mrs. Liston Returns to Virginia,” Virginia Cavalcade (Summer 1965): 46.

  226 “[we] were received very friendly”: John Pintard’s Journal (1759-1844), excerpt in R. W. G. Vail, “Two Early Visitors to Mount Vernon,” The New-York Historical Society Quarterly (October 1958): 350, 352, 353.

  227 “We were all Federalists”: William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler, eds., Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D., 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke, 1888), 2:56-58.

  227 “two or more disinterested Witnesses”: Fields, 393.

  228 “The pleasure which we had anticipated”: Eliza Cope Harrison, ed., Philadelphia Merchant: The Diary of Thomas P. Cope, 1800-1851 (South Bend, Ind.: Gateway Editions, 1978), 111-13.

  228 “being neglected since her sickness”: Ibid., 279.

  229 “Fortitude & resignation”: Ellen McAllister, “This Melancholy Scene,” Annual Report 1981 (Mount Vernon, Va.: MVLA, 1982), 15.

  229 “for the last dress.”: Ibid.

  229 “On Saturday the 22nd of May”: Alexandria Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer , May 25, 1802.

  233 “look for perfect felicity”: Writings of George Washington, 33: 501.

  233 “more permanent & genuine happiness”: Ibid., 28: 514.

  234 “a hard husband”: Vail, 81-82.

  Bibliography

  A Note on the Sources

  Martha Washington: An American Life is based almost entirely on published manuscripts. Despite Martha Washington’s attempt to keep her private life from public view, many of her letters survived. Extant letters and documents were located and published by Joseph E. Fields in “Worthy Partner”: The Papers of Martha Washington (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994). Subsequently, an additional letter from Martha to George Washington was discovered and acquired by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, and a page in Daniel Parke Custis’s “Invoice Book &ca.” in the Lee family papers at the Virginia Historical Society was identified by the author as the earliest-known document written by Martha Washington.

  The Papers of George Washington (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1976- ), a model edition not only of all Washington’s writings but of incoming correspondence, began publication with Washington’s diaries in 1976 and continues today. Under the leadership of a series of outstanding editors—Donald Jackson, Dorothy Twohig, W.
W. Abbott, and Philander D. Chase—fifty-one invaluable volumes have appeared to date. The project Web site, at www.virginia.edu/gwpapers, is also an immensely useful resource.

  This modern edition supersedes John Fitzpatrick’s Writings of George Washington , 39 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931-1944), still useful for material not yet published in the modern edition. A searchable edition at lib.virginia.edu/washington/fitzpatrick/ was edited and made available online by Frank E. Grizzard Jr., an editor of The Papers of George Washington.

  For researchers interested in the truth about Martha Washington, a book to beware is Martha and Mary by Benson J. Lossing (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886). Like Mason Locke Weems with his cherry tree and other priggish fables about George Washington, Lossing was a glorifier who didn’t find his subjects sufficiently glorious. Gilding the lily was essential for his nineteenth-century worldview. Besides information from the Custis-Lee family, portions of five letters supposedly to or from Martha Washington appear in this book. The letters share several characteristics: none is extant; none of those purported to be from Martha Washington is in her style; recipients’ copies would have been unavailable to Lossing; all of them incorporate ludicrous errors of fact, style, place, and/or date. From Washington’s love letter to his dream of death, none is acceptable to a professional historian. I contend that Benson Lossing fabricated (not forged, for there are no physical copies) all five letters.

  On the basis of family lore, many Americans, white and black, believe they are descendants of the founding fathers and mothers. Some are; many aren’t. Their claims are always worth investigating because they may be true in whole or in part, but must be subjected to the same intense scrutiny as any other historical data. The honesty of the informants isn’t in question, but their information is often inaccurate.

  The authors of two recent books have accepted post-Civil War family mythology about events of well over a century before, without either analyzing its probability or uncovering any supporting evidence. Based solely on that lore, both assert that Martha Washington had a mixed-race half-sister, John Dandridge’s daughter, who lived with her throughout her life at Chestnut Grove, White House, and Mount Vernon—even though Martha never took a slave from Chestnut Grove. In Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty (New York: John Wiley, 2001), Helen Bryan first published the tale of the shadow sister who lived with Martha Washington and accompanied her everywhere, her existence obscured by a “veil of secrecy.” Henry Wiencek followed up with An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003). Although the family story was that Ann Dandridge was raised alongside Martha Dandridge at Chestnut Grove, Wiencek transformed that woman into a small child brought up by Martha, cutting several years from her age to make her just young enough for a convoluted tale of inter-racial incest.

  Disregarding Martha Washington’s moral and religious character, both authors seriously considered the possibility that she was a murderer; both charged her with condoning incest. Ignoring the legal and financial realities of chattel slavery, both posit shifting states of freedom and slavery occurring without legal action or documentation. Neither this supposed sister nor her several children appear on the 1786 or 1799 Mount Vernon lists of slaves made by George Washington, a meticulous record keeper. Absent any documentary evidence whatsoever—contemporary eyewitness accounts, legal documents, or Mount Vernon records—the story of the secret sister bearing a child by her own nephew must be rejected. No half-sister lived with Martha Washington. The story simply isn’t true.

  Manuscript Collections

  Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia

  York County Project. Research and data collection done with assistance from

  the National Endowment for the Humanities under Grants RS-0033-80-1604

  and RO-20869, Department of Historical Research

  Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report Series on individual

  houses, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library

  Mount Vernon Ladies Association

  Lewis, Robert. “A Journey from Fredericksburg, Virginia, to New York,”

  May 13-20, 1789

  Research notebooks

  Tudor Place Historic House and Gardens Archives

  Custis family letters

  Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia

  Custis family papers

  Lee family papers

  Selected Sources

  Abbott, W. W. The Young George Washington and His Papers. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1999.

  Abbott, W. W., ed. The Papers of George Washington: Colonial Series. 10 vols. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1983-1995.

  ———. The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series. 6 vols. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1992-1997.

  Abbott, W. W., et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington: Retirement Series. 4 vols. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1998-1999.

  Baker, William Spohn. Itinerary of General Washington from June 15, 1775, to December 23, 1783. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1892.

  ———. Washington After the Revolution, 1784-1799. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1898.

  Baumgarten, Linda. Eighteenth-Century Clothing at Williamsburg. Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1995.

  ———. What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

  Bearss, Sara B. The Story of Virginia. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1995.

  Benedict, Barbara. Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.

  Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.

  Berkin, Carol, and Mary Beth Norton. Women of America: A History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

  Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1998.

  Billias, George A., ed.. George Washington’s Generals and Opponents. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.

  Billings, Warren M., John E. Selby, and Thad W. Tate. Colonial Virginia. New York: KTO Press, 1994.

  Blanton, Wyndham B. Medicine in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century. Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1931.

  Boatner, Mark M., III. Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1994.

  ———. Landmarks of the American Revolution. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1973.

  Bodle, Wayne. The Valley Forge Winter: Civilians and Soldiers in War. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.

  Bond, Edward L. Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2000.

  Bourne, Miriam Anne. First Family: George Washington and His Intimate Relations . New York: W. W. Norton, 1982.

  Brady, Patricia. George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly: The Letters of Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, 1794-1851. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992.

  Bridenbaugh, Carl. Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625-1742. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

  Brinkley, M. Kent, and Gordon W. Chappell. The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg . Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1996.

  Britt, Judith S. Nothing More Agreeable: Music in George Washington’s Family. Mount Vernon: The Association, 1984.

  Brock, Henry Irving. Colonial Churches in Virginia. Richmond: Dale Press, 1930.

  Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

  Budka, Metchie J. B., ed. Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz. Under Their Vine and Fig Tree. Elizabeth, N.J.: Grassman Publishing, 1965.

  Butterfield, L
yman, et al., eds. Adams Family Correspondence. 7 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1963-.

  Callahan, North. Henry Knox: General Washington’s General. New York: Rinehart, 1958.

  Cappon, Lester J., et al., eds. Atlas of Early American History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976.

  Carr, Lois Green, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo. Colonial Chesapeake Society . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

  Carson, Barbara G. Ambitious Appetites: Dining, Behavior, and Patterns of Consumption in Federal Washington. Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Architects Press, 1990.

  Carson, Cary, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert. Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1994.

  Carson, Jane. Colonial Virginia Cookery. Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1985.

  ———. Colonial Virginians at Play. Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1965.

  ———. Travelers in Tidewater Virginia, 1700-1800. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1965.

  Carter, Edward C., II, ed. The Virginia Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1795-1798. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.

  Cary, Wilson Miles. “The Dandridges of Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly. Series 1:5 (July 1896): 30-39.

  Chamberlayne, C. C., ed. The Vestry Book and Register of St. Peter’s Parish, New Kent and James City Counties, Virginia, 1684-1786. Richmond: Library of Virginia, 1997.

  ———. The Vestry Book of Blisland (Blissland) Parish, New Kent and James City Counties, Virginia, 1721-1786. Richmond: Library of Virginia, 1997.

  Chase, Philander D., et al., eds. The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series. 13 vols. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1985- .

  Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.