BYMAEIOM 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 E312.19 .T31 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 032 749 461 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tile Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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1 
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 BY 
 
 MARION HARLAND s,o t.^ A . 
 
 IFITH PORTRAIT AND EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " I have seen the only Roman matron living at this day," 
 
 La/ayette, 1184. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 JCbe Ki\)et^iDe ^SkSh, <JEam6ribae 
 
 1892 
 
Copyright, 1892, 
 By The National Mary Washington 
 Memorial Association. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 ^^^\ 
 
 7^(9 
 
 X 
 
 The Riverside Press, Camhrid^e, Mass. , U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Photogravure of Mary Washington at Twenty- 
 three. (Original in possession of Mrs. S. F. B. 
 Morse.) Frontispiece 
 
 Bas-Relief over Dra wing-Room Mantel in Ken- 
 more io6 
 
 Mary Washington Cottage . . . .no 
 
 Walk in which Mrs. Washington met Lafay- 
 ette, at Back of Cottage . . . .124 
 
 Kenmore, Residence of " Betty " (Washington) 
 Lewis 132 
 
 Rock near Unfinished Tomb, a Favorite Re- 
 sort of Mary Washington . . . .142 
 
 Kenmore as seen from the " Oratory Rock " 144 
 
 Unfinished Monument to Mary the Mother 
 OF Washington 154 
 
 Corner of Room in which Mary Washington 
 died 164 
 
THE 
 
 STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The counties of Westmoreland, Rich- 
 mond, Northumberland, and Lancaster, in 
 eastern Virginia, form the peninsula that 
 separates the Rappahannock from the Poto- 
 mac River. In the year 1700, Lancaster 
 County lent character to the " Northern 
 Neck," famed for broad plantations and for 
 the wealth and refinement of the inhabitants. 
 
 The largest landholder in this region was 
 Robert Carter, of Corotoman, a territorial 
 grant washed upon the east by the Chesa- 
 peake, and upon the south by the Rappa- 
 hannock. The latter is a lordly stream at 
 this point, and navigable for over a hundred 
 miles from the mouth. John Carter, the 
 father of Robert, built in 1670 the first 
 
4 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 Episcopal church on the Neck. His name 
 had headed the Hst of parish vestrymen in 
 1654, preceding that of the clergyman, — an 
 arbitrary order followed in the cases of his 
 namesake-son John, and Robert, surnamed 
 " King " Carter, the greatest of the line. 
 The temper and customs of the day and 
 country were semi-feudal ; leaders were few 
 in number and despotic in spirit. If plant- 
 ers and small farmers dwelt together in 
 unity it was because the autocrat's position 
 was not questioned. 
 
 So near to Christ Church which the first 
 Carter had builded, that the two were early 
 in the eighteenth century united into one 
 parish, was St. Mary's White Chapel ; the 
 place of worship for those belonging to this 
 parish was a chapel-of-ease of the mother- 
 church. Prominent among her vestrymen 
 for almost one hundred years was the name 
 of Ball. It occurs so frequently upon 
 the crumbling tombstones paving the old 
 churchyard as to persuade one into the idea 
 that this was, at the first, a family burying- 
 ground, and the chapel an afterthought. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 5 
 
 The present building, erected in 1 740, occu- 
 pies the site of one which was attended reg- 
 ularly by Colonel Joseph Ball, of Lancaster. 
 His father, William Ball, emigrated from 
 England about the year 1650, and settled 
 at the mouth of the Corotoman River, a 
 tributary of the Rappahannock. His home- 
 stead, Epping Forest, one of the centres of 
 influence to which I have referred, was in- 
 herited by Joseph Ball. The parish record 
 has an entry to the effect that while White 
 Chapel was in building in 1740, Joseph 
 Ball asked and obtained leave to construct 
 a gallery in the same for his family pew. 
 Stipulation was made that it " be completed 
 at the same time with the church, and fin- 
 ished in the same style with the West gal- 
 lery." The vestryman-petitioner was made 
 colonel by Governor Spotswoode, who en- 
 tered upon the duties of his office in 17 10. 
 
 The owner of Epping Forest was then 
 plain " Mr.," or at most, " Major," on the 
 late autumnal day in the year of our Lord 
 1 706, when his youngest child, Mary, was 
 born. 
 
6 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 There were other children in the home: 
 Joseph and Hannah by a former marriage, 
 and the " Sister Susie," of whom we hear in 
 Mary's letters, and who was probably her 
 own mother's child. The Ball house was 
 a square frame structure, plain in architec- 
 ture, with a porch in front, and upper and 
 lower porticos recessed by two half-wings, 
 in the rear. A grove of native trees sur- 
 rounded it on all sides. We get our first 
 mention of the baby-girl in a will executed 
 by her father, when she was between five 
 and six years old : — 
 
 " I give and bequeath unto my daughter, 
 Mary, 400 acres of land in Richmond 
 County in ye freshes of Rappa-h-n River, 
 being a part of a pattern of 1600 acres to 
 her, ye said Mary and her heirs forever." 
 
 When this was written the testator was, 
 he states, " lying upon the bed in my lodg- 
 ing-chamber, making my last will and testa- 
 ment, commending my soul to God with 
 sound and disposing mind." 
 
 In the scarcity of information respecting 
 Mary Ball's childhood and girlhood, we 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 7 
 
 catch eagerly at the shadowy sketch indi- 
 cated to a Hvely fancy by the few hnes cop-, 
 ied above. The " lodging-chamber," the 
 heart of the old Virginia country-house, 
 was, we assume, upon the first floor of the 
 square dwelling. Upon the 25th of June, 
 the date of this instrument, windows and 
 doors would stand wide open to every wind 
 of heaven. The leaves of oaks, hickories, 
 and poplars would be quivering in the salt 
 air blowing fresh from the Bay ; mocking- 
 birds and robins were singing in rapturous 
 chorus, and the voice of the baby of the 
 household blending with all other jocund 
 sounds while the sick man made provision 
 for her, her heirs, and assigns. 
 
 That, although " smitten with sore sick- 
 ness," the good vestryman did not then join 
 his kindred in the churchyard of White 
 Chapel, we gather from the partial list of 
 contributors to the salary of Rev. John Bell, 
 of Christ Church, Lancaster, in 171 2. 
 Colonel Joseph Ball subscribed five pounds, 
 equal then to treble that sum in our day. 
 His title of " Colonel Ball, of Lancaster " 
 
8 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 was used to distinguish him from a cousin of 
 the same name and rank, resident in another 
 county. His brother, William Ball, had 
 eight sons, five of whom married and left 
 sons to keep alive his name upon the earth. 
 We hear of but four children of Colonel 
 Joseph Ball, and his only son had no male 
 issue. 
 
 The Ball coat-of-arms is thus described: 
 " The escutcheon bears a lion rampant, a 
 coat-of-mail, and a shield bearing two lions 
 and a Jiezir de lys. The crest is a helmet 
 with closed visor. Above the lion is a 
 broad bar, half red and half gold. On the 
 scroll which belongs to it are these words : 
 ' Ccelumqtie tueri! " 
 
 " They were taken, of course," says Bishop 
 Meade, in his " Old Churches and Families 
 of Virginia," " from these lines of Ovid : — 
 
 " ' Pronaque cum spectant animalia CEetera terram 
 Os homini sublime dedit caslumque tueri.' " 
 
 These particulars are given the more 
 fully because of an impression, as errone- 
 ous as general, prevailing among superficial 
 readers of American history to the effect 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON g 
 
 that Mary Washington's origin was obscure 
 and her breeding mean. Her lineage — if 
 less august than that of her husband, whose 
 descent from William de Hertburn, Lord 
 of the Manor of Washington in the time of 
 Richard III., is clearly proved — was not 
 ignoble, nor were her associations ever 
 other than those of dignified respectability. 
 " King " Carter's family were the Balls' near 
 neighbors and friends, and their circle of ac- 
 quaintances, if not extensive in the sparsely 
 settled country where their lot was cast, was 
 the best that country afforded. 
 
 After Colonel Ball's death, which took 
 place while Mary was but a child, the 
 widow, according to a kinswoman, lived 
 many years, " which were undoubtedly de- 
 voted to careful training of her child, fitting 
 her, as it proved, to pass with rare firmness 
 and fortitude through the trials and vicissi- 
 tudes that later life laid upon her." 
 
 The blast of civil war, that unroofed so 
 many homes and lost to posterity records 
 of incalculable value, fluttered to the feet of 
 a reverent chronicler a fragment of a pri- 
 
10 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 vate letter found in a deserted mansion 
 near the York River, wliich is beyond price 
 to those wlio are interested in the story of 
 Mary Ball's early life. Despair, indignant 
 and impotent, seizes us at the thought of 
 how much as precious and even more satis- 
 factory to the student of colonial history was 
 destroyed like so much waste paper in those 
 four years of wrath and desolation. The 
 letter, from which the signature is missing, 
 
 begins thus : — 
 
 "WmsBurg, ye 7th of Octr, 1722 
 
 " Dear Sukey, Madam Ball of Lancas- 
 ter and Her Sweet Molly have gone Horn. 
 Mamma thinks Molly the Comliest Maiden 
 She Knows. She is about 16 yrs old, is 
 taller than Me, is verry Sensable, Modest 
 and Loving. Her Hair is like unto Flax, 
 Her Eyes are the color of Yours and her 
 Chekes are like May blossoms. I wish you 
 could see her." 
 
 We do seem to see her in lingering: over 
 the portrait done in miniature in colors that 
 are fresh to this day. It is, as if in explor- 
 ing a catacomb, we had happened upon a 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON II 
 
 fair chamber adorned with a frescoed por- 
 trait of a girl-princess of a legendary age. 
 Romancist and biographer are one as we 
 study the picture, line by line. The brush 
 was dipped in the limner's heart and 
 wrought passing well. A shade of demure- 
 ness is imparted to winsome Molly by the 
 mention of Madam Ball and by the citation 
 of the nameless writer's mamma's approval 
 of her daughter's intimate, — demureness 
 that becomes the maiden as moss the half- 
 opened rose. 
 
 She sits for her likeness upon a stool in 
 Madam Ball's shadow, the blue eyes glan- 
 cing shyly up from her sampler, and the May 
 blossoms (that must mean wild roses as they 
 blush upon the Eastern shore) unfolding 
 in her " chekes " at her hostess's commen- 
 dation of her " comliness." The October 
 sunshine is tangled in curls that are " like 
 unto flax," and soften the contour of a fore- 
 head that would be, but for their shading, 
 too high for feminine loveliness. A like- 
 ness, reputed to be of her, taken at twenty- 
 three, shows us this, and that her no^e was 
 
 ,\ 
 
12 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 a delicate aquiline, her mouth small, with 
 firm lines that would become severe under 
 the pressure of circumstance. We are told, 
 moreover, that her voice was to the last 
 of her life sweet, with pleasant English 
 cadences. She and her mother had been 
 visiting Williamsburg, just then in the flush 
 of its lately acquired honors as the capital 
 of the State. A brave life and a gay was 
 that of which Mary Ball had glimpses from 
 under the wing of the discreet mother. To 
 the eyes of the provincial beauty Duke of 
 Gloucester Street must have been what the 
 Mall was to Miss Burney's " Evelina," and 
 the Apollo Room at the Raleigh Tavern on 
 Assembly nights as much like a scene of 
 Arabian enchantment as Vauxhall to that 
 unsophisticated diarist and correspondent. 
 
 Virginia's most graceful historian, John 
 Esten Cooke, is especially happy in delinea- 
 tion of life in the capital at that date. This 
 is one of his pictures, beginning with the 
 celebrated tavern wherein Jefferson danced 
 with his Belinda : — 
 
 " It was on Gloucester Street, a building 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1 3 
 
 of wood, erected about 1 700, with entrances 
 on both fronts, and a leaden bust of Sir 
 Walter Raleigh over the main doorway. 
 The large apartment called the ' Apollo 
 Room ' was a favorite place for balls. 
 
 " The town consisted of detached houses 
 without pretensions to architectural beauty, 
 but this modest hamlet was the scene of 
 much that was brilliant and attractive in 
 Virginia society. . . . The love of social 
 intercourse had been a marked trait of 
 the Virginians in all generations. . . . The 
 violins seemed to be ever playing for the 
 divertissement of the youths and maidens ; 
 the good horses were running for the purse 
 or cup ; cocks were fighting ; the College 
 students were mingling with the throng in 
 their academic dress. ... It was a scene 
 full of gayety and abandon." 
 
 The population of Virginia was, in 1722, 
 rated at 70,000, double that of Maryland, 
 the next most populous colony, and there 
 was but one older college in North America 
 than her William and Mary, now well es- 
 tablished in the renewed lease of life in- 
 
14 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 augurated after the fire of 1705. Pretty 
 Molly Ball had strolled past the University 
 buildings at the head of Gloucester Street 
 and looked down the mile-long vista, straight 
 as plumb-line could make it, and edged 
 with fine trees, to the Capitol at the far 
 end. Perhaps she was escorted through 
 them by a gallant collegian with "dear Su- 
 key's " correspondent upon the other side 
 of her. She had stared and laughed at the 
 queer octagonal stone construction, already 
 yclept " The Powder Horn," built by Gov- 
 ernor Spotswoode in 17 17 as a magazine 
 for ammunition. Her soft eyes had rounded 
 with delight at sight of the Governor's 
 Palace, the wonder of the tide-water region, 
 standing in the middle of pleasure-grounds 
 between three and four hundred acres in ex- 
 tent, planted with tulip-poplars, maples, lin- 
 dens, and aspens ; had doubtless looked in 
 loyal reverence upon the portraits of king, 
 queen, and princes that hung in the state 
 reception-room. Being ever " verry sensa- 
 ble " and thoughtful, she must have carried 
 back to the seclusion of Epping Forest ma- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 15 
 
 terial for reflection and talk for months to 
 come. Even if this were her first visit to 
 Williamsburg, she could never again be an 
 unlearned rustic to whom news of the gay 
 world was like messages in an unknown 
 tongue from foreign lands. 
 
 Four months thereafter (January 14, 1723) 
 we have something from our heroine's own 
 hand that may or may not denote the growth 
 of intellectual tastes implanted during her 
 sojourn at the seat of polite literature 
 and the birthplace of Virginia journalism. 
 " Brother Joseph," the elder and mentor of 
 the half-sister, grown to manhood, had suc- 
 ceeded his father as her virtual if not legal 
 guardian. He had been sent to England 
 to be educated, a custom much in vogue 
 with those of the early colonists who could 
 afford the advantage for their sons. It goes 
 far toward accounting for the circumstance 
 that the education of the men of the times 
 was so far superior to that of the girls. 
 Joseph Ball, Jr., had fallen in love with 
 London, and never again resided in America 
 except for a few months at a time. These 
 
1 6 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 visits must, however, have been tolerably- 
 frequent, and his supervision of his young 
 sister conscientiously strict, if we are to 
 judge from her deference to him, her con- 
 tinual reference of all matters of weight to 
 his superior judgment, and the masterful 
 tone in which he addressed her. He had 
 married an Englishwoman, and was now a 
 city barrister, resident at Stratford-by-Bow, 
 London. 
 
 " Few of her letters remain. It is prob- 
 able that few were written," says Mary Ball's 
 kinswoman-biographer. " The handwriting 
 is stiff and cramped, the spelling bad, but 
 they are most sensibly and earnestly ex- 
 pressed." 
 
 Queen Anne spelled no better, and INIary 
 Ball's handwriting is as legible as copper- 
 plate, albeit school-girlish and ungraceful. 
 
 She was in her seventeenth year, having 
 celebrated her sixteenth birthday soon after 
 her return from visiting "dear Sukey's " 
 confidante, when she indited a letter upon 
 family matters to her fraternal guardian, in 
 which is the following paragraph : — 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1/ 
 
 " We have not had a schoolmaster in 
 our neighborhood until now in nearly four 
 years. We have now a young minister liv- 
 ing with us who was educated at Oxford, 
 took orders and came over as assistant to 
 Rev. Kemp, at Gloucester. That parish is 
 too poor to keep both, and he teaches 
 school for his board. He teaches Sister 
 Susie and me and Madam Carter's boy and 
 two girls. I am now learning pretty fast. 
 Mamma and Susie and I all send love to 
 you and Mary. This from your loving sister, 
 
 " Mary Ball." 
 
 Bishop Meade speaks of the Kempes of 
 Gloucester as " having at an early period in 
 the history of Virginia been characterized 
 by devotion to the welfare of the Church 
 and religion," but one scans in vain his 
 annals of the parishes in Gloucester for 
 record of the name of " Rev. Kemp." It 
 is, therefore, idle to conjecture as to who 
 was his assistant, the young Oxonian whose 
 name demure Molly omits so cavalierly. 
 The failure to write it in any part of the 
 
I8 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 communication may have been tlie result of 
 indifference bordering upon contempt on 
 the part of one who had already won the 
 title of the " Belle of the Northern Neck," 
 or the lapse may be significant. The care- 
 less note of such an important event as the 
 addition to the country household of a 
 young minister educated at Oxford, and 
 who, she is careful to state, took orders 
 there, savors of studied negligence. She 
 may not have cared to call the jarosperous 
 London barrister's attention to the perilous 
 propinquity of his sister to a curate who 
 was content (or compelled) to teach five pu- 
 pils for his board in Madam Ball's family. 
 Brother Joseph's word was potential with his 
 much-younger sister, possibly with his step- 
 mother, and Mary may have had a shrewd 
 fear that her scholastic career might be ar- 
 rested if his suspicions were excited by de- 
 tails of the personality and qualifications of 
 the tutor. If such an idea crossed her mind 
 she hastened to avert the danger by casually 
 and agreeably remarking that she was now 
 "learning pretty fast." Her naive compla- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 19 
 
 cency is engaging. Evidently her untrained 
 powers had required considerable breaking- 
 in. At sixteen she would be " in society," 
 and to fold her wings into the school-girl 
 chrysalis demanded an effort. 
 
 It is to be deplored that the transcriber 
 of this one of the few letters that bear her 
 signature thought it seemly to put the 
 orthography into shape. A quaint flavor, 
 as of lavender and dried rose-leaves, clings 
 to* the yellow old pages covered with un- 
 practiced characters that have come down 
 to us from the average woman of the last 
 century, and much of the charm is due to 
 the reckless defiance of all rules touching 
 spelling and the use of capitals. 
 
 An ancient gentlewoman, whose wit was 
 the joy of her intimates, once defended this 
 lawlessness, and not unsuccessfully: — 
 
 " Language is only the vehicle of thought," 
 she argued. " In those days people cared 
 little for varnish and plating. The main 
 thing was to have the vehicle hold together 
 and be safe and comfortable." 
 
 Without their old-time perfume, letters a 
 
20 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 hundred years old are shorn and flat. We 
 are glad that Mary Ball's enthusiastic pane- 
 gyrist wrote of her " chekes," and we smile, 
 almost affectionately, over the two r's in the 
 " verry " that qualifies " sensable." It would 
 have been interesting to see how Mary 
 spelled — say such words as " schoolmaster" 
 and "assistant" — after four years' famine 
 (or resjDite) from pedagogues, and while her 
 learning was in a state of satisfactory for- 
 wardness. 
 
 In this epistle we have the only definite 
 allusion to the fourth child of Colonel Ball, 
 — ■" Sister Susie." History is dumb, but for 
 this passing mention, as to this one of Wash- 
 ington's maternal aunts, and tradition tells 
 us nothing beyond what we glean from 
 Mary's prim talk of her fellow-student who 
 joins her and " Mama " in sending love to 
 the far-away kindred. That she learned her 
 lessons from Rev. Kemp's curate would im- 
 ply nearness in age to the youngest of the 
 band, and we hope that Mary had this one 
 full-blooded sister. 
 
 Madam Carter's boy and two girls prob- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 21 
 
 ably represented one fourth of the dozen 
 olive-plants that had grown up about the 
 wide-leaved table of " King " Carter. The 
 family school was an English custom brought 
 over with heirlooms of lace and silver from 
 " Home," and which in some sections of 
 Virginia has outlived the " onward-and-up- 
 ward " rush of free and popular school-edu- 
 cation. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The chronicler to whom the MSS. found 
 in the dismantled mansion of the York 
 River were consigned supplies us with an- 
 other and important event in Mary Ball's 
 sirlhood. A frao-ment of a tattered, faded 
 letter, signed " Lizzy Burwell," retains part 
 of the address to " Miss Nelly Car'' — (un- 
 doubtedly " Carter "), and of the heading 
 and date, — " tank " (why not Piaukatank, 
 the next parish to Lancaster, or perhaps 
 Chotank, afterward the seat of a Lawrence 
 Washington?) — "■ May ye \^th 1728." The 
 paper crumbled at the reader's touch ; the 
 yellow-brown blotches that bespeak the 
 thumbing of Time ran together all over 
 the sheet. But three short lines were legi- 
 ble even to eyes skilled in deciphering an- 
 cient records : — 
 
 ..." understand Molly Ball is going 
 home with her Brother, a Lawyer, who lives 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 23 
 
 in England. Her Mother is Dead three 
 months ago, and her Sister " — 
 
 Ah, her sister! what of "Sister Susie"? 
 Does the "and "awlcvvardly include Molly's 
 school-fellow in the death-roll with the 
 mother? It might well read, "and her 
 Sister died last year, or last month, or last 
 week." If she went on to say, " her Sister 
 was married the other day," some Lancas- 
 ter genealogist would have added to the list 
 of " William and Joseph Ball ; William's 
 daughter Hannah, who married Daniel Fox ; 
 his eight sons ; Colonel Burgess Hall, only 
 son of Jeduthun the third, youngest son of 
 James, the third son of said William ; Jo- 
 seph Ball, Jr., who had no male issue, but 
 whose nephew was General George Wash- 
 ington, son of his sister Mary, youngest 
 daughter pf Colonel Joseph Ball, of Lan- 
 caster ; David Ball, seventh son of Captain 
 William Ball, born in 1686," — and an in- 
 terminable line of other worthies, who were 
 begotten, who lived, and who died on the 
 Northern Neck, — some local antiquarian 
 would, I say, have bracketed with these 
 
24 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 Susan Ball, who married this or that planter, 
 or maybe an imported clergyman. 
 
 It seems altogether likely that when the 
 orphaned Mary left Epping Forest forever 
 to become a part of Brother Joseph's family, 
 she left none nearer in blood than he to be 
 regretted in her exile. It was a long fare- 
 well to the girlish days that were slipping 
 away from her, according to the prejudice 
 of that era. She was within a few months 
 of two-and-twenty, and still Molly Ball, 
 spinster. Southern girls went off in looks 
 earlier then than in our favored days, and 
 as a rule went off the single list between 
 sixteen and twenty. Gray shadows had be- 
 gun to chase the blue out of the eyes of her 
 who had borne modestly the sobriquets of 
 the " Belle of the Northern Neck," and the 
 " Rose of Epping Forest ; " the flaxen curls 
 were darkening" into chestnut, and in tide- 
 water Virginia May blossoms are short- 
 lived. 
 
 There is comfort in the knowledge that 
 Brother Joseph was with her to superintend 
 the breaking up of the home, and to sustain 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 25 
 
 his sister's courage under all that the phrase 
 implies. Bishop Meade asserts, and with 
 authority, the identity of Mary Ball's brother 
 with Mr. Joseph Ball, of Lancaster, of whose 
 activity in promoting good works he cites 
 an instance. An entry made in the records 
 of Lancaster County in 1729 sets forth: — 
 
 " A proposition of Joseph Ball, Gentle- 
 man, in behalf of himself and the rest of 
 the inhabitants of Virginia, directed to the 
 Honourable the General Assembly concern- 
 ing the instructing a certain number of 
 young gentlemen, Virginians born, in the 
 study of divinity, at the county's charge, 
 was this day presented in court by the said 
 Joseph Ball, and on his prayer, ordered to 
 be certified to the General Assembly." 
 
 How the stout churchman who thus sig- 
 nified his own willingness to be taxed that 
 the ranks of the native clergy might be 
 filled could be an " inhabitant of Virginia," 
 and at the same time " a Lawyer who lives 
 in England," can only be explained by as- 
 suming that he retained his colonial estates 
 and worked the principle of absenteeism in 
 
26 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 both directions. A residence of months — 
 perhaps of over a year — in Lancaster at the 
 time of his mother's death may have suf- 
 ficed to the legal conscience of the land- 
 holder to justify the claim of citizenship. 
 If he were the " Gentleman " referred to in 
 the record, and whose only daughter Fanny 
 married Raleigh Downman in 1750, Mary 
 Ball did not sail for England until a year 
 after Lizzie Burwell wrote of the rumor 
 that the common acquaintance of herself 
 and Nelly Carter was going home with her 
 brother. The venerable annalist of the 
 church he loved and sewed so well sets no 
 bounds about the declaration, — " This Jo- 
 seph Ball was the uncle of George Wash- 
 ington." 
 
 In the parish register of the village of 
 Cookham, Berkshire, England, are the names 
 of numerous Washingtons and several Balls. 
 A local legend, rehearsed by Benson J. Los- 
 sing, designates a Cookham villa as that 
 occupied by Mary Ball after her marriage. 
 As Joseph Ball was living at " Stratford-by- 
 Bow Nigh London " in 1723, and also in 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 2/ 
 
 1760, and the presumption is that his sister 
 carried out her expressed design of living 
 with him, it is hardly likely that she met at 
 Cookham, under the circumstances detailed 
 by another tradition, the man whose wife 
 she was to become. 
 
 This story runs that the fair American 
 was residing in the Berkshire village with 
 relatives who had given her a home in her 
 orphanhood when a gentleman's traveling 
 chariot was upset in front of the house, and 
 he was brought in, seriously injured. He 
 proved to be Miss Ball's countryman, Mr. 
 Augustine Washington, and she bore a dis- 
 tinguished part in nursing him. 
 
 " In Virginia," surmises Lossing, " since 
 the Washingtons and Balls lived in adjoin- 
 ing counties, they were doubtless personally 
 acquainted with one another." 
 
 If this were true, Mary Ball recognized 
 the sufferer as one who had other claims 
 upon her sympathies besides those of a 
 common nationality. 
 
 As Wessyngtons, Weshingtons, Wassing- 
 tons, and Washingtons, his ancestors had 
 
28 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 played a conspicuous part in English his- 
 tory since the Conquest. One of them — a 
 baronet — had married a half-sister of George 
 Villiers, Duke of Buckingham ; another had 
 served under Prince Rupert at Worcester, 
 So stubborn was their loyalty to the Stuarts 
 that two younger brothers of Sir William 
 Washington, Buckingham's brother-in-law, 
 sailed for America during the Protectorate, 
 preferring expatriation and the hardships 
 of colonial life to ease and plenty under 
 regicide rule. 
 
 These were John and Laurence Wash- 
 ington, names repeated so often in the 
 family genealogy that strict attention to 
 chronology is necessary if we would avoid 
 confusion of successive generations. Little 
 is known of them prior to the embarkation. 
 John, the elder and wealthier of the pair, 
 was a Yorkshire gentleman living cjuietly 
 at Cave Castle, a manorial seat of the Wash- 
 ingtons. His reputation was that of an 
 energetic man with decided military taste, 
 if not genius. The more scholarly Lau- 
 rence had taken an Oxford degree, and was 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 29 
 
 married to the daughter of Sir Hugh Wal- 
 lace. One year after his marriage in 1655, 
 the brothers left their native land in com- 
 pany, moved by some fresh impulse of dis- 
 gust for the Cromwellian administration, 
 or provoked by what they construed into 
 growth of tyranny. The popular belief is 
 that they settled upon adjoining estates in 
 Westmoreland, which is separated by Rich- 
 mond County from Lancaster. Having 
 brought wealth with them, they were soon 
 eminent among the successful men of the 
 region. 
 
 If Laurence's lands originally joined those 
 of his brother he soon removed to Rappa- 
 hannock County, where his will was re- 
 corded in 1675. John's was made, as by 
 concert, in the same year, and both were 
 admitted to probate in January, 1677, one 
 upon the 6th, the other upon the loth of 
 the month, as if in their deaths they had 
 not been long divided. These instruments 
 breathe the spirit of exalted piety character- 
 istic of the earlier American branches of 
 the Washington family. No Roundhead 
 
30 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 exhorter could have enunciated sentiments 
 more evansrelical than are contained in the 
 preamble to the last will and testament of 
 George Washington's great-grandfather : — 
 " Being heartily sorry from the bottom of 
 my heart for my sins past, most humbly de- 
 siring forgiveness of the same from the Al- 
 
 o o 
 
 mighty God, my Saviour and Redeemer, in 
 whom and by the merits of Jesus Christ I 
 trust and believe assuredly to be saved, and 
 to have full remission and forgiveness of all 
 my sins, and that my soul with my body at 
 the oreneral resurrection shall rise ao-ain 
 with joy " — is the language of triumphant 
 faith. He " hopes," moreover, in good Cal- 
 vinistic phrase, " through the merits of 
 Jesus Christ's death and passion to possess 
 and inherit the kingdom of heaven prepared 
 for His elect and chosen." 
 
 His fortune, which " it has pleased God 
 to give him far above his deserts," was 
 large, and was divided between his wife and 
 three children, John, Laurence, and Anne. 
 Much of it was in the great staple of the 
 region, tobacco. Four thousand weight 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 3 1 
 
 were devised to the rector of the church, in 
 which he orders that a tablet containing the 
 Ten Commandments shall be set up as his 
 memorial stone. One thousand pounds ster- 
 ling were left to his wife's brother, Thomas 
 Pope, and the same sum and four thousand 
 weight of tobacco to a sister who was on 
 the eve of emigrating to America. Prop- 
 erty in England is included among the be- 
 quests. His wife, Anne Pope, and his 
 brother Laurence were his executors. He 
 had iived in the land of his adoption eigh- 
 • teen years when an invasion of the Seneca 
 Indians was made upon the colony, and 
 John Washington was put in command of 
 the forces hastily collected to oppose the 
 savages. He was successful, and received 
 a colonel's commission in recognition of 
 the signal service rendered the menaced 
 provinces. The parish in which he lived 
 was named for him, and at the time of his 
 death he was commander-in-chief of the 
 Northern Neck. 
 
 The parallel between his character, his 
 achievements, — even the honors paid him 
 
32 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 and the titles conferred, — and those of his 
 great descendant is too striking to be ig- 
 nored by the thoughtful student of history. 
 
 His son Laurence married Mildred, daugh- 
 ter of Colonel Augustine Warner, a prom- 
 inent freeholder of Gloucester. They had 
 two sons, — -John, named for his paternal, 
 and Augustine for his maternal grandfather. 
 
 This rapid review of the history of the 
 three generations immediately preceding 
 the birth of our first President is inter- 
 esting in significance to the believers in he- 
 reditary transmission of moral and mental 
 traits. If, as Emerson has it, " Man is 
 physically, as well as metaphysically, a thing 
 of shred and patches, borrowed unequally 
 from good and bad ancestors," it will be 
 seen that there was abundance of superfine 
 material for the outfit of the coming man of 
 the eighteenth century, and that the cardi- 
 nal virtues of patriotism, courage, temper- 
 ance, thrift, justice to man and faith in God, 
 which were constituents of the Washington's 
 greatness, were the more stanch for a cen- 
 tury's seasoning by the time they fell to him. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Augustine, the second son of Laurence 
 Washington and Mildred Warner his wife, 
 was born in Westmoreland County, Vir- 
 ginia, in 1694, probably upon the planta- 
 tion to which he afterward succeeded as 
 proprietor. It is washed upon one side 
 by Bridge's Creek, and upon the other by 
 Pope's Creek, small rivers that run into the 
 Potomac. The homestead stood not far 
 from their junction with the greater stream. 
 The lesser watercourses form two sides of 
 a truncated triangle, within which lay the 
 fertile patrimonial acres. The early life of 
 Laurence Washington's sons was doubtless 
 that of the well-born, well-endowed colonial 
 youths of the period. They were trained 
 in military exercises, hunted deer, foxes, wild 
 turkeys and ducks, danced well, and had 
 such theoretical knowledge of husbandry 
 as qualified them to manage the overseers 
 who would manage their plantations. 
 
34 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 Augustine must have come into posses- 
 sion of his property in his nonage, for he 
 married at twenty-one Jane, the daughter 
 of Caleb Butler, Esq., whose lands skirted 
 Bridge's Creek. The young couple lived 
 together for thirteen years, during which 
 time three sons, and the one daughter that 
 almost seems to have been the rule in the 
 Washington family, were born to them. 
 The baby-girl was christened by the mo- 
 ther's name, but did' not outlive early in- 
 fancy. In November, 1728, the mother 
 went to join her in the family vault near 
 Bridge's Creek. At the age of thirty-four 
 the father was a widower with the care of 
 two sons of tender age upon him. 
 
 His second wife was wont to describe 
 him as a stately and handsome gentleman, 
 and contemporary authorities agree that 
 his son George inherited his superb phy- 
 sique from this one of his parents. He 
 was, a descendant tells us, "a noble-look- 
 ing man of distinguished bearing, with fair, 
 florid complexion, brown hair and fine gray 
 eyes," and in the prime of early maturity 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 35 
 
 when thrown — whether literally or figura- 
 tively matters not — into the society of his 
 whilome compatriote, Mary Ball. He had 
 gone to England, it is said, to dispose of 
 certain property to which he was heir by 
 the terms of his grandfather's will. In 
 1853 there was standing in Cookham, Eng- 
 land, a large walnut tree, which, it was al- 
 leged, was set out as a sapling by Augus- 
 tine Washington " while a-waiting to find a 
 purchaser for his property." 
 
 It is singular enough, considering the 
 historical and social consequence of the 
 parties concerned, that conjecture and oral 
 tradition, in pretty equal proportions, make 
 up the sum of what is generally accepted 
 as the true relation of the circumstances 
 attending the courtship and wedlock of 
 Washington's father and mother. The 
 probabilities are all in favor of the state- 
 ment that they met and made (or renewed) 
 in England the acquaintanceship that ended 
 so auspiciously. Mary Ball was to accom- 
 pany her brother to the neighborhood of 
 London in 1728-29. Augustine Washing- 
 
36 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 ton was looking after his English estates in 
 1729. What more natural than that the 
 rest should follow ? 
 
 While President, George Washington 
 supplied by request to an English heraldry 
 office a genealogical table of the American 
 branch of his family. He wrote there: — 
 
 " Jane, wife of Augustine, died November 
 24, 1728, and was buried in the family vault 
 at Bridge's Creek. Augustine then married 
 Mary Ball, March 6, 1730." 
 
 In the same table is set down : " George, 
 eldest son of Augustine by the second mar- 
 riage, was born in Westrnoreland County T 
 
 The section I have italicized should — or 
 so an unprejudiced person might suppose 
 — settle definitively the question as to 
 George Washington's nationality. Yet one 
 historian speaks of it as " a mooted point." 
 Lossing, after quoting from the genealog- 
 ical table, subjoins, " There is no known 
 official record that can solve the question," 
 and pamphlets have been written to prove 
 that the first chief magistrate of the country 
 severed from the crown by his efforts was 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 37 
 
 born in England. It cannot be overlooked 
 that, while the distinguished son is silent as 
 to the place of the marriage, neither hint- 
 ing that the ceremony was performed in 
 England, nor asserting that it took place in 
 America, he is explicit as to his birthplace, 
 even naming the county. If he were not 
 prime authority upon this point, especially 
 when he sets his hand to a formal and im- 
 portant record, to what " official record " 
 can we turn ? How clear was his under- 
 standing of date and circumstances was 
 further displayed in an entry made in his 
 mother's Bible in his own handwriting 
 when he was a lad of seventeen, or there- 
 abouts. At sixteen he was one of Lord 
 Fairfax's surveyors, and earning his own 
 living among men double his age. It 
 is altogether unlikely that he transcribed 
 idly or ignorantly what is still to be read in 
 round, careful characters in the volume 
 faithfully preserved in the family : — 
 
 " George Washington, Son to Augustine 
 and Mary his wife, was born ye nth Day 
 of February 173- about 10 in the morn- 
 
38 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 ing and was baptized the 3th of April fol- 
 lowing, Mr. Beverley Whiting & Capt 
 Christopher Brooks, Godfathers, & Mrs. Mil- 
 dred Gregory, Godmother." 
 
 It ought to be needless to call attention 
 to the extreme improbability that one so 
 well instructed with regard to the very hour 
 of the birth, the time of baptism, and the 
 names of the sponsors, should err as to the 
 more momentous question, On which side 
 of the Atlantic did he first see the light ? 
 The marvel is that the matter should ever 
 have been debated. 
 
 To recapitulate : conflicting legends are 
 most easily reconciled by acceptance of 
 Lossing's hypothesis that the contracting 
 parties were married in England, probably 
 from the house of Mary Ball's only surviv- 
 ing near kinsman, and, sailing from Eng- 
 land within the year, were settled in the 
 Westmoreland homestead between Bridge's 
 and Pope's creeks before their first child 
 was born. Unfortunately, the marriage and 
 baptismal registers of the parish church at 
 Cookham were destroyed before 1853, at 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 39 
 
 which time investigation of this matter was 
 made, only the burial register having been 
 saved. 
 
 Mrs. Ella Bassett Washington, a lineal 
 descendant of " Betty " Lewis, Washing- 
 ton's only sister, and whose husband was a 
 grandnephew of the great chieftain, echoes 
 the general disappointment of biographical 
 students when she remarks that, " Some- 
 thing more is due to the father of Washing- 
 ton than the mere mention of his personal 
 appearance." Her reference to " careful re- 
 views of Washington's ancestry, given in 
 Sparks's and Irving's histories, tracing the 
 family for six centuries in England," hardly 
 contents those to whom every particular 
 relating to the antecedents of our country's 
 deliverer is fraught with intense interest. 
 Still we cannot but admire the grace of the 
 evasion with which Augustine Washing- 
 ton's very great-indeed-granddaughter would 
 parry useless questionings : — 
 
 " Returning to Mary Ball's marriage and 
 the query, ' Who was her husband ? ' no- 
 thing could be more emphatic than his own 
 
40 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 solemn assertion made in the first sentence 
 of his last will, ' I, Augustine Washington, 
 of the County of King George, Gentle- 
 
 5 I) 
 
 man. 
 
 The formula in this individual instance 
 conveys all we would have it express — as 
 far as it goes, but it goes a very little way. 
 Every planter on the Northern Neck, or, for 
 that matter, east of the Blue Ridge, used 
 the words in cognate circumstances, and 
 the probability is that they slipped from the 
 notary's pen of their own weight. Com- 
 mon sense descries a stronger proof that he 
 was the worthy sire of his magnificent son 
 in the facts that John Washington was his 
 grandfather, and that Mary Ball chose him 
 as her husband. " Good blood does not 
 lie," and the highest praise a man can re- 
 ceive is the love and trust a noble woman 
 reposes in him when she lays her hand in 
 his for the rest of their united lives. Our 
 favorable judgment of the successful planter 
 is based upon association and upon pre- 
 sumptive evidence rather than upon direct 
 information. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 41 
 
 Beyond the skeleton history which the 
 best of biographers have only sufficed to 
 indicate, not to sketch, there is little to tell 
 where we would fain relate at length. How 
 little is betrayed by the pertinacity with 
 which relic-mad posterity reverts (especially 
 upon the 2 2d of February, N. S.) to the 
 mouldy vestige of what was, when new and 
 whole, absurdly insufficient drapery for the 
 frame of a moral lesson. That man or 
 woman should not be allowed to go at large 
 who dares, in the age that now is and to 
 come, to tell in cold-blooded seriousness the 
 story of the hatchet and the cherry-tree. 
 The memory of father and of son is best 
 honored by ignoring in toto the petty trans- 
 action in lumber that has made both ridicu- 
 lous, and turned the stomachs of thousands 
 of embryo citizens of our republic against 
 truth-telling. 
 
 Descriptions of the home to which the 
 well-to-do widower brought the bride who 
 was ten years his junior are happily suffi- 
 ciently full to aid us in arranging the set- 
 ting for our heroine's new " cast." The 
 
42 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 blunted point of the triangle formed by the 
 creeks that furnished fat low-grounds on 
 two sides of Augustine Washington's plan- 
 tation of Wakefield rested upon the Poto- 
 mac, and was a mile in width. Wakefield 
 comprised a thousand acres of as fine wood 
 and bottom lands as were to be found in a 
 county " that by reason of the worth, tal- 
 ents, and patriotism that adorned it was 
 called ' the Athens of Virginia.' " The 
 house faced the Potomac, the lawn sloping 
 to the bank between three and four hun- 
 dred yards distant from the " porch," run- 
 ninof from corner to corner of the dwelling:. 
 There were four rooms of fair size upon 
 the first floor, the largest in a one-story ex- 
 tension at the back, being " the chamber." 
 The hip-roof above the main building was 
 pierced by dormer-windows that lighted a 
 large attic. At each end of the house was 
 a chimney built upon the outside of the 
 frame dwelling, and of dimensions that 
 made the latter seem disproportionately 
 small. Each cavernous fireplace would 
 hold a half cord of wood, and the leaping 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 43 
 
 blaze had all seasons for its own in a region 
 where river fogs at evening and morning 
 were vehicles of the dreaded " ao;ue and 
 fever." About the fireplace in the parlor 
 were the blue Dutch tiles much affected in 
 the decorative architecture of the time. 
 What a priceless scrap of bric-a-brac to a 
 modern collector would be one of those 
 same enameled squares, bedight with a rep- 
 resentation of Abrahams Offering, or Moses 
 Breaking the Tables of the Law, the tents 
 of Israel, like a row of sharp haystacks, 
 almost touching his knees, although osten- 
 sibly dwarfed in perspective until the whole 
 camp was smaller than the tablets he hurled 
 to earth ! — the tiles that once reflected 
 rosily the thoughtful face of the young wife, 
 and gave distorted images of the blonde 
 giant, her nominal lord and master ; that, 
 by and by, missed the musing face and 
 slighter figure for a time, and then showed 
 a double picture, ■ — ■ a visage paler and 
 sweeter than of old, bent over the baby that 
 was, from the beginning, the image of his 
 mother. In the one-storied chamber the 
 
44 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 Moses of the New World was born, and the 
 mother nursed the goodly child upon her 
 bosom in gladness and pride of heart until 
 the birth of the little Betty in June, 1733. 
 Between the stepmother and the two 
 sturdy sons of Mr. Washington's first mar- 
 riage there existed cordial frendliness from 
 the hour of her installation as mistress of 
 the modest mansion. An elderly kins- 
 woman had cared for them during their 
 fathers protracted absence, but with the 
 recollection of their own mother, hardly two 
 years dead, in their memories, it spoke well 
 for the little fellows, as for the new mother, 
 that they yielded her respectful duty. Her 
 early life had made every detail of country 
 housekeeping familiar to her. The retinue 
 of servants was perhaps lai^ger than that at 
 Epping Forest had been, and the appoint- 
 ments of the house may have included rel- 
 ics of such grand living as had befitted 
 Cave Castle, and went well with the stories, 
 told over the logs on winter nights, of 
 court-visits and royal preferment. Apostles 
 of Democracy, though the Washingtons 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 45 
 
 called themselves, they were ingrain aristo- 
 crats, — the greatest of them not excepted. 
 It was impossible for them then, as now, to 
 forget the august procession of warriors 
 and scholars who had borne high in peace 
 and in war the emblem of the closed visor, 
 the ducal coronet capped by a soaring ra 
 ven, and the motto, pregnant with prophecy, 
 — " Excitus acta probata 
 
 The one tragical incident in this chapter 
 of Mary Washington's wedded life — a tale 
 of tranquil happiness, Arcadian in simpli- 
 city and beauty — was the violent death of 
 a girl visitor, an intimate friend of the mis- 
 tress of the manor. The two women were 
 sitting at supper together while a thunder- 
 storm was raginor, thouarhtless of fear or 
 danger, when a flash of lightning struck 
 the young girl, melting the knife and fork 
 in her hand, and killing her instantly. The 
 nervous shock left ineffaceable traces upon 
 the strong mind of Mrs. Washington. Cour- 
 ageous at all other times, she grew pale 
 and sick at the approach of a thunder-storm, 
 and at the first roll and gleam of the deadly 
 
46 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 elements sought her own room or sat with 
 closed eyes and folded hands, absorbed in 
 silent prayer while it lasted. The electrical 
 play restored in all its vividness the scene 
 photographed by that scathing " flash light " 
 upon brain and heart. 
 
 Mrs. Ella Bassett Washington recounts 
 that, " On one occasion the daughter, miss- 
 ing her mother, and knowing how she suf- 
 fered, found her kneeling by the bed with 
 her face buried in the pillows, praying. 
 Upon rising, she said, ' I have been striv- 
 ing for years against this weakness, for you 
 know, Betty, my trust is in God ; but 
 sometimes my fears are stronger than my 
 faith.' " 
 
 The Wakefield library was small, a straw 
 of circumstantial evidence in support of the 
 belief that the tastes of the handsome, ath- 
 letic master were not intellectual. It was 
 high noon of the Augustan age of English 
 literature, and the Old Dominion, more 
 than any other colony, was a faithful reflec- 
 tion of what went on in the mother-country. 
 Mr. Cooke's picture of plantation life in the 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 4/ 
 
 eighteenth century, which he calls " The 
 Golden Age of Virginia," is graphic and 
 beautiful : — 
 
 " Care seemed to keep away from it and 
 stand out of its sunshine. The planter in 
 his manor-house, surrounded by his family 
 and retainers, was a feudal patriarch, mildly 
 ruling everybody. He drank wholesome 
 wine, sherry or canary, of his own importa- 
 tion ; entertained every one ; held great fes- 
 tivities at Christmas, with huge log-fires in 
 the great fireplaces around which the family 
 clan gathered ; and everybody, high and low, 
 seemed to be happy. It was the life of 
 the family, "not of the great world, and pro- 
 duced that intense attachment for the soil 
 which had become proverbial ; which made 
 a Virginian once say, ' If I had to leave 
 Virginia, I would not know where to go.' 
 . . . Such luxuries as were desired, books, 
 wines, silks, and laces, were brought from 
 London to the planter's wharf in exchange 
 for his tobacco ; and he was content to pay 
 well for all, if he could thereby escape liv- 
 ing in towns." 
 
48 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 The precedence given, in the list of luxu- 
 ries, to books is not accidental. William Eve- 
 lyn Byrd's principality of Westover was, as 
 the crow flies, less than seventy miles from 
 Wakefield, and the stately suzerain's pro- 
 gresses included visits to the Rappahannock 
 plantations and the cultivation of social re- 
 lations with his brother magnates. The 
 Byrd library was the finest in America, the 
 owner the most accomplished man on this 
 side of the sea, and there were few on the 
 other side whose learning exceeded his. 
 The Virginia planters and their families 
 were usually omnivorous readers, and every 
 country-house held a choice collection of 
 classics to which every year brought ad- 
 ditions. The masters of English essay and 
 song were as well known in the new as in 
 the old country ; the portraits hung against 
 whitewashed and wainscoted walls were 
 by Hudson and Kneller and Vandyke ; 
 gentlemen and gentlewomen read together, 
 with proper emphasis and discretion, the 
 Beggars Opera, and Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, and Paradise Lost, in country-houses 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 49 
 
 in rainy weatlier, and got up masquerades 
 and private theatricals at Christmas, and 
 made polite talk of " Shakespeare and the 
 musical glasses " as airily as did the belles 
 and gallants of court circles in the mother- 
 land they never forgot. 
 
 All this being true, the fact that the 
 bookshelves in the room vi^ith the Dutch- 
 tiled chimney-piece held few except devo- 
 tional works, while gratifying proof that the 
 religious faith of the fathers had descended 
 to the third and fourth generations, implies 
 that the robust intellect of the wife was not 
 likely to be lured to higher flights by the 
 husband's example. The thrifty planter 
 had set a thrifty wife and mistress over the 
 Westmoreland home. Whatever may be 
 said of him, it is certain that she left upon 
 everything she handled the stamp of a vig- 
 orous personality. One biographer relates, 
 casually, and not consciously in evidence of 
 this, that one of the volumes in the Wake- 
 field library — Sir Matthew Hales Con- 
 templations, Moral and Divine — had be- 
 longed to her predecessor Jane, and bore 
 
so THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 upon the fly-leaf the signature of the first 
 wife. Directly beneath this, the second put 
 in her reversionary claim in full by inscrib- 
 ing " and Mary Washington " in characters 
 that have a dogged assertiveness of their 
 own to the imagination of the amused 
 reader. Jane, nee Butler, had had her day 
 and opportunity. She had done with earthly 
 belongings and helps. Mary wanted all the 
 room she could get for growth and action. 
 
 This volume, worn by many readings 
 and defaced ■ — or embellished — by numer- 
 ous marginal pencilings, was treasured by 
 George Washington as long as he lived. 
 One chapter, which we may fancy to our- 
 selves the mother reading aloud to her sons 
 on the many Sundays when there was no 
 service in the parish church, is entitled — 
 Of the Vanity and Vexation which ariscth 
 from Worldly Hope and Expectation. It 
 was a lesson she had learned by heart be- 
 fore she sat down in Jane Washington's 
 place, or wrote her name beneath that 
 traced by the fingers now mouldering in 
 the vault on Bridge's Creek. 
 
 -'Jd^ 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON SI 
 
 We note with respect, not unmixed with 
 awe, that the essay The Great Audit, — - 
 the solemn searching of heart and summing 
 up of and for himself of England's great 
 and good chief-justice, — was used by the 
 mother as a lesson to be committed to 
 memory by her children. What pious pre- 
 science dictated for her eldest boy a study 
 that closes with these words ? — 
 
 " When Thy honor, or the good of my 
 country was concerned, I then thought it 
 was a seasonable time to lay out my repu- 
 tation for the advantage of either, and to 
 act with it, and by it, and upon it, to the 
 highest, in the use of all lawful means. 
 And upon such an occasion, the counsel of 
 Mordecai to Esther was my encourage- 
 ment: ' Who knoweth whether God hath not 
 given thee this reputation and esteem for 
 such a time as this ? ' " 
 
 Baby Betty was but sixteen months old 
 when, in November, 1734, a second son 
 (Samuel) was added to the household 
 group. Upon a windy April day in the 
 following year, sparks were carried from a 
 
52 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 burning brush-heap in the garden to the 
 tinder-hke shingles of the roof, which was 
 in flames before the mishap was discovered. 
 Mr. Washington was absent, and when 
 satisfied that the efforts made by the negro 
 men to save the building would be useless, 
 the mistress set the example to the women 
 of bringing out the furniture, clothing, and 
 other articles of value and carrying them to 
 a place of safety. This done, without wast- 
 ing time in lamentation over the loss of 
 the first home of her married life, she called 
 all hands to assist in making up beds and 
 getting supper ready in the kitchen, — a 
 mere cabin that had not been seized upon 
 by the flames. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Instead of rebuilding upon the site of 
 the burnt homestead, Augustine Wash- 
 ington removed his family and household 
 effects to a plantation he owned in Stafford 
 County. It was upon the Rappahannock 
 River, and opposite the town of Fredericks- 
 burg. The situation was commanding, and 
 the garden and orchard were in better cul- 
 tivation than those they had left. The 
 house was, like that at Wakefield, broad 
 and low, with the same number of rooms 
 upon the ground floor, one of them in the 
 shed-like extension at the back, and the 
 spacious attic was over the main building. 
 Even the great chimneys were upon the 
 same plan and of like proportions with 
 those marking the spot where the older 
 house had stood. The place was called by 
 the family " Pine Grove," from a noble 
 bodv of these trees near it, but was better 
 
54 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 known in the surrounding country as " Ferry- 
 Farm." There was then no bridge over 
 the Rappahannock, and communication was 
 had with the town by the neighboring 
 ferry. 
 
 The Washingtons' church connection was 
 with Overwharton Parish. In Bishop 
 Meade's chapter upon this we have an in- 
 teresting letter from Hon. Peter V. Daniel, 
 then Judge of the Supreme Court, written 
 in 1855, which contains the only printed 
 memorandum I have been able to find of 
 " Hannah Ball, half-sister of Mary Ball, the 
 mother of General George Washington." 
 According to the distinguished jurist, who 
 assuredly should have known whereof he 
 wrote, she married his great-grandfather 
 Rowleigh {sic) Travers, " one of the most 
 extensive landed proprietors in that part of 
 the country, and from them proceeded a 
 long line of descendants." Judge Daniel re- 
 marks in conclusion, of Overwharton Parish 
 which covered the narrow county of Staf- 
 ford, that " the space of some eight or ten 
 miles square comprised none but substan- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 55 
 
 tial people, some of them deemed wealthy 
 in their day, several of them persons of 
 education, polish, and refinement." 
 
 Following the interesting clue thus of- 
 fered, I have been so fortunate as to obtain 
 from a living representative of the Daniel 
 family a few additional and charmingly sug- 
 gestive particulars relative to Mrs. Wash- 
 ington's near kinswoman. 
 
 " Hannah Ball was a half-sister of Mary 
 Washington, and married Raleigh Travers 
 (said to have been of the same blood as Sir 
 Walter Raleigh). The daughter of Han- 
 nah (Ball) Travers married Peter Daniel. 
 Their daughter, Hannah Daniel, it is said, 
 once danced with General Washington, 
 who gallantly expressed his pleasure at 
 finding that he had such a pretty cousin." 
 
 The knowledge that Mrs. Washington in 
 her new abode was in the same parish with 
 her half-sister, and of Mrs. Travers's stand- 
 ins as wife of the American founder of a 
 family distinguished in the later history of 
 Virginia for breeding, learning, and elo- 
 quence, casts a pleasing light upon the mo- 
 
56 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 tives that may have caused the removal of 
 Augustine Washington to Stafford. Much 
 happiness must have come to his wife 
 through this step. She dwelt once more 
 among her own people. Her attachments 
 were powerful, as is often the case with 
 natures that are reckoned undemonstrative 
 by casual acquaintances. The rupture, one 
 after another, of the ties that bound her to 
 the home of her childhood knit but the 
 more firmly the few that remained. 
 
 The newer, sweeter bonds of mother- 
 hood were increased by the birth of John 
 Augustine Washington, in January, 1736; 
 and of Charles, in May, 1738. Close upon 
 his heels, in 1739, came a second baby- 
 daughter, a joyful apparition after the suc- 
 cessive advents of three boys. Mildred, 
 named for the aunt who had stood sponsor 
 for George, died when about fourteen 
 months old, and Betty, now a winsome 
 maid of seven, remained thenceforward the 
 only daughter. 
 
 Before the ache in the mother's heart 
 was dulled by time, the crowning grief of 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 57 
 
 her life fell upon her. Augustine Wash- 
 ington, like many other gentlemen of his 
 day and habits, had suffered vicariously for 
 the high living of his ancestors in repeated 
 attacks of rheumatic gout. One is re- 
 minded that disregard of weather which 
 prudent men would no.t brave is also, some- 
 times, hereditary, in reading that he con- 
 tracted his last illness, as his more illustri- 
 ous son fifty-six years afterward tempted 
 his, by riding over his plantation for sev- 
 eral hours in a cold rain-storm. In both 
 cases, Nature's retribution was quick and 
 awful. During the night succeeding his 
 exposure, Mr. Washington was racked by 
 excruciating pains, and with morning in- 
 flammation set in. In a week he died. 
 
 "Augustine Washington Departed this life 
 ye 1 2th day of April, 1743, aged 49 years," 
 is the last record upon the page that gives 
 in brief the history of the joint life bounded 
 by the wedding and the death day. 
 
 They took h"im back to Westmoreland 
 County, and laid him in the vault upon 
 Bridge's Creek. 
 
58 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 It is in keeping with the apathy that pre- 
 vails throughout the Southern, and in some 
 of the Middle States, with respect to the 
 last resting-places of those whom family 
 and friends delighted to honor while living, 
 that the Washington vault should to-day be 
 as neglected and almost as undistinguishable 
 from the surrounding fields as is the birth- 
 place of George Washington. Forty years 
 ago it was described as " in an open field, 
 and uninclosed. A small space around it 
 is covered with grass, briers, shrubs, and a 
 few small trees. Itself can only be dis- 
 tinguished by the top of the brick arch 
 which rises a little above the surface. The 
 cavity underneath has been very properly 
 filled up with earth to prevent the bones of 
 the dead from being taken away by visitors 
 who had thus begun to pillage it." 
 
 In reading this we must not forget that 
 the family vault was reckoned a safe and a 
 sacred repository for the precious dust com- 
 mitted to it when Mary Washington buried 
 her dead out of her sight and, returning to 
 the house thus suddenly bereft of the head. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 59 
 
 gathered the fatherless children about her, 
 and took up with both hands life as God 
 had made it for her. She was thirty-seven 
 years of age. Those who maintain that the 
 circumstances of her widowhood moulded 
 her character and habits, developing latent 
 germs of intelligence and judgment, leave 
 the matter of age out of sight. She was 
 too mature to be put to school, even by 
 affliction. What she was as the guardian 
 of her husband's children and comptroller 
 of his estates she had been before she was 
 left alone. Association with him may have 
 been a goodly staff; it was never a crutch. 
 According to the reports of various contem- 
 poraries, she sustained her bereavement 
 with Christian fortitude. One writer re- 
 cords that " she submitted to the Divine 
 Will with the strength of a philosopher and 
 the trustfulness of a Christian. . . . She 
 seemed alike indifferent to the smitings of 
 affliction and the tenderness of human sym- 
 pathy. Above all the tumult of emotion 
 she heard the commands of Duty, and 
 obeyed them." 
 
6o THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 Others recount likewise the story that 
 with the assumption of her weeds, features 
 and bearing took on gravity and decision 
 that never left them. There were five of 
 her own children, — all under twelve years 
 of age, whose guardian she was made by 
 the terms of her husband's will. One 
 clause of this instrument provokes us to a 
 smile, chased away by a thoughtful frown : — 
 
 " It is my will that my said four sons' 
 estates may be left in my wife's hand until 
 they respectively attain the age of Twenty 
 One years, in case my said wife continues so 
 lono; tmniarriedr 
 
 Frankly, we wish the thrifty planter who 
 understood so well how to make and to 
 keep money, and who had presumably 
 trained the wife so much his junior in like 
 wisdom, had left out this proviso. Should 
 she, his discreet relict, at thirty-seven, imi- 
 tate the example he, when three years 
 younger than that, had set her, he should 
 have been sure enough, after thirteen years 
 of wedded trustfulness, of her sense of jus- 
 tice and her integrity, if not of her maternal 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 6 1 
 
 love, to confide the material interests of their 
 boys to her hands. Let us hope that the 
 grave-faced widow was as indifferent to the 
 condition as she appeared to be. The sec- 
 ond marriages of her own father and of her 
 children's father may have accustomed her 
 to contemplate these as probable contin- 
 gencies, and reason may have arisen so 
 far above sentimentality as to lead her to 
 applaud the sagacity of her long-sighted 
 spouse. The will was, in the main, equi- 
 table, and devised specifically more property 
 than most of his acquaintances had sup- 
 posed the testator to possess. The family 
 had lived comfortably, but hardly luxuri- 
 ously ; extravagance was opposed to the 
 principles of both husband and wife. The 
 broad vein of thrift and the economical 
 instincts that characterized the business 
 dealings of their son George were as much 
 an inheritance as his incorruptible integrity. 
 To Laurence Washington, a splendid 
 young fellow of twenty -six, made by his 
 father's death the head of the family, was be- 
 queathed a larger fortune than to any other 
 
62 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 of the heirs. To him fell the fine estate 
 of Hunting Creek, — a name he afterward 
 changed to " Mount Vernon," in compli- 
 ment to a British admiral. It lay along the 
 Potomac River, and contained twenty-five 
 hundred acres. The fisheries connected 
 with it were exceedingly valuable and the 
 lands fertile. He received other real estate, 
 and shares in the iron-works established by 
 Governor Spotswoode and his brother-capi- 
 talists. Augustine had Wakefield and Hey- 
 wood in Westmoreland. The Stafford 
 property, including Pine Grove, fell to 
 George; Samuel, John, and Charles had 
 about seven hundred acres apiece, a toler- 
 able portion for younger brothers. Betty's 
 fortune was principally in money well-in- 
 vested. The entire income of the five chil- 
 dren Mary Ball had borne him was subject 
 to her management during their minority. 
 
 Her only adviser in America was her 
 step-son Laurence. The two were always 
 firm friends, each recognizing the sterling 
 worth of the other. With genuine good 
 sense and feeling the second wife trained 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 63 
 
 her own children to look up to him as their 
 father's representative, and his business con- 
 ferences with her were as with another man. 
 In her home she required no backing. Her 
 wiU was law, her rules were a code from 
 which there was no appeal. Life at Pine 
 Grove differed little from what it had been 
 in the father's day, except that the mother 
 superintended the plantation work as well 
 as that within doors. Nearly everything 
 used upon the place was likewise raised 
 and manufactured there. Cotton was then 
 extensively cultivated in Virginia. It was 
 gathered, spun, and woven under the mis- 
 tress's eyes, the tedious process of picking 
 out the seed being performed by the negro 
 children. Wool was also a staple of the 
 region, and every stage of the preparation 
 of the fleece passed under the same vigi- 
 lance, — washing, carding, spinning, and 
 weaving into linsey-woolsey and stouter 
 fabrics. Flax was raised, but in small 
 quantities, and the little wheels, that now 
 take their place among the curiosities of 
 our parlors, whirled and buzzed under the 
 
64 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 house-mother's foot when the heavier tasks 
 of the day were done. The garments worn 
 by the servants and the every-day clothes 
 of the whites were cut out by her, or un- 
 der her direction by seamstresses she had 
 trained, and were made up in " the cham- 
 ber," where she sat, like Lucretia, with her 
 maids about her. Not a pound of sugar, 
 or lard, not a quart of meal, or flour, or 
 molasses, vinegar, cider, or whiskey was con- 
 sumed in " the house," or kitchen, or " quar- 
 ters," that had not been weighed or mea- 
 sured by her. All commodities were kept 
 under lock and key, and her key-basket of 
 stout wickerwork, lined and covered with 
 leather, went with her everywhere but to 
 church. On Sundays it was locked up in 
 a closet, and she carried the closet key at 
 her girdle, with silver-handled scissors, pin- 
 cushion, and nutmeg grater. 
 
 Except in cases of dangerous illness, she 
 was physician and apothecary whenever 
 medical aid was required upon the planta- 
 tion ; head-nurse, let the sufferer be her own 
 child, or a field-hand at the farthest "quar- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 6$ 
 
 ter," — ^ watching for whole nights together 
 over the sick or dying, and administering 
 every dose of medicine with her own hands. 
 The pickHng, preserving, and potting of a 
 private family was a formidable undertaking 
 a century before "canned goods" were put 
 upon the market ; the killing and curing 
 season, when bacon was " put up " by the 
 thousand and tens of thousands of pounds, 
 was a gigantic enterprise achieved annually. 
 All these concerns in all their details the 
 mistress of a plantation carried upon her 
 mind. The negroes were no better than 
 grown-up children, and she bore their cares 
 and assumed the responsibilities of their 
 physical, moral, and spiritual condition. 
 
 It was a stern period -in domestic govern- 
 ment, — and what wonder ? Children feared, 
 in honoring the parents who had well-nigh 
 the power of life and death over them. The 
 household was an absolute monarchy. The 
 child who seated himself in the presence 
 of mother or father, unless bidden to do so, 
 would have been ordered from the room by 
 the one, or knocked down by the other. 
 
66 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 He spoke when spoken to, and respectfully ; 
 he wore what was put upon him, and until 
 he was twenty-one came and went at the 
 parental command, as mindlessly as a ma- 
 chine. It is not true, although often as- 
 serted, that the system of slavery was re- 
 sponsible for this state of affairs at the 
 South. In Puritan New England the like 
 prevailed, and with greater severity. It was 
 the temper of a comparatively rude people, 
 and of a time when the Old Testament was 
 more read than the New. The process 
 made stout wood of growing natures that 
 were not too delicate to endure it. If the 
 result were the survival of the fittest the 
 survivors were very fit for the work of the 
 age and of the world. 
 
 Laurence Washington was married, on 
 the 19th of the July succeeding his father's 
 death, to Anne Fairfax, the wedding having 
 been jDOstponed in consequence of that 
 event. The bride's father, Hon. William 
 Fairfax, was the master of Belvoir, an ele- 
 gant estate adjoining Mount Vernon, which 
 last-named place became the home of the 
 newly wedded pair. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 6 J 
 
 The influence of this alHance with the 
 Fairfaxes upon the character and destiny 
 of George Washington was great. How 
 wholesome was the tendency of the inti- 
 macy that grew up between Laurence's 
 father-in-law and the promising " big boy " 
 may be surmised from an extract of a let- 
 ter introduced here, — not in chronological 
 sequence, but to illustrate the nature of the 
 counsels given by the older of the friends, 
 and the material upon which these wrought. 
 Washington was at the age of twenty-two 
 in command of a camp at Fort Necessity, 
 among the Alleghanies, guarding an im- 
 portant pass against the French and Indi- 
 ans. William Fairfax writes to him as to 
 an equal and coadjutor: — 
 
 " I will not doubt your having public 
 prayer in the camp, especially when the 
 Indian families are your guests, that they, 
 seeing your plain manner of worship, may 
 have their curiosity to be informed why we 
 do not use the ceremonies of the French, 
 which, being well-explained to their under- 
 standings, will more and more dispose them 
 
68 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 to receive our baptism and unite in strict 
 bonds of cordial friendship." 
 
 Tliis is another crevice-ray that strikes 
 unexpectedly across the subject we are con- 
 sidering, bringing into relief that which we 
 could not spare without doing injustice to 
 the harmonious whole. At Laurence's mar- 
 riage and removal to his own home, the 
 patriarchal duty of saying grace at meals 
 and reading prayers night and morning 
 would have devolved upon the next eldest 
 son. Knowing, as we do, the strict rules 
 that guided the household of her who was 
 henceforward called " Madam Washington," 
 we cannot doubt that to the eleven-year-old 
 boy the task was assigned, and that it was 
 performed with solemn decorum. In a 
 treatise upon the Religious Opinions and 
 Character of Washington, Rev. E. C. Mc- 
 Guire, of Fredericksburg, invites notice to 
 the truth that the child was baptized " at a 
 time when care was taken to instruct the 
 children in our holy religion, according to 
 the Scriptures as set forth in the standards 
 of the Episcopal Church," and transcribes 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 69 
 
 certain passages from a set of " Resolu- 
 tions " drawn up privately for his own use 
 by Madam Washington's oldest son when 
 but thirteen years of age. One is: " When 
 you speak of God or His attributes, let it 
 be seriously, in reverence." 
 
 Another: " Labour to keep alive in your 
 heart that little spark of celestial fire called 
 conscience." 
 
 Again : " Let your conversation be with- 
 out malice or envy, for it is a sign of a 
 tractable and commendable nature, and in 
 all causes of passion admit reason to gov- 
 ern." 
 
 Whether this code, which embraces rules 
 for the government of behavior in company, 
 at table, and in business, be a compilation 
 from various (to us) unknown sources, or — 
 what is scarcely credible — the composition 
 of the lad himself, it is a remarkable paper, 
 as betraying depth and steadiness of charac- 
 ter almost unparalleled in one of his years. 
 
 From birth, the imprint of the stronger 
 natured parent was upon her firstborn, — 
 the man she felt she had gotten from the 
 
^O THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 Lord. He was emphatically, although not 
 in the sentimental significance usually at- 
 tached to the phrase, " a mother's boy." In 
 later years he expressed his appreciation of 
 this vital truth in blunt, sincere terms he 
 might have learned from herself. " All that 
 I am I owe to my mother " is one of the 
 best-known of his sayings. 
 
 I have written thus far to little purpose 
 if I have not made it plain that this wo- 
 man, upon whom was laid the charge of 
 an immense estate and the education of 
 five children, had no store of what are 
 rated as polite accomplishments. What- 
 ever may have been the promise of personal 
 graces in her comparatively careless youth, 
 she was now neither brilliant nor hand- 
 some. Life was a terribly earnest matter 
 with her, and her demeanor showed that 
 she felt it to be such. She had never been 
 idle or self-indulgent. After her husband's 
 death doubled her daily duties she became 
 a proverb for incessant diligence. Every 
 minute of her waking hours was filled with 
 a specific task. Method became almost 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON J I 
 
 mania. It followed, inevitably, that she 
 was a strict task-mistress, disposed to be as 
 intolerant of indolence as of sin. Her 
 carriage was upright, her manner dignified; 
 although not talkative, she expressed her- 
 self clearly and with force, and her choice 
 of words would have done credit to many a 
 queen of polite society. A nephew of her 
 husband — Laurence Washington, of Cho- 
 tank — writing many years afterward of this 
 period of her life, has left us his impres- 
 sions of his uncle's widow : — 
 
 " I was often here [at Pine Grove] 
 with George, his playmate, schoolmate, and 
 young man's companion. Of the mother, I 
 was more afraid than of my own parents ; 
 she awed me in the midst of her kindness ; 
 and even now, when time has whitened my 
 locks and I am the grandfather of a second 
 generation, I could not behold that majestic 
 woman without feelings it is impossible to 
 describe." 
 
 Another, whose opportunities of intimate 
 acquaintance with her disposition and hab- 
 its were ample, has recorded that " there 
 
72 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 was a plain honesty and truth about her, 
 pecuHar to that age, and which lias been 
 ill exchanged for empty professions and out- 
 ward polish. As a native of Virginia, she 
 was hospitable by birthright, and always re- 
 ceived her visitors with a smiling welcome ; 
 but they were never asked to stay but once, 
 and she always speeded the joarting guest 
 by affording every facility in her power. 
 She possessed all those domestic habits and 
 qualities which confer value on woman, but 
 had no desire to be distinguished by other 
 titles than those of a good wife and mother." 
 To this date belongs the story of the 
 sorrel colt which George, probably in con- 
 scious emulation of Alexander, determined 
 to master. The experiment ended in the 
 death of the fiery young horse, who broke a 
 blood-vessel in a futile attempt to dislodge 
 the lad from his back. It so chanced that 
 the mother's first question when her son 
 and his companions returned to the house 
 was whether or not they had seen the sorrel 
 colt. Mr. Custis and Dr. Lossing have 
 combined to thrust a speech into the cul- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 73 
 
 prit's mouth, which no boy, even of that 
 stilted day, ever delivered as an impromptu ; 
 but in whatever style he replied, the facts 
 were told, promptly and squarely. The 
 widow struggled for a second with the tem- 
 per she had not lost in passing it down to 
 her child, then replied to the effect that she 
 was sorry the horse was dead, but glad that 
 her boy had spoken the truth. 
 
 The anecdote, albeit but a trifle less 
 threadbare than the hatchet myth, is a rep- 
 resentative incident, and not to be omitted 
 from the history of mother or son. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Brother Joseph, the London barrister, 
 who would seem to have been masterful by 
 nature, became a trifle pragmatical with the 
 advance of years, a foible his sister did not 
 suspect, or which she was willing to over- 
 look in consideration of his relationship to 
 herself and the guardianly office he had 
 once held. She had consulted him as to 
 the terms of settlement of certain accounts 
 of the estate with Laurence Washington at 
 the time of her step-son's marriage, and 
 had taken his advice, which was wise and 
 just. She applied to him for counsel in a 
 matter of more vital interest when Georo[e 
 was fourteen years old. 
 
 Laurence Washington had served as cap- 
 tain in a Virginia regiment under General 
 Wentworth and Admiral Vernon, in the 
 united attack of naval and land forces upon 
 Cartagena, South America, in 1741. Im- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 75 
 
 paired health, the consequence of illness 
 contracted during the siege, hindered the 
 fulfillment of his intention of joining the 
 British army, and making the profession of 
 arms his life-work. The Rappahannock 
 plantations and Fredericksburg, the one 
 town of consequence upon the river, have 
 always furnished a quota of men and offi- 
 cers to the navy far in excess of what 
 might be considered their natural propor- 
 tion of seafaring people. One might sup- 
 pose that the conditions, physical or men- 
 tal, of the region are peculiarly favorable 
 to the development of a longing for mari- 
 time adventure. With his mother's sanc- 
 tion, George Washington paid many and 
 long visits to Mount Vernon, she judging 
 sensibly that the society gathered about 
 her favorite step-son and his charming wife 
 would be a liberal education for the fast- 
 growing country-boy. There, and at Bel- 
 voir, he met English and colonial military 
 men, officers of the army and navy, and 
 the martial fire that had glowed in his 
 English ancestor John, and warmed the 
 
"](} THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 pulses of the half-brother he loved and re- 
 vered, was kindled in the listener's heart, 
 while the veterans fought their battles over 
 again, and predicted other struggles before 
 permanent peace could be assured. 
 
 After each of these visits he went back 
 to his mother with the eager petition that 
 she would allow him to enter the British 
 navy, a request seconded by Laurence's 
 powerful influence. The mother hesitated 
 and argued, — an unusual course of action 
 in one so prompt to decide, so energetic in 
 deed. But she must have seen ere this 
 that the eldest of her brood was an eaglet 
 who could not long be detained in the nest. 
 He was tall for his fourteen years, remark- 
 ably robust and fearless of hardships. In 
 the steady purpose to attain a thorough 
 education, after learning all that could be 
 taught him in an " old field school," — kept 
 by Hobby, pedagogue and sexton, and the 
 most conceited man in three parishes, — 
 the lad made a daily journey on horseback 
 in winter and summer to what was con- 
 sidered a better school among the hills ten 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 77 
 
 miles away, and the next year rowed morn- 
 ing and evening in the roughest weather 
 across the river to the Fredericksburg 
 Academy, the same in which two other 
 Presidents, Madison and Monroe, were 
 afterward prepared for college. That he 
 would have a career in a day when history 
 was in making was evident, and the mother, 
 if not ambitious for him, was so far in sym- 
 pathy with his restlessness under the limi- 
 tations of his present life that she heark- 
 ened patiently to his arguments, reinforced 
 by those of Laurence Washington, Mr. Fair- 
 fax, and the family physician, who repre- 
 sented the advantages of an active life in the 
 open air for her boy. She had written to 
 her brother shortly after the subject was 
 broached, but his answer was delayed so 
 long that before receiving it she yielded to 
 the combined pressure brought to bear 
 upon her. 
 
 The lad's midshipman's warrant in the 
 British navy was procured in the winter 
 of 1746-47 by the influence of his half- 
 brother, and preparations were begun, gayly 
 
78 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 by George, sadly enough by his mother, 
 for his outfit and departure. 
 
 Still another side-light falls athwart a fea- 
 ture of Madam Washington's character that 
 proves her mortal, and for once neither un- 
 like nor superior to the majority of mothers. 
 Mr. Robert Jackson, of Fredericksburg, the 
 friend of both parties to the controversy, 
 writes confidentially to Laurence Washing- 
 ton : — 
 
 " I am afraid Mrs. Washington will not 
 keep up to her first resolution. She seems 
 to dislike George's going to sea, and says 
 several persons have told her it was a bad 
 schem.e. She offers several trifling objec- 
 tions, such as a fond, unthinking mother 
 habitually suggests, and I find that one 
 word against his going has more weight 
 than ten for it." 
 
 Mr. Robert Jackson was very man, and 
 an audacious one at that, in that he could 
 couple the phrase " fond, unthinking mo- 
 ther " with the name of the Spartan parent 
 who, having put personal preference behind 
 her, honestly believed that she scanned the 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 79 
 
 projected " scheme " critically for her child's 
 sake, and that alone. She knew the perils 
 to morals and to life attendant upon the 
 profession selected for him, and had before 
 her a living evidence of some of these in 
 the condition of Laurence dying by inches 
 of pestilence-poison taken into his system 
 during the horrible experiences of Carta- 
 gena, when thousands of his comrades died 
 of the plague. If she lent ear to what 
 " several persons " said, it was because her 
 heart trembled, and her judgment had been 
 convinced against her will by the impas- 
 sioned pleadings of her boy, and the calmer 
 advocacy of his cause on the part of men of 
 the world who held Mr. Jackson's views as 
 to women's ability to see both sides of a 
 question, and to weigh evidence. 
 
 While in this distressing incertitude, she 
 received the long-expected letter from 
 Brother Joseph. It was dated May 19, 
 1747, and couched in the barrister's most 
 characteristic style : — 
 
 " I understand that you are advised and 
 have some thoughts of putting your son 
 
8o THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 George to sea. I think he had better be 
 put apprentice to a tinker, for a common 
 sailor before the mast has by no means the 
 common Hberty of the subject ; for they 
 will press him from ship to ship, where he 
 has fifty shillings a month, and make him 
 take twenty-three, and cut and slash and 
 use him like a negro, or rather like a dog. 
 And as to any considerable preferment in 
 the navy, it is not to be expected, as there 
 are so many gaping for it here who have 
 interest, and he has none. And if he 
 should get to be master of a Virginia ship 
 (which is very difficult to do), a planter who 
 has three or four hundred acres of land, 
 and three or four slaves, if he be industri- 
 ous, may live more comfortably, and have 
 his family in better bread than such a mas- 
 ter of a ship can. . . . 
 
 " He must not be too hasty to be rich, 
 but go on gently and with patience as 
 things will naturally go. This method, 
 without aiming at being a fine gentleman 
 before his time, will carry a man more com- 
 fortably and surely through the world than 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 8r 
 
 going to sea, unless it be a great chance in- 
 deed. I pray God to keep you and yours. 
 " Your loving brother, 
 
 " Joseph Ball." 
 
 Either the lad's mother, who never put 
 pen to paper if she could help it, had failed 
 to make clear what were George's prospects 
 and desires, or the conservative cockney 
 had read the letter carelessly. The epistle 
 bristles with British prejudice, and, in its 
 almost brutal frankness, is a painful sug- 
 gestion of what had been his sister's life 
 while a member of his household, and under 
 his command. His contempt for provincial 
 opinions and ambitions matches his igno- 
 rance of the real state of affairs in the col- 
 ony in which he was born. Notwithstand- 
 ing his many visits to Virginia, and his 
 pecuniary interest in her improvement, he 
 had no appreciation of her progress during 
 the last quarter-century. Ah ! if that finest 
 of old Virginia gentlemen — William Byrd 
 — impregnable in the conviction that his 
 State was the goodliest land the sun ever 
 
82 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 shone upon, and exultant in presages of her 
 glorious future, could have sat down oppo- 
 site the dogmatic lawyer in the Westover 
 drawing-room, and, transfixing him with his 
 shining dark eyes, — have had his way vi'ith 
 him for an hour ! It would have been the 
 encounter of stag-hound and bull-terrier. 
 What did the Londoner reck of the bril- 
 liant gatherings at Belvoir and Mount Ver- 
 non, when men before whom he and his 
 fellow - citizens would have stood cap - in - 
 hand encouraged the ardent boy in his 
 hopes and spurred his mettled spirit ; how 
 guess — when he said flatly of govern- 
 mental influence, "//(fhas none" — at the 
 midshipman's commission obtained for his 
 provincial nephew by the fond brother, 
 whose dear friend was Admiral Vernon, 
 and whose companion-in-arms was General 
 Wentworth ? How was he to divine that 
 the raw lad who, he advised, should be 
 bound to a tinker sooner than have his 
 way, and whom he cautioned patronizingly 
 against being a fine gentleman before his 
 time, was already the favorite companion 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 83 
 
 of Thomas Lord Fairfax, a peer of the 
 reahTi, an Oxonian by education, a member 
 of the Spectator Club, and the owner of 
 all the lands in the Northern Neck, between 
 the Rappahannock and the Potomac, and 
 the Blue Ridge and the Chesapeake ? 
 
 It is a woeful pity that we have no record 
 or tradition of the manner in which the 
 nephews and their allies received this as- 
 tonishingly bumptious and fatuous commu- 
 nication. It must have read to them like 
 impertinent fustian, that would have been 
 beneath contempt but for the effect it had 
 upon George's mother. Respect for and 
 obedience to Brother Joseph had grown 
 into her character during the formative 
 time passed under his shadow at Epping 
 Forest. He would ever be to her loyal soul 
 the chief of her clan. Her clear eyes could 
 not but see that he was fighting as wildly 
 as a blindfolded bruiser, his heaviest blows 
 beating the air; but the remembered crack 
 of the whip appealed to memory and con- 
 science, and, wise head though hers was, 
 the babble of press-gangs and floggings 
 
§4 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 had some effect, if only because it echoed 
 her own boding dreams. She made up her 
 mind upon the spot. No time was to be 
 lost. George had his uniform, the natty 
 midshipman's cap, and in the belt the 
 jaunty little dirk, that gave it the true mar- 
 tial touch. His luggage was on board of a 
 British man-of-war moored in the Potomac. 
 To-morrow her eaglet would have flown. 
 Armed with Brother Joseph's letter, she 
 sought his presence and refused positively 
 to let him go. When he rebelled, for the 
 first time in his life, and passed from argu- 
 ment to pleading, her rare tears burst forth ; 
 the "fond, unthinking mother" eclipsed the 
 rigid matron, and the son, terrified by her 
 emotion, bowed to her will. 
 
 Barrister Joseph builded better than he 
 knew, but while America owes her freedom 
 to his besotted pugnacity, gratitude is due, 
 not to him, but to the Divine Wisdom that 
 makes the stupidity as well as the wrath of 
 man to praise Him for his wonderful works 
 to the children of men. 
 
 After what the mother-heart must often 
 
THE STORY OF MARY IVASHINGTOA^ 85 
 
 have reckoned a Pyrrhian victory over the 
 dearest wishes of the gallant boy whose 
 filial obedience under the crucial test en- 
 hanced her appreciation of his noble na- 
 ture, Madam Washington suffered him to 
 spend most of his time with the half-brother 
 who shared his disappointment. She would 
 not thwart him again when opposition could 
 be avoided, and a common chagrin had 
 knit the brothers' hearts yet more closely 
 together. In the effort to overcome his re- 
 grets at the frustration of his best hopes, 
 George turned with redoubled diligence to 
 the study he liked best, that of mathe- 
 matics. His mother gladly engaged a pri- 
 vate tutor for him in the higher branches of 
 the science, and under him George learned 
 what was his first step to success, — land 
 surveying. At sixteen, through the Fair- 
 fax influence, he received the extraordinary 
 — considering his years — appointment of 
 public surveyor. In the practice of his pro- 
 fession he resided at Mount Vernon, visit- 
 ing his mother often, and gradually taking 
 Laurence's place as manager and adviser. 
 
86 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 It is to his eternal honor that not an inti- 
 mation is given by contemporary or sub- 
 sequent historians tliat the painful epi- 
 sode, to him approximating a tragedy, 
 tinged with bitterness his feelings toward 
 her who had given him birth. He was her 
 staunch champion then and ever. She was 
 his mother, — therefore always right. 
 
 He held Governor Dinwiddle's commis- 
 sion as major, and was drawing $750 per 
 annum as commandant of a military posi- 
 tion, when a call nearer home diverted 
 thouo;ht and service. The gallant fight 
 made by his best-beloved brother against 
 the insidious malady that was undermining 
 his system was near its end. Accompanied 
 by George, he sailed for the West Indies in 
 the autumn of 1751, and, continuing to fail 
 after his arrival, sent back his brother to 
 bring his wife to him. He returned to 
 Mount Vernon in June, 1752, and lived but 
 a few weeks longer. He was buried at 
 Mount Vernon. 
 
 Three out of the four children born of 
 this marriage had preceded the father into 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 8/ 
 
 the other world. Evidently comprehending 
 that the survivor must share the fate of 
 the rest by reason of inherent delicacy of 
 constitution, he directed in his will that in 
 case of her demise without issue, Mount 
 Vernon should become the property of his 
 brother George. Within the year the 
 youthful major received a legacy he must 
 have accepted with an aching heart. Short 
 space was allowed him for enjoyment of his 
 new possessions. In 1753, although only 
 one-and-twenty years of age, he was ap- 
 pointed by Robert Dinwiddle, then gover- 
 nor of the State of Virginia, to be the 
 bearer of dispatches to the French com- 
 mander St. Pierre. The route designated 
 for the envoy and his small party was 
 through a wild and savage country; the 
 month, November. He called to see his 
 mother on the way to Williamsburg, and 
 explained to her the nature of his mission. 
 She heard and questioned him calmly, of- 
 fering no objections to the enterprise she 
 saw was fraught with peril. With her fare- 
 well kiss she bade him " remember that 
 
88 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 God only is our sure trust. To Him I 
 commend you." 
 
 In the strength of that trust she awaited 
 with outward tranquillity the passage of the 
 forty-odd days that elapsed before her hero 
 presented himself in her presence with the 
 news of the triumphs of the little expedi- 
 tion. 
 
 In 1755 came a summons from the newly- 
 arrived General Braddock, who was sent to 
 America to put an end to the French and 
 Indian warfare that threatened the exist- 
 ence of the colonies. The fame of the 
 Virginia colonel reached him as soon as he 
 landed in America, and he offered an hon- 
 orable and flattering command to the am- 
 bitious youth. Before accepting it, Wash- 
 ington held another conference with his 
 mother. The news of the offer, tempting 
 to him and terrifying to her, drove her to 
 pay a hasty visit to Mount Vernon. 
 
 It is surprising that artist and poet have 
 passed over this interview in the quest 
 for the picturesque in American history. 
 Mount Vernon was one of the notable plan- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 89 
 
 tation houses of the riverside, although less 
 spacious than now, and the proprietor was 
 the rising man of the colony. A portrait 
 of him in his colonel's uniform is that of a 
 magnificently built man with a kingly port 
 and face. The birthright of leadership was 
 stamped upon him ; his manners had al- 
 ready the serious dignity that distinguished 
 him as Commander-in-Chief of the Conti- 
 nental Army, and President of the United 
 States. Upon his return from the inter- 
 view with Braddock, he was met upon the 
 threshold of his home by his mother. She 
 was now in her fiftieth year, and clad 
 plainly, in widow's weeds. Without pre- 
 amble, she opened the case with a strenu- 
 ous appeal to him not to risk a life so dear 
 to her and so valuable to his country in an 
 expedition led by the dashing Irishman, 
 whose renown for reckless bravery had pre- 
 ceded him. Important interests in county 
 and colony required the services of one 
 of the largest landholders in the region. 
 Surely another could better do Braddock's 
 bidding than fill George Washington's place 
 
90 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 should his life be sacrificed to a mistaken 
 sense of duty. 
 
 Her words of truth and soberness had 
 weight with the listener. Two days passed 
 before he determined to adhere to his origi- 
 nal design. He began the final discussion 
 respectfully and affectionately, but the 
 steadfast soul from which he had drawn his 
 own must have perceived from the outset 
 the futility of further opposition. He took 
 the ground on which he could meet her on 
 most nearly equal terms, — that of the 
 choice of duties. Granting full weight to 
 all that she had said, he represented his 
 country's need of him, and why he had 
 been selected for this especial work. The 
 public weal should overbalance, in the pa- 
 triot's mind, the demands of self-interest 
 and local concerns. The safety, and per- 
 haps the very existence of the colonies, de- 
 pended in his judgment upon immediate 
 concert of action. All the trained forces 
 at the command of the government should 
 be massed at a given point, and advance 
 upon the enemy under officers approved for 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 9 1 
 
 skill and valor. He believed that such a 
 policy would be followed by speedy defeat 
 and dispersion of the forces gathering upon 
 the frontier. 
 
 She hearkened attentively and mutely, 
 doubtless with natural pride in the gallant 
 speaker that upbore the sinking heart, and 
 unable to repress a thrill of admiration at 
 the address with which he finally turned 
 her own words upon her : — - 
 
 " The God to whom you commended me. 
 Madam, when I set out upon a more peril- 
 ous errand, defended me from all harm, and 
 I trust He will do so now. Do not you ? " 
 
 We can fancy the rare, humorous gleam 
 that, we are told, gave a peculiarly arch ex- 
 pression to her features, stealing over them 
 at this adroit touch. The allusion to the 
 Power which, she had taught him from 
 babyhood, guided the honest soul into the 
 path of right and safety, could not be gain- 
 said. She had supplied him with the wea- 
 pons with which he overcame her. It was 
 the last severe conflict between the two 
 master-wills. With candor that matched his, 
 
92 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 she refrained from further remonstrance, 
 and declared herself convinced that he was 
 in the right. 
 
 We are irresistibly reminded in reading 
 of the momentous debate, and the result of 
 it, of that conference of the disciples in the 
 house of Philip of Caesarea, when the plead- 
 ings of those who loved him were stayed 
 by the chiefest Apostle with an impassioned 
 outbreak from a tried, yet resolute soul : — 
 
 " ' What do ye, weeping and breaking my 
 heart ? for I am ready not to be bound only, 
 but to die at yerusalem! 
 
 " And when he would not be persuaded, 
 we ceased, saying, ' The will of the Lord be 
 done / ' " 
 
 This was the thought uppermost in Mary 
 Washington's mind, as she went back to 
 the Ferry Farm and the duties that awaited 
 her there. 
 
 This was in April, 1755 ; the monotonous 
 round of plantation-life was soon broken by 
 stirring news of the formation of the fa- 
 mous Braddock expedition, and the depar- 
 ture for the seat of war. On July 9 occurred 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 93 
 
 the terrible defeat of the British and Co- 
 lonial forces. Of sixty odd officers, Wash- 
 ington was the only one who escaped un- 
 harmed, and the report that he had fallen 
 on the field of battle was the first tidings of 
 the eventful day that reached his mother. In 
 what agony of desolation she awaited par- 
 ticulars of her bereavement ; what struggles 
 went on in the chastened soul between 
 knowledge of the blow dealt by the God 
 whom she had trusted and faith not to be 
 shaken from its hold, are left to us to con- 
 jecture. Almost a fortnight elapsed before 
 mourning was turned into thanksgiving by 
 the receipt of a letter written by the be- 
 loved hand, dated July 18, and sent by 
 special messenger from Fort Cumberland. 
 
 It began, " Honored Madam." 
 
 It was his invariable custom thus to ad- 
 dress his mother upon paper. It was one 
 of the ways of that day, which he and men 
 like him helped to make. Whatever might 
 be the clash of opinion between them ; how- 
 ever strongly the parent, in her linsey skirt, 
 short jacket, and mob-cap, might contrast 
 
94 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 with the eleoant dames who strove for his 
 favor, she was ever " honored " in his 
 thought and in his speech. A sovereign in 
 her own right, she commanded his per- 
 petual allegiance. 
 
 The letter gave a succinct account of the 
 disaster, and recounted the circumstances 
 of his almost miraculous escape, " although 
 I had four bullets through my coat and two 
 horses shot under me." He mentions, too, 
 an illness prior to the fight, of which she 
 had not heard, that had confined him to 
 bed and wagon for above ten days, and 
 from which he was " not half-recovered " 
 when he went into action. He fears that 
 in the necessity of halting for some days 
 to recover strength to proceed homeward, 
 and the probability that he will not be able 
 to stir from Mount Vernon until towards 
 September, he will not have the pleasure 
 of seeing her until then, and subscribes him- 
 self thus : — 
 
 " I am, honored Madam, your most duti- 
 ful son." 
 
 His mother had, also, the solemn joy of 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 95 
 
 reading in his letter, written on the same 
 day to her step-son, Augustine, the acknow- 
 ledgment that " by the all-powerful protec- 
 tion of Providence I have been protected 
 beyond all human probability or expecta- 
 tion." 
 
 She did not wait for him to come to her 
 upon his return to Mount Vernon, late in 
 July, but hastened to see and nurse him. 
 His robust frame was in a state of pitiable 
 exhaustion, but his spirit was unbroken. To 
 her tender expostulations against the sacri- 
 fice of health, fortune, and perhaps life, he 
 pleaded the patriot's obligation not to fail 
 his country in the hour of extremity. She 
 was back in her home when he wrote to 
 her, under the date of August 14: — 
 
 " Honored. Madam, — If it is in my power 
 to avoid going to Ohio again, I shall, but if 
 the command is pressed upon me by the 
 general voice of the country, and offered 
 upon such terms as cannot be objected 
 against, it would reflect dishonor upon me 
 to refuse it, and that, I am sure must, or 
 ought to give you greater uneasiness than 
 
96 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 my going in an honorable command. Upon 
 no other terms will I accept it." 
 
 They understood one another by now. 
 She had the good sense to accept the fact 
 that her boy was a man, and the best judge 
 of his own affairs. Henceforward she gave 
 him fullest sympathy, how intelligent may 
 be gathered from such letters as the above. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Later in the eventful year, 1755, the 
 spirit of worldly wisdom moved Brother 
 Joseph to write to the nephew whom he 
 had hectored indirectly, and patronized di- 
 rectly, eight years before. As both of his 
 letters were preserved by the Washingtons, 
 we indulge the hope that George and the 
 Fairfaxes had the satisfaction of comparing 
 them, and derived as much wicked enjoy- 
 ment from the act as men in this unsaintly 
 century would feel in like circumstances. 
 "Stratford, 5th of September, 1755. 
 
 " Good Cousin, — It is a sensible pleasure 
 to me to hear that you have behaved your- 
 self with such a martial spirit in all your 
 engagements with the French, nigh Ohio. 
 Go on as you have begun, and God prosper 
 you." 
 
 We are credibly informed that Washing- 
 ton had a fine sense of humor. He used to 
 
98 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 laugh at Nelly Custis's jokes, and smile be- 
 nignantly, with a twinkle in his eye, upon 
 his little wife when she brought him down 
 from the heights of political lucubrations to 
 the levels of commonplace matters by hook- 
 ing her finger in his buttonhole ; and there 
 are many playful, some sarcastic touches in 
 his correspondence. A grim smile must 
 have illumined his sedateness when he 
 reached this benediction : — 
 
 " We have heard of General Braddock's 
 defeat. Everybody blames his rash con- 
 duct. Everybody commends the courage 
 of the Virginia and Carolina men, which is 
 very agreeable to me. [!] I desire you, as 
 you may have opportunity, to give me a 
 short account how you proceed. I am your 
 mother's brother. I hope you will not deny 
 my request. I heartily wish you good suc- 
 cess, and am, 
 
 " Your loving uncle, 
 
 " Joseph Ball. 
 
 " To Major George Washington, 
 
 "^/ the Falls of Rappahannock, or elsewhere in 
 
 Virginia. 
 '■'■Please direct for 7ne at Stratford-by-Bow, nigh 
 London!''' 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 99 
 
 No talk now of "going on gently and 
 with patience, as things would naturally 
 go," or cautions against " being a fine gen- 
 tleman before his time." We may be sure, 
 from the urgent plea for a few words from 
 his "good cousin's " hand, how the worthy 
 cockney would strut from villa to villa of 
 the suburban neighborhood, and invade 
 the dingy offices of the Middle Temple, 
 and buttonhole acquaintances at the street 
 corners, to show those " words," if they were 
 ever written to his " mother's brother." 
 
 The leal sister shut her eyes to his weak- 
 nesses, perhaps because better informed as 
 to his virtues than we. In 1759 — after 
 her son's five years' service in the army, 
 his election to the House of Burgesses, and 
 resignation of his position of Commander- 
 in-Chief of the Virginia forces, his marriage 
 to Mrs. Custis, and settlement as a family- 
 man at Mount Vernon — Madam Washing- 
 ton wrote by private hand to her now vener- 
 able mentor : — 
 
 " I inquire by all opportunity from you, 
 and am glad to hear you and my sister, 
 
lOO THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 and Mr. Downman and his lady [Brother 
 Joseph's daughter and her husband] keep 
 your health so well. I sometimes hear you 
 intend to see Virginia once more. I should 
 be proud to see you. I have known a great 
 deal of trouble since I saw you : there was 
 no end to my trouble while George was in 
 the army, but he has now given it up." 
 
 The sigh of relief in the last sentence was 
 the prelude to over a dozen years of peace- 
 ful enjoyment of domestic life in the homes 
 upon the Rappahannock and the Potomac. 
 All the sons were married ; Samuel had set- 
 tled in Stafford County ; John in Westmore- 
 land ; Charles in Spottsylvania; Augustine, 
 the surviving step-son, had been established 
 for several years upon the old plantation on 
 Pope's Creek. Grandchildren were grow- 
 ing up about Madam Washington's knees ; 
 her business-affairs were prosperous. Los- 
 sing and Mrs. Ella Bassett Washington af- 
 firm that George's marriage brought delight 
 to his mother; the former authority that 
 " the social position, the fortune, and the 
 lively character of the bride were extremely 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON lOI 
 
 satisfactory to Mary Washington." Betty 
 Lewis's great - granddaughter says more 
 briefly that " the mother rejoiced in the 
 son's happiness." We note with gratifica- 
 tion this coincidence of evidence, because 
 rumors have gained credence that between 
 tlie Custises and the plainer matron of Pine 
 Grove, there was never perfect accord ; that 
 the Dowager Madam Washington had little 
 in common with the beautiful heiress, and 
 that their intercourse never approximated 
 intimacy. I shall take greater pleasure in 
 inserting in due order of the narrative an 
 extract from the pen of Martha Washing- 
 ton's grandson, that ought to kill these de- 
 tractions beyond the fear of resuscitation. 
 
 Mary Washington's tasks were essentially 
 domestic, and as child after child left her 
 home for his or her own, she became an 
 inveterate " home-body." The plantation 
 could not get on without her, and the chil- 
 dren were always more than welcome to 
 Qome to her. Her doors and heart were 
 open to them and the babies. She began 
 to call herself " an old woman," although she 
 
102 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 remitted not one jot of the work, and her up- 
 right figure, brisk step, and alert eye belied 
 the phrase. To this season of outward pros- 
 perity and inward tranquillity belongs onexjf 
 the few letters preserved for our inspection. 
 It is, for a wonder, given unedited as to or- 
 thography, and is the more welcome on that 
 account. Educators maintain that spelling, 
 like the use of the fork, must be learned 
 before the age of fifteen, or not at all. We 
 bethink ourselves of the four years' dearth 
 of schoolmasters in Westmoreland, durincj 
 the early girlhood of the Belle of the North- 
 ern Neck, and are impressed by the royal 
 disregard of arbitrary rules manifest in the 
 composition. Writing was hard work, and 
 she wasted not a word or stroke. Since it 
 had to be done, she did it, and contrived to 
 leave no doubt as to her meaning. The ad- 
 dress is to ''Mr. Joseph Ball, Esquire. At 
 Stratford-by-Bow, nigh London" 
 
 ''July 2, 1760. 
 
 " Dear Brother, — This comes by Cap- 
 tain Nicholson. You seem to blame me for 
 not writeing to you, butt I doe ashure you 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 103 
 
 it is Note for the want of a very great regard 
 for you and the fanaily, butt as I dont ship 
 tobacco, the Captains never call on me, soe 
 that I never know when tha com or when 
 tha goe. I believe that you have got a very 
 good overseer at this quarter now. Captain 
 Newton has taken a large lease of ground 
 from you which I deare say, if you had been 
 hear yourself, it had not been don. Mr. Dan- 
 iel, and his wife and family, is well ; Cozin 
 Hannah has been married and lost her hus- 
 band. She has one child, a boy. Pray give 
 my love to Sister Ball, Mr. Downman, his 
 son-in-law, his Lady. I am Deare Brother, 
 " Your loving sister, 
 
 " Mary Washington." 
 
 Several interesting and characteristic par- 
 ticulars present themselves in what sounds 
 like a trite communication. Brother Joseph 
 had taken her to task for remissness in cor- 
 respondence. Simply, and with no haste of 
 self-vindication or show of wounded feeling, 
 she assures him of her unabated regard for 
 himself and family, and gives the all-sufii- 
 
104 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 cient reason for her apparent negligence. 
 The shipment of Virginia's great staple had 
 made some of her neighbors rich, and beg- 
 gared others. Without having so much 
 as heard of the Essay on Bulk Tobacco 
 presented to " the Honorable Commission- 
 ers of their Majesties Customs," in 1692, 
 by the " Merchant Masters of Ships and 
 Traders to Virginia and Maryland," our 
 shrewd woman of affairs knew it to be an 
 expensive and treacherous crop, subject to 
 perils often from weather, worms, and smug- 
 glers, and she exported none in bulk or par- 
 cel. The captains of outgoing crafts knew 
 her views on this point, and gave her wharf 
 a wide berth, and she was too much occu- 
 pied in minding her own business to con- 
 cern herself with their coming and goino-. 
 The front windows of the Pine Grove house 
 overlooked the river and Fredericksburg 
 wharf where all the vessels touched. She 
 must have been singularly void of idle cu- 
 riosity not to keep some watch upon the 
 passing sails. 
 
 She speaks a good word for the absen- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON I OS 
 
 tee's overseer, but opines dryly that Captain 
 Newton would not have been his tenant 
 had he been on the spot to look into mat- 
 ters for himself. Cozin Hannah is probably 
 the daughter of William Ball, their father's 
 brother, the Hannah who married Daniel 
 Fox. With old-fashioned courtesy, she 
 names the members of Brother Joseph's 
 family, and prays that her love may go to 
 each. The signature is more sloping and 
 in bolder sort than the '' Mary Ball" affixed 
 to the seventeen -year -old girl's epistle. 
 This same year, Betty Washington, a beauti- 
 ful woman, whose portrait, preserved at the 
 ancestral seat of the Lewises at Marmion, 
 Virginia, bears a striking resemblance to 
 her distinguished brother, was married to a 
 wealthy widower. Colonel Fielding Lewis, 
 of Gloucester. He owned much real estate 
 in and around Fredericksburg, and that his 
 wife might be near her mother, set about 
 building Kenmore, a splendid residence for 
 those times. It was then in the suburbs of 
 the busy little shipping-town which after- 
 wards grew out to and beyond it. 
 
I06 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 Kenmore is still one of the show-places of 
 Fredericksburg. When I visited it in May 
 of the present year (1892), it was in excel- 
 lent preservation, having been purchased 
 and " restored " by people appreciative of 
 the associations that cluster about it. The 
 decorations of wainscot and ceilings are 
 elaborate and curious. When the present 
 occupants took possession, the dining-room 
 walls were so defaced by the grime that had 
 accumulated during the years in which it 
 was used as a kitchen, that the noble wains- 
 cot and fretted ceiling were a surprise to 
 the spectators of the revelations made by the 
 cleaner's brush. Over the mantel in the 
 drawing-room, an apartment of noble dimen- 
 sions and ornamentation, is a remarkable 
 fresco, said to have been designed by George 
 Washington, at the request of his sister, 
 the invention of her artists having "given 
 out." It is in what is know as " putty-work," 
 or plastic stucco, and represents in low re- 
 lief several scenes from yEsop's Fables, — 
 the crow with the lump of cheese in his 
 mouth, and the wheedling fox beneath the 
 
tT f"'"^ 'T i 7 ' ^ ' 1 t r ' ' 
 
 ilttfti'f'f'rirrrt; 
 
 
 BAS-RELIEF OVER DRAWING-ROOM MANTEL AT KENMORE 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 10/ 
 
 tree ; the wolf accusing the lamb of fouling 
 the water; and other less conspicuous tokens 
 of the warrior's familiarity with the celebrated 
 classic. The workmanship of the whole is 
 decidedly foreign. The story runs that it 
 was executed by certain Italians, who, having 
 enlisted in the French army, were taken 
 prisoners in America, and remained there 
 after peace was declared. 
 
 Betty Lewis has hardly had the attention 
 from her mother's and brother's biographers 
 that should be awarded to the tender devo- 
 tion she showed to her surviving parent, and 
 which her charms of person and character 
 merited. We are indebted to her letters for 
 some of the pleasantest glimpses of Mary 
 Washington's home-life ; and the reverent 
 affection of her children proved her rare 
 virtues as mother, wife, and woman. 
 
 This tranquil middle period of our hero- 
 ine's existence was disturbed by the muttering 
 of the war-cloud upon the Northern horizon. 
 With sad, and, as was proved, correct fore- 
 bodings that it would be long before peace 
 was restored, Washington, before setting 
 
Io8 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 out to take charge of the Colonial troops 
 after the battle of Bunker Hill, begged his 
 mother to leave the river-farm and take a 
 house in Fredericksburg. Mrs. Lewis fol- 
 lowed up his representations of the danger 
 of her present residence by urgent invitation 
 to their parent to accept a home at Kenmore 
 for the remainder of her natural life. 
 
 Mary Washington never showed her ster- 
 ling sense more clearly than in declining, 
 gratefully, gently, and firmly, the inconsider- 
 ately generous offer. She had been a widow 
 for thirty-two years, accustomed to her own 
 home, her own servants, and her own man- 
 ner of life. The spirit and habit of com- 
 mand were strong within her, and the ways 
 of her simple establishment had unfitted her 
 to occupy a visitor's place in any other, es- 
 pecially in the elegant home in which the 
 wealthy merchant had placed her daughter. 
 
 " My wants in this life are few," she re- 
 plied to her daughter's fond importunity, 
 " and I feel perfectly competent to take care 
 of myself." 
 
 To Colonel Fielding Lewis's proposal 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 109 
 
 that he should reheve her of the labor of 
 going back and forth to the Ferry Farm and 
 overseeing the plantation, she said : — 
 
 " You can keep my books, for your eye- 
 sight is better than mine ; but leave the man- 
 agement of the farm to me." 
 
 It was not then so well understood as 
 now that inaction and rust are synonyms 
 to one who has passed his fiftieth birthday. 
 Had Madam Washington resigned her stir- 
 ring life, full, for every waking hour of the 
 day, with specific duties ; had exchanged 
 the daily drive over the plantation, and the 
 countless errands into the outer air, insepa- 
 rable from the business of managing a farm, 
 for the luxurious ease of Kenmore, a seat in 
 the softest chair in the warmest corner of 
 the hearth, and no livelier interests in what 
 went on about her than such as a well-to-do 
 gentlewoman far on in the sixties might feel 
 in pursuits foreign to her taste, — she would 
 have collapsed into querulous invalidism or 
 imbecility. Conscious of the splendid re- 
 serves of vitality within her, she determined 
 to live out her own life — as such — until 
 disabled by old age or fatal disease. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The house purchased by Mary Washing- 
 ton as the shelter of her decHning years 
 still stands, an esteemed relic, in the heart 
 of the town of Fredericksburg, In 1890, it 
 became the property of the Association for 
 the Preservatio7i of Virginia Aitiiqtiities. 
 It was, in 1775, a long, low cottage, with 
 four windows upon Charles Street, and the 
 same number, of unequal sizes, upon the side 
 thoroughfare. A central hall ran from the 
 front to the back doors. Upon the right of 
 the entrance was a spacious parlor, and op- 
 posite this a still larger room, which was se- 
 lected as the chief apartment of the house, 
 — " the chamber." Back of this was the 
 dining-room, under the sloping roof that 
 took off a half-story from the rear. A large 
 pantry where stores were kept, and a small 
 bed-chamber off the parlor, completed the 
 number of rooms upon the first floor. The 
 
HOME OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON III 
 
 half-Story above-stairs was lighted, back and 
 front, by dormer-windows. In a detached 
 building, behind the dwelling, were kitchen 
 and servants' dormitories. 
 
 The stables were upon the corner of the 
 block, the whole of which was occupied by 
 garden and orchard. Madam Washington 
 was always fond of flowers and successful in 
 cultivating them. She transplanted into the 
 garden of her new abode many favorites 
 from across the river. The change was 
 great to one who loved the unrestrained 
 liberty, the wide spaces and free air of plan- 
 tation - life, yet she made no complaint. 
 " George thought it best," was the reply to 
 query and marvel at the radical change in 
 her surroundings and habits. The formula 
 had answered her mental disinclination to 
 break up her home and dwell within city- 
 limits. She did not care what others 
 thought or said. Amid the various burdens 
 and distractions of the offices pressed upon 
 him, her son made time to superintend the 
 business of removal, and saw her settled 
 comfortably in the unfamiliar quarters be- 
 fore bidding her farewell. 
 
112 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 He did not look upon her face again in 
 seven years. 
 
 Within the past year, since the elfort to 
 erect a suitable memorial above the resting- 
 place of Mary, the Mother of Washing- 
 ton has assumed form and proportions, a 
 rumor has been set afloat that she repro- 
 bated her son's action in identifying himself 
 with the rebellion against the Parent Coun- 
 try, and remained an obstinate, some say, 
 a malignant Tory, throughout the war. 
 Hence — goes on the calumny — he never 
 visited her during the struggle for Indepen- 
 dence, and with difficulty made his peace 
 when it was ended by the victory at York- 
 town. 
 
 A more baseless and witless slander was 
 never concocted by the latter-day Athenian, 
 whose "new thing" must be "high" in fla- 
 vor, or fail to tempt his appetite. 
 
 Lossing, who had known and consulted 
 the venerable grandson of Martha Washing- 
 ton, and drew his information from others 
 of the same blood ; who quotes freely from 
 Sparks, Irving, Everett, and Paulding, as 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON II3 
 
 well as from contemporaneous authorities, 
 writes in serene unconsciousness that such 
 a tale ever had been or could be : — 
 
 " Madam Washington was now in the 
 direct line of communication between the 
 Eastern and Southern colonies, and she 
 was in the constant receipt of news con- 
 cerning the progress of the struggle at all 
 points. Washington communicated to her, 
 as opportunities offered, tidings of the most 
 important occurrences in the strife. Courier 
 after courier would appear at the door of 
 her dwelling with dispatches which told her 
 alternately of victory and of defeat. She 
 received all messages with equanimity, and 
 never betrayed any uncommon emotion. 
 When the cheering news of the victories 
 at Trenton and Princeton reached Freder- 
 icksburg, several of her friends congratu- 
 lated her upon the brilliant achievements of 
 her son, when she simply replied, ' George 
 seems to have deserved well of his country ; ' 
 and when some of them read paragraphs of 
 letters they had received in which the skill 
 and bravery of Washington were applauded, 
 she said : — 
 
114 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 " ' Gentlemen, here is too much flattery. 
 Still, George will not forget the lessons I 
 have taught him ; he will not forget him- 
 self, though he is an object of so much 
 praise.' " 
 
 Had he been at that moment, to her ap- 
 prehension, recreant to the cause of right, a 
 traitor to his king, and in unlawful rebellion 
 against the government to which she felt 
 she owed allegiance, the outspoken matron, 
 ever fearless in defense of truth and justice, 
 would not have talked of his being true to 
 himself and to the lessons she had taught 
 him. 
 
 Betty Lewis's descendant is as explicit : — 
 
 " During the trying years when her son 
 was leading the Continental forces, the mo- 
 ther was watching and praying, following 
 him with anxious eyes ; but to the messen- 
 gers who brought tidings, whether of vic- 
 tory or defeat, she turned a calm face, what- 
 ever tremor of feeling it might mask, and 
 to her daughter she said, chiding her for 
 undue excitement, ' The sister of the com- 
 manding general should be an example of 
 fortitude and faith.' " 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON IIS 
 
 Again, from the same trustworthy source, 
 we learn of her foremother's demeanor dur- 
 ing the " troubled and anxious " eight years 
 " with few lights amid their shadows : " — 
 
 " The experience of these years must have 
 been most deeply felt by Washington's mo- 
 ther, but whatever the tension of thought, 
 there was no change of demeanor while she 
 dispersed a large though simple hospitality 
 to the friends who gathered around her far 
 and near ; and though her means were lim- 
 ited, her charities were wide and generous. 
 There was something of nervous energy in 
 her constant occupation, knitting-needles 
 ever flying in the nimble fingers ; for with 
 her daughter and their domestics to aid, 
 dozens of socks were knitted and sent to the 
 General at camp for distribution, together 
 with garments and provisions, the fruit of 
 her thrift and economy." 
 
 Rev. Robert Reid Howison, the author 
 of The History of Virginia, and The Shi- 
 deiifs History of the United States, — a man 
 who has given years of toilful study to the 
 collection of materials for the admirable 
 
Il6 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 and useful volumes I have named, — thus 
 responds to a query as to what foundation 
 exists for the story that, if true, stamps an 
 indelible stfgma upon the character of the 
 mother of Washington : — 
 
 " I am a native of Fredericksburg, and 
 have passed the greater part of my life here 
 and in the immediate vicinity. I have 
 talked, times without number, with people 
 who had known Mrs. Washington. Tales 
 of her personal characteristics, her doings, 
 and her sayings were familiar to me in my 
 boyhood, and I do not hesitate to say that 
 I hear now for the first time that her patri- 
 otism was ever called in question. Like 
 Washington, she felt at the beginning of the 
 troubles between King and Colonies, that 
 overt rebellion should, if practicable, be 
 avoided, and with him, she deprecated the 
 suggestion of war with the Mother Country. 
 But, once convinced that the conflict was 
 inevitable, her loyalty never swerved. The 
 cause of American Independence had no 
 more steadfast adherent. I confess myself 
 at a loss to conceive how a slander so ground- 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON II7 
 
 less could have originated, at a period so 
 remote from the event it involves." 
 
 In view of the emptiness of the charge, 
 I should not have considered it worth the 
 ink and time I have bestowed upon it, had 
 it been less offensively put forth. When it 
 passes unchallenged in a prominent chapter 
 of the Daughters of the American Revolu- 
 tion, and becomes the subject of debate in 
 a prominent Woman's Club, it is well to 
 seize and shake it to pieces. Alongside of 
 the scrap of proof in support of the false- 
 hood, offered by the son's prolonged absence 
 from F"redericksburg, I beg leave, in quit- 
 ting the unsavory subject, to lay the follow- 
 ing sentence from George Washington's 
 letter to Lafayette, dated " Mount Vernon, 
 February i, 1 784 : " — 
 
 " On the eve of Christmas I entered these 
 doors, an older man by iiine years than when 
 I left them." 
 
 The same causes had exiled him from his 
 own and from his mother's home. 
 
 Once more, consulting Madam Washing- 
 ton's lineal descendant, we read : — 
 
Il8 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 " When the tidings of the splendid suc- 
 cess at Yorktown were brought direct from 
 the General to his mother, she was moved 
 to an exclamation of fervent thanksgiving: 
 
 " ' Thank God the war is ended, and we 
 shall be blessed with peace, happiness, and 
 independence, for our country is free ! ' " 
 
 A " malignant Tory" would have sat down 
 in sackcloth and ashes to bemoan the day 
 in which the man-child was born who had 
 brought this calamity to pass. 
 
 Returning gladly to the even course of 
 our narrative, we find ourselves at the last 
 chapter of the storm-and-stress period, the 
 mighty travail out of which was born our 
 nationality. 
 
 On the afternoon of November ii, 1781, 
 Washington arrived in Fredericksburg with 
 his staff" of French and American officers, en 
 route from Yorktown to Philadelphia. He 
 left his retinue at the place appointed as 
 his headquarters, and walked unattended 
 through streets vocal with his name, to the 
 corner-cottage where his mother, previously 
 apprised of his coming, awaited him. Mr. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON II9 
 
 Custis tells the story in language that his 
 habitual ornateness cannot rob of tender 
 interest : — 
 
 " She was alone, her aged hands employed 
 in the works of domestic industry, when the 
 good news was announced, and it was told 
 that the victor was awaiting at the thresh- 
 old. She bade him welcome by a warm 
 embrace, and by the well-remembered and 
 endearing name of ' George,' — the familiar 
 name of his childhood. She inquired as to 
 his health, for she marked the lines which 
 mighty cares and toils had made in his 
 manly countenance, and she spoke much of 
 old times and old friends, but of his glory 
 not one word." 
 
 One, or both, of two reasons may have 
 caused what strikes the modern reader as 
 strange reticence. Washington's dislike of 
 spoken praise was proverbial. Notable in- 
 stances of this were his extreme confusion 
 when the Speaker of the House of the Bur- 
 gesses announced in eulogistic terms the 
 appointment of Major Washington to the 
 supreme command of the Colonial forces, and 
 
120 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 in 1789, when, at a New York theatre, the 
 interlude of the play promised a complimen- 
 tary reference to himself. " He smiled," 
 says a chronicler, "but looked grave and 
 uneasy, expecting some personal adulation, 
 which always annoyed him." To no one 
 was this idiosyncrasy better known than 
 to her who for her part held flattery so 
 cheap that nobody dared offer it to her. 
 She would comprehend, moreover, with the 
 quick intuition which stood her in stead of 
 worldly address, that he was satiated with 
 " war-talk," and hungered like a weary child 
 for the homely converse of olden times. He 
 longed to know himself again as her son and 
 intimate. Unheralded and unaccompanied, 
 he had come back to bow himself at her 
 knee, and she met him in kind. The grand 
 simplicity of one found a clear, full echo in 
 the other. 
 
 Again, Mary Washington belonged to the 
 school, now no more, of parents who held 
 as an invariable rule that praise of one's 
 offspring was in bad taste, and a positive 
 injury to the subject of laudation if heard 
 
& 
 
 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 121 
 
 by him. When she had said, " George will 
 be true to himself," she covered the whole 
 ground in her own mind. She had the 
 English horror of wordy scenes and melo- 
 dramatic situations, and had guarded the 
 door of her lips so long that they would not 
 have opened readily to sentimental ejacula- 
 tions. 
 
 Her only public appearance as the hero's 
 mother was at the Peace Ball given in Fred- 
 ericksburg during the visit of Washington 
 to that town. With all her majestic self- 
 command, she did not disguise the plea- 
 sure with which she received the special 
 request of the managers that she would 
 honor the occasion with her presence. 
 There was even a happy flutter in the play- 
 ful rejoinder that " her dancing days were 
 pretty well over, but that if her coming 
 would contribute to the general pleasure she 
 would attend." 
 
 The town-hall was hung with flags and 
 festooned with evergreens, and blazed with 
 lio;ht on the November night of the festival. 
 The glitter of French uniforms and the gala- 
 
122 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 attire of the women present, who had drawn 
 forth from chest and wardrobe all the finery 
 the war had left them, made the scene the 
 gayest the "home-body" had ever beheld. 
 We please ourselves by speculating whether 
 or not Betty Lewis was allowed to lace up 
 the black silk gown and adjust the snowy 
 kerchief and cap the wearer adjudged to be 
 the only correct costume for a plain country- 
 woman who had been a widow for almost half 
 her life. We are secure in the belief that 
 her garb pleased the superb son who led her 
 into the room with the respectful courtesy 
 due a queen. A path was opened from the 
 foot to the top of the hall as they appeared 
 in the doorway, and " every head was bowed 
 in reverence." It must have been the proud- 
 est moment of her life, but she bore herself 
 with perfect composure then, and after her 
 son, seating her in an armchair upon the 
 dais reserved for distinguished guests, faced 
 the crowd in prideful expectancy that all his 
 friends would seek to know his mother. She 
 had entered the hall at eight o'clock, and for 
 two hours held court, the most distinguished 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1 23 
 
 people there pressing eagerly forward to be 
 presented to her. She received them with 
 placid dignity, as little excited, to all appear- 
 ance, as when entertaining her Fredericks- 
 burg neighbors in the roomy "chamber," in 
 one corner of which stood the " best bed 
 and tester," hung with the " Virginia cloth 
 curtains," bequeathed in her will to her son 
 George. From her slightly elevated posi- 
 tion she could, without rising, overlook the 
 floor, and watched with quiet pleasure the 
 dancers, among them the kingly figure of 
 the Commander-in-Chief, who led a Freder- 
 icksburg matron through a minuet. 
 
 At ten o'clock, she signed to him to ap- 
 proach, and rose to take his arm, saying in 
 her clear, soft voice : — 
 
 " Come, George, it is time for old folks to 
 be at home ! " 
 
 Smiling a good-night to all, she walked 
 down the room, as erect in form, and as 
 steady in gait, as any dancer there. 
 
 One of the French officers (it may have 
 been Rochambeau or De Grasse) exclaimed 
 aloud, as she disappeared : — 
 
124 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 " If such are the matrons of America, she 
 may well boast of illustrious sons ! " 
 
 In the autumn of 1784, Lafayette paid 
 his respects to the widowed mother of his 
 brother-in-arms, visiting Fredericksburg for 
 that purpose alone. Mrs. Fielding Lewis 
 — by this time a widow like her mother, 
 and with a family of young children, as 
 that mother had been forty years ago — 
 was visiting her brother at Mount Vernon, 
 and sent her son Fielding (as Mr. Lossing 
 has it; Mrs. Ella Bassett Washington calls 
 him " Robert ") to act as the cicerone of the 
 titled foreiofner. Madam Washington's one 
 recreation was walking and working among 
 her flowers, and in her garden-garb of linsey 
 skirt, the short gown we would style " a 
 sacque," and broad-brimmed hat tied over 
 the plaited border of her cap, was raking 
 together dry weeds and sticks into a heap, 
 to which she would presently apply a coal 
 fetched from the kitchen fire, and burn out 
 of sight. The visitors approached the house 
 from Kenmore, by way of the side-street. 
 The boy, proud of his mission, and knowing 
 
LAFAYEITE WALK 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 125 
 
 his grandmother too well to fear disconcert- 
 ing her, pointed her out over the palings to 
 his companion. 
 
 " There is my grandmother, sir! " he said 
 complacently, and unlatching the side-gate, 
 led the Marquis into the inclosure, naming 
 him as they neared the venerable mistress 
 of the domain. 
 
 The situation vi^ould have been intolerable 
 to a woman who had one atom of personal 
 vanity. The startled hostess met it with 
 the aplomb of a duchess. She dropped her 
 rake, took between her bare palms the hand 
 the nobleman extended, while he bared his 
 lofty head and bowed before her in deepest 
 reverence. Her voice, at seventy-eight, had 
 no longer the timbre of youth, but the mod- 
 ulations were refined : — 
 
 " Ah, Marquis ! you have come to see an 
 old woman ! But come in ; I can make you 
 welcome without changing my dress. I am 
 glad to see you. I have often heard my son 
 George speak of you." 
 
 She preceded him into the narrow hall, 
 and, near the front entrance, turned, not 
 
126 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 into the state parlor, set out stiffly with the 
 " six red leather chairs, the oval table, look- 
 ing-glasses, and walnut writing-desk with 
 drawers," named in her last will and testa- 
 ment, but into the chamber, her " living- 
 room," where she was used to sit and be " at 
 home." Those acquainted with the ways 
 of " Old Virginia" at that time (and for a 
 century afterward) are sure that a brisk lit- 
 tle fire burned in the chimney, the season 
 being autumn, and Madam " an old woman." 
 She seated Lafayette, laid aside her straw 
 hat, and placed herself opposite to him. In 
 her quaint attire, " neat as a nun's," erect as 
 at eighteen, never touching the tall, straight 
 back of her chair, her unfaded eyes full of 
 kindly light, she listened calmly to the pan- 
 egyric upon her son poured forth by the 
 eloquent Frenchman, whose strong accent 
 must have made his discourse at first hardly 
 intelligible to her unaccustomed ears. 
 
 She heard her George lauded as the mira- 
 cle of his age; as greater than Ceesar, and 
 more modest than Cincinnatus, — the hero 
 whose fame would outlast time. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 12 J 
 
 Her well - known reply is a multum in 
 parvo. 
 
 " I am not surprised at what George has 
 done. He was always a good boy." 
 
 That " good " comprised all public and 
 private virtues to a soul laid out in large, 
 simple lines. What had set a world to won- 
 dering had not " surprised " her. The child 
 of prayers and cares — whose greedy ears had 
 from his youth up drunk in tales of worthy 
 deeds done by his ancestors of six hundred 
 years; whose own father had been without 
 fear and without reproach ; his mother's 
 pupil as she reasoned of righteousness, 
 temperance, and the judgment to be pro- 
 claimed when " The Great Audit " should 
 be made — could be no less than "good." 
 The hero described by the fluent tongue 
 could be no more. 
 
 Fredericksburg annalists tell us laugh- 
 ingly, and with sly humor at thought of 
 modern reforms, that Madam Washington 
 mixed with her own hands a mint-julep, and 
 offered it to General Lafayette with a plate 
 of home-made " ginger-cakes." According 
 
128 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 to the social customs of the day, she would 
 have been inhospitable had she suffered a 
 guest to depart without some refreshment of 
 which wine or spirits formed a part, and in 
 that region the mint-julep was the prescribed 
 " article." The man of the world accepted 
 the beverage as simply and gracefully as it 
 was tendered, pronounced it delicious, and 
 arose to go. He was on the point of em- 
 barking for his native land, he said, and they 
 would probably never meet again. Would 
 she give him her blessing } 
 
 She looked up to heaven, folded her 
 hands, and, in sweet, thrilling tones, prayed 
 that God would grant him *' safety, happi- 
 ness, prosperity, and peace." Tears were in 
 the listener's eyes ; he bent to kiss the with- 
 ered hand, thanked her fervently, and took 
 his leave. The grandson, who was the sole 
 witness of the touching scene, could never 
 speak of it without emotion. 
 
 Lafayette's report of the interview to his 
 friends at Mount Vernon was : " I have 
 seen the only Roman matron living at this 
 day ! " 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1 29 
 
 The stirring events attendant upon the 
 return of peace and the assured indepen- 
 dence of the new country over, Madam 
 Washington's life resumed its even tenor. 
 It had been her wont in earlier days to drive 
 herself daily, in fine weather, down to the 
 ferry in her gig, and on board of the flat- 
 bottomed scow that carried passengers over 
 the river. Arrived upon the other side, she 
 made the round of the farm, inspecting 
 fields, gardens, the servants' quarters, and 
 the barns, with the keen eye for neglect and 
 disorder cultivated through the many years 
 of stewardship for her children. If rebuke 
 were needed, she administered it in short, 
 sharp fashion, as in the case of an overseer 
 who had departed from her instruction in 
 an important transaction, excusing himself 
 by saying that " in his judgment " — 
 
 " And who gave you the right to use your 
 judgment in the matter?" interrupted the 
 dictator, "/command! There is nothing 
 left iox you but to obey." 
 
 The discharged subordinate declared af- 
 terward that " her eyes flashed blue Hght-^ 
 
130 THE STORY OF MARY WASHTNGTON 
 
 ning, and he felt exactly like he had been 
 knocked down." 
 
 There is pathos in the anecdote that it 
 was her practice to bring "home every day 
 a jug, or demijohn, of water for her own 
 drinking, from a spring of the Stafford plan- 
 tation, declaring that no other water tasted 
 so good. The rustic fount that was to her 
 as the Well of Bethlehem bears still the 
 name of " Lady Washington's spring." 
 
 As years and weakness increased, she was 
 driven about town and across the ferry in 
 a low-hung vehicle, like a topless phaeton. 
 Stephen, the only man-servant in the cot- 
 tage-establishment, acted as coachman, sit- 
 ting stiffly upon the box, and thoroughly 
 imbued with a consciousness of his impor- 
 tance as part of the equipage which every- 
 body, young and old, saluted as it passed 
 along the rambling, unpaved streets. 
 
 The phaeton was a gift from her son, and 
 she preferred it to any other carriage. Be- 
 sides it and the bay horse that drew it, her 
 stables held a pair of blacks and a riding- 
 chair or gig, minutice worth jotting down 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 131 
 
 as controverting the false impression that 
 Washington, enjoying his own and his wife's 
 fortunes, allowed his mother to live in pov- 
 erty. 
 
 We are indebted to her great - grand- 
 daughter for a graphic portraiture of Madam 
 Washington during her daily drives, which 
 the writer had heard times without number 
 from her father, " Betty " Lewis's son : — 
 
 "In summer she wore a dark straw hat 
 with broad brim and low crown, tied under 
 her chin with black ribbon strings ; but in 
 winter a warm hood was substituted, and 
 she was wrapped in the purple cloth cloak 
 lined with silk shag (a present from her son 
 George) that is described in the bequests of 
 her will. In her hand she carried her gold- 
 headed cane, which feeble health now ren- 
 dered necessary as a support." 
 
 Slow decay was sapping her natural pow- 
 ers. An accidental blow upon the breast, 
 little regarded at the time, quickened the 
 seeds of a cancerous tumor, decided, at a 
 date when surgical science was compara- 
 tively rude, to be incurable. Upon July 24, 
 1789, Mrs. Lewis's bulletin ran thus : — 
 
132 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 " I am sorry to inform you that mother 
 still suffers from her breast. She is sen- 
 sible of it [that is, of the danger], and is 
 perfectly resigned, — wishes for nothing 
 more than to keep it easy. She wishes to 
 hear from you, and will not believe you are 
 well until she receives it from your hand." 
 
 In her hour of mortal extremity, when all 
 she could hope for in life for herself was 
 comparative ease, her heart trembled for the 
 safety of the Nation's Hope. She would 
 trust no tale of his welfare that did not come 
 from him who had never deceived her. 
 
 The end was approached by mercifully 
 gradual degrees. She made herself strong 
 enough in the early summer to visit her sons, 
 Samuel and Charles, and assure herself that 
 all was well with them, and her daughter 
 was in daily attendance upon her. On 
 April 14, 1789, she had had a visit from 
 her eldest-born and always her best-beloved 
 child. 
 
 The interview was unexpected, and of ne- 
 cessity a hurried one. That very morning 
 Washington had received oiilicial notice of 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1 33 
 
 his election to the Presidency of the United 
 States, and he must leave for New York 
 on the morrow. He had galloped up from 
 Mount Vernon to snatch an hour with the 
 woman he revered in weakness and old age 
 as when her will had overruled the boy's 
 plans of a career. He found her in " the 
 chamber," alert in mind and serene of spirit, 
 but so altered in appearance that his heart 
 misgave him. Concealing his dreads, he 
 began to speak cheerfully of his intention, 
 so soon as public business could be disposed 
 of, to return to Virginia and see her again. 
 
 She stayed him there with steady voice 
 and feeble hand. This would be their last 
 meeting in this life, she said. She was old, 
 and a fatal disease was upon her. She 
 would not be lons^ in this world. She 
 trusted in God that she was somewhat pre- 
 pared for a better. Then, laying the wasted 
 hand upon the head bowed to her shoulder, 
 she told him that Heaven's and his mother's 
 blessing would always be with him. 
 
 When he said reluctantly that he must be 
 gone, she arose also, as loath to lose sight 
 
134 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 of him, and walked with him to the cham- 
 ber-door, leaning for the last time upon his 
 arm, and he felt how light was the wasted 
 form, how uneven the once firm tread. As 
 he stooped for a parting embrace, she felt 
 him slip a purse into her hand. 
 
 She put it back, raising her head with the 
 old-time pride. 
 
 " I don't need it!" she said, and repeated 
 the formula often upon the lips of the aged : 
 " My wants are few." 
 
 It should be a keepsake from him, he an- 
 swered, and would not take it back again. 
 It was full of gold, as she saw. They were 
 at the door, through which the faithful body- 
 servant, " Billy Lee," was visible, holding his 
 master's horse. Time pressed, but he lin- 
 gered to plead tenderly, " Whether you 
 think you need it or not, — for my sake, 
 mother! " 
 
 We consult once more Mrs. Ella Bassett 
 Washington's narrative: "The appeal was 
 irresistible, and the purse was retained ; but 
 after he had gone she dropped it indiffer- 
 ently upon the table, and sank into a chair, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1 35 
 
 lost in sad reverie. Her grandson, coming 
 in with a message, witnessed the parting 
 scene, and, too respectful to disturb her sor- 
 row, hastened home to tell his mother all 
 that had passed. Feeling anxious touching 
 her mother's state, and fearing that this pain- 
 ful excitement might cause serious illness, 
 she hastened at once to her side. Very calm 
 and still they found her, seated with droop- 
 ing head and calm, unseeing eyes." 
 
 " Unseeing " in semblance, yet they saw 
 very far into the checkered past and pierced 
 the shadowy future. To very few is it per- 
 mitted to know, beyond peradventure, that 
 their work upon this earth is fully done, and 
 well done. This woman had this assurance, 
 and henceforward was " perfectly resigned 
 and wished for nothing." She had borne 
 the burden of five young lives upon unbend- 
 ing shoulders ; had brought up her children 
 to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk hum- 
 bly with their God ; had nursed the fortune 
 of each with wisdom, and delivered it over 
 to him with equity. As friend, neighbor, 
 and Christian, she had carried herself blame- 
 
136 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 lessly in the sight of all. By reason of 
 strength of body and mind, she had passed 
 the fourscore years that usually bound human 
 usefulness. Her children were doing their 
 parts well in life ; of her first-born she might 
 have said in reverent thankfulness that she 
 had seen in him of the travail of her soul, 
 and was satisfied. There remained to be 
 cared for only " an old woman," racked by 
 painful disease. Yet, with all her fullness 
 of resignation, the faithful heart, the depth 
 of whose capacity for loving few divined, 
 yearned over the darling whom she had 
 never called by that sweet name, — and she 
 should see his face no more. 
 
 She had lived her love for him as for the 
 husband of her youth, for the baby taken 
 from her breast almost fifty years ago, and 
 for the mother whose fostering care of the 
 fatherless girl had been her training for a 
 similar task. 
 
 Ah, well! she would soon be with them, 
 and God was good. His mercies were from 
 everlasting, and his faithfulness unto all 
 generations. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1 37 
 
 She died, " upheld by unfaltering faith in 
 the promises of the Bible, and by full belief 
 in the communion of the saints," August 
 25, 1 789, surrounded by children and friends. 
 New York was a week away even by special 
 post-rider, and the President did not receive 
 the news until September i. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Mary Washington had been one of the 
 most familiar figures in Fredericksburg for 
 over fourteen years, and the announcement 
 of her decease produced a profound sensa- 
 tion. The closed blinds of the corner-cot- 
 tage suggested to high and low incidents of 
 the busy existence that had become a part 
 of the history of the town. Men gathered 
 in groups on the street-corners to discuss 
 in bated tones national events with which 
 the life that had gone out was connected ; 
 women, in their own homes, or " running 
 over " to sit upon a neighbor's doorstep or 
 porch, in the sweet informal fashion of 
 Southern sociability, reminded one another 
 of the many " ways," the very eccentricity of 
 which was charminsf now, that had marked 
 Madam Washington's individuality. 
 
 Of how used they were to see her in the 
 summer sunsets emerge from the side-gate 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 139 
 
 of her garden (the one by which Lafayette 
 entered), and pace slowly down the side-walk 
 to the stable to be sure that Stephen bedded 
 and fed the horses, and that Betsy, his wife, 
 " stripped " the last and richest drops of 
 cream from the cows. She would stand at 
 the open doors of the stable, watching these 
 operations and giving orders for the night 
 or morrow, exchanging cheery salutations 
 with chance passers-by, her never-idle fin- 
 gers busy with her knitting, or, at certain 
 seasons, picking out the black seeds from a 
 mass of raw cotton in her apron. People 
 used to smile at the homely picture when 
 they remembered her stately son. They re- 
 called to-day that there was ever a sort of 
 dignity about her; that she never gossiped ; 
 how kindly was her interest in the suffering 
 and sorrowing, and that diligence in busi- 
 ness became the New World housewife more 
 than elegant idleness. 
 
 How it was told as a joke at which she 
 laughed vi^ith her daughter when it filtrated 
 to them, that when she might be expected 
 at Kenmore to pass the day or afternoon, a 
 
I40 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 watch was posted at the upper windows of 
 the great house to give notice when the 
 blacked-robed figure, with erect head and 
 measured step, issued from the gate, followed 
 by her maid, Patsey, who bore her mistress's 
 work-basket and shawl. Whereupon, the 
 whole household force of Kenmore flew to 
 broom, duster, and scrubbing-brush in fran- 
 tic haste, to have every corner speckless 
 and shining before " Ole Mistis " arrived, 
 and the children were ready with smooth 
 pinafores and clean faces to meet " Grand- 
 mother " at the outer door. 
 
 How her son George had learned punc- 
 tuality in a school so strict that her neigh- 
 bors averred that they set their watches by 
 the ringing of her breakfast, dinner, and sup- 
 per bell, sounded as regularly and as long 
 when she was the only person to be sum- 
 moned to table as if there were a houseful of 
 guests ; and that her pew in St. George's 
 Church was occupied at precisely the same 
 moment of time every Sunday morning. 
 
 How the fashion of her raiment had not 
 changed in twenty years ; that nobody had 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 141 
 
 ever seen her look in the least fashionable, 
 and nobody ever otherwise than perfectly 
 neat. 
 
 How those who had been to look at her, 
 lying in the best bed in the shadowy corner 
 of her chamber, the thin hands crossed upon 
 a bosom that would never ache again with 
 the cruel pain, had noted that the strongly- 
 marked features people had not called hand- 
 some for forty years were subdued into a 
 wondrous likeness to her son, and grew 
 younger and sweeter hour by hour, until it 
 was easy to credit the traditions of her 
 youthful comeliness. 
 
 How — the voices of the gossips falling 
 at the mention of it — she had chosen her 
 burial-place, and asked of Mrs. Lewis the 
 gift of a spot upon her plantation for this 
 purpose, and that the grave had already 
 been marked out where no grave was ever 
 dug before. 
 
 It was a gentle knoll not far from the 
 Kenmore grounds, and crowned by a few 
 gray boulders overshadowed by a clump of 
 trees. It had been remarked that she often 
 
142 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 resorted to this retreat, sometimes alone 
 with her basket of mending, or her knitting, 
 or her Bible. Nobody passed very near her 
 at such times, for the place lay apart from 
 any footpath, but many had seen from a 
 distance the motionless figure seated upon 
 a flat rock, and wondered " what the old 
 Madam " was thinking about, sitting there 
 so long. 
 
 Oftener, she was surrounded by the Lewis 
 children, who preferred " Grandmother's Bi- 
 ble-stories " to any others they ever heard. 
 The granddaughter of one of the little band 
 relates that " the manner of her speaking 
 was so deeply impressive that neither the 
 lessons taught nor the scenes connected with 
 them were ever forgotten by the young list- 
 eners." As one of them related, when he 
 was himself growing old, — " There was a 
 spell over them as they looked into grand- 
 mother's uplifted face, with its sweet expres- 
 sion of perfect peace, and they were very 
 quiet during the homeward walk." 
 
 I sat for a long hour upon the flat gray 
 rock one fair May day a few months ^ ago. 
 
u 
 c 
 Pi 
 
 i" 
 
 Pi 
 o 
 
 < 
 
 o 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1 43 
 
 The " two splendid pines towering above it" 
 have died a natural death, and deciduous 
 trees have taken their place. They cast 
 flickering shadows upon the rough surface 
 of the boulder as the wind stirred them and 
 rustled the grasses and wild flowers growing 
 about the base. The knoll falls gently away 
 to the beautiful valley of the Rappahannock, 
 a panorama of fertile farms, groves, and 
 homesteads, bounded by low hills curving 
 against the horizon. The time-stained walls 
 and hipped roof of Kenmore are in full sight, 
 and the mother's eyes must have rested in 
 gratification upon the house that held, in 
 luxurious happiness, her only daughter and 
 the beloved little ones. Her own cottage 
 was then visible, for between the two dwell- 
 ings the space not occupied by houses was 
 open from the Kenmore lawn to the garden 
 where flourished the calycanthus and box 
 brought from Pine Grove. 
 
 The knowledge that this was the chosen 
 oratory of one whose character had seemed 
 to me, up to that hour, granitic in reserve 
 and strength, was a revelation. That " silent 
 
144 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 side" of her had color and sentiment unsus- 
 pected save by those who knew and loved 
 her best, — the children that crowded about 
 her feet as the ferns and clover-blossoms 
 nestled in the shadow of the rock ; the son 
 whose great nature sprang from hers as the 
 pines took root in the warm heart of the 
 earth beneath the boulder. 
 
 The Rappahannock mart mourned for her 
 on the August day of the funeral, as one 
 man. Business was suspended, and crape 
 hung from most of the closed shops and 
 warehouses. The sanctuary in which she 
 had been a reverent communicant was 
 thronged to hear the burial service read 
 above the remains. The cofifin was carried 
 from the church on men's shoulders to the 
 quiet hillside, and every foot of the knoll 
 was covered by the concourse of mourners 
 and spectators. All over the country press 
 and pulpit made solemn note of the event ; 
 in New York, members of Congress and 
 many private citizens wore crape for thirty 
 days, as for a distinguished public official. 
 
 On the evening of Thursday, August 27, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1 45 
 
 1789, a near neighbor of Mary Washington 
 penned this tribute to her memory: — 
 
 " It is usual, wlien virtuous and conspic- 
 uous persons quit this terrestrial abode, to 
 publish elaborate panegyrics on their charac- 
 ters, but suffice it to say that she conducted 
 herself through this transitory life with 
 virtue and prudence worthy of the mother 
 of the greatest hero that ever adorned the 
 annals of history. There is no fame in the 
 world more pure than that of the mother 
 of Washington, and no woman since the 
 mother of Christ has left a better claim to 
 the affectionate reverence of mankind." 
 
 George Washington Parke Custis, the 
 grandson of Martha Washington, and the 
 adopted son of the first President, wrote 
 thirty-seven years after her decease : — 
 
 " Thus lived and died this distinguished 
 woman. Had she been of the olden time, 
 statues would have been erected to her 
 memory at the Capitol, and she would have 
 been called the Mother of Romans. When 
 another century has elapsed, and our de- 
 scendants shall have learned the true value 
 
146 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 of liberty, how will the fame of the paternal 
 chief be cherished in story and in song! 
 Nor will be forgotten she who first bent the 
 twig to incline the tree to glory. Then, and 
 not till then, will youth and age, maid and 
 matron, aye, and bearded men, repair to the 
 now-neglected grave of the Mother of 
 Washington." 
 
 The tale of the various attempts to erect 
 a suitable memorial above the grave dates 
 very far back. Projects were agitated soon 
 after Mrs. Washington's death to mark the 
 spot by a stone to be paid for by the United 
 States Government. In the confusion at- 
 tendant upon the establishment of a new 
 nation, these lapsed, were revived, and again 
 forgotten. Mr. Custis's stirring appeal in 
 1826 awoke interest all over the country, and 
 for some months it seemed that the work 
 would be done. The proverbial apathy of 
 republics to their dead benefactors was not 
 so easily overcome. The Kenmore estate 
 passed out of the Lewis family, and the suc- 
 ceeding proprietors buried the dead of two 
 generations near the now sunken mound 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 147 
 
 under which lay all that was mortal of Mary 
 Washington, with the faithful housekeeper 
 and life-long friend of Mrs. Lewis close be- 
 side her. Mrs. Lewis died in Culpepper 
 County, at her daughter's home, and was 
 buried there. Washington slept in the 
 mouldering vault at Mount Vernon. By 
 and by a low brick wall inclosed the family 
 burying-ground close by the grave of the 
 two women, and made more palpable the 
 neglect of that which was left outside. 
 
 In 1833, Silas Burrows, a wealthy and 
 patriotic citizen of New York, offered to 
 bear the whole expense of constructing a 
 stately monument to the memory of " Mary, 
 THE Mother of Washington." 
 
 The design lies before me as I write. A 
 square pedestal bears the simple inscription 
 I have just set down. Grecian columns, two 
 on each side, are set in embrasures above ; 
 four eagles sit over these ; an obelisk tapers 
 to the bust of Washington, and upon the 
 bust is a fifth eagle, with outstretched wings 
 and beak. The conception is fantastic and 
 ungraceful, and was to be expensive. 
 
148 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 The corner-stone was laid with great 
 pomp and circumstance, which were duly 
 detailed in the best manner of the Jenkyns 
 of the day in the columns of the New York 
 Mtj^ror, date of June 8, 1833. Brittle pages 
 that crack as we flutter them are covered 
 with eulogy of the dead and the self-gratula- 
 tions of the living. We read with mournful 
 curiosity, considering what followed it all, 
 that early on the morning of May 7, 1833, 
 the city was crowded to overflowing. At 
 ten o'clock a procession was formed by the 
 marshals of the day, in the following order: 
 
 1. A detachment of cavalry. 
 
 2. The chief architect and Masonic soci- 
 eties. In this division Mr. Burrows was as- 
 signed a conspicuous and honorable situa- 
 tion. 
 
 3. The President of the United States in 
 an open carriage with the head of depart- 
 ments and his private secretary, accompa- 
 nied by the Monument Committee. 
 
 4. Clergy and relatives of Washington. 
 
 5. The Mayor and Common Council. 
 
 6. A handsome company of small boys, in 
 complete uniform, with wooden guns. 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 1 49 
 
 7. The officers of the army and navy of 
 the United States, and the invited strangers. 
 
 8. A battalion of volunteers under the 
 command of Major Patten, and several com- 
 panies of infantry from Washington and 
 Alexandria, with the Marine Band. 
 
 9. Strangers and citizens, six abreast. It 
 is estimated that there were between ten 
 and fifteen thousand persons present on the 
 occasion. 
 
 The corner-stone was adjusted with Ma- 
 sonic ceremonies, and Andrew Jackson laid 
 upon it the engraved plate, " intended to 
 distinguish it." In the address that accom- 
 panied the transfer of the plate from the 
 hands of Mr. Bassett — a relative of Madam 
 Washington and chairman of the Monu- 
 ment Committee — into those of the Presi- 
 dent, Mr. Bassett said : — 
 
 " Let us carry with us hence, engraved on 
 our hearts, the memory of her who is here 
 interred : her fortitude, her piety, her every 
 grace of life ; her sweet peace in death, 
 through her sure hope of a blessed immor- 
 tality." 
 
ISO THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 The President dwelt at length upon the 
 characteristics of her they had met to honor, 
 a eulogy which hundreds of his auditors 
 could have verified, or challenged from their 
 own memories. As the speaker gained his 
 information from Madam Washington's con- 
 temporaries, his verdict is of distinct value: 
 
 " She was remarkable for the vigor of her 
 intellect and the firmness of her resolution. 
 Left in early life the sole parent of a numer- 
 ous family, she devoted herself with exem- 
 plary fidelity to the task of guiding and 
 educating them. ... A firm believer in 
 the sacred truths of religion, she taught its 
 principles to her children, and inculcated 
 an early obedience to its injunctions. It is 
 said by those who knew her intimately that 
 she acquired and maintained a wonderful 
 ascendancy over those around her. This 
 true characteristic of genius attended her 
 through life, and even in its decline, after 
 her son had led his country to independence 
 and had been called to preside over her 
 councils, he approached her with the same 
 reverence she had taught him to exhibit in 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 151 
 
 early youth. This course of maternal dis- 
 cipline no doubt restrained the natural ardor 
 of his temperament, and conferred upon 
 him that power of self-command which was 
 one of the most remarkable traits of his 
 charaqter. . . . 
 
 " Fellow-citizens ! at your request and in 
 your name, I now deposit this plate in the 
 spot destined for it ; and when the American 
 citizen shall, in after ages, come up to this 
 high and holy place and lay his hand upon 
 this sacred column, may he recall the virtues 
 of her who sleeps beneath, and depart with 
 his affection purified and his piety strength- 
 ened, while he invokes blessings upon the 
 memory of the Mother of Washington ! " 
 
 The ceremonies concluded with the read- 
 ing of a poem by Lydia Huntley Sigourney, 
 then the most popular writer of verse in 
 America. We make room for a portion 
 of it: — 
 
 "Long hast thou slept unnoticed. Nature stole 
 In her soft ministry around thy bed, 
 And spread her vernal coverings, violet-gemmed, 
 And pearled with dews. She bade sweet Summer 
 bring 
 
IS2 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 Gifts of frankincense with sweet song of birds, 
 And Autumn cast his yellow coronet 
 Down at thy feet; — and stormy Winter speak 
 Hoarsely of man's neglect. But now we come 
 To do thee homage, mother of our chief ! 
 Fit homage, such as honoreth him who pays. 
 
 " Methinks we see thee as in olden time, 
 Simple in garb, majestic and serene, 
 Unawed by pomp and circumstance ; in truth, 
 Inflexible, and with a Spartan zeal 
 Repressing vice, and making folly grave. 
 Thou didst not deem it woman's part to waste 
 Life in inglorious sloth, to sport awhile 
 Amid the flowers, or on the summer wave, 
 Then fleet like the ephemeron away. 
 Building no temple in her children's hearts, 
 Save to the vanity and pride of life 
 Which she had worshiped." 
 
 I have made this long excerpt from the 
 proceedings of that day — memorable in the 
 history of Fredericksburg — not in derision, 
 or even in sad sarcasm, but as cumulative 
 testimony to the- native nobility, the sterling 
 virtues, and rare powers of her whose story 
 I have told, out of the fullness of a heart 
 moved by the study, and by the thought 
 of the tarnish left upon the national name 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 153 
 
 by failure to recognize our debt- to this 
 woman. 
 
 Almost sixty years after panegyric and 
 poem vibrated upon the listening air of that 
 May-day, there stands above the corner- 
 stone that which desecrates the spot. The 
 hand that laid the marble block and that 
 which set the engraved plate upon it were 
 dust a generation ago ; those who remain of 
 the boy-soldiers are aged men, telling in 
 quavering tones how the architect died with- 
 out the sight of the stately pile he had 
 planned, and of the legends, some romantic, 
 some reasonable, which account for the 
 abandonment of the scheme. Fredericks- 
 burg folks affect most seriously the tale that 
 a Southern girl set the enterprise as a test 
 of a Northern lover's devotion, and jilted 
 him before the work was finished. The 
 likelier story is that a sudden reverse of for- 
 tune compelled Mr. Burrows to withhold the 
 funds necessary for the completion of the 
 monument. They tell you — white-haired 
 men who stepped so proudly to national airs 
 sounded by the Marine Band — that when 
 
154 THE STORY OF MARY WASH/ACTON 
 
 the marble monolith which was to be set 
 upon the recessed columns and buttressed 
 corners was landed at the Fredericksburg 
 dock, disasters followed the attempt to drag 
 it the half mile and more that lay between 
 the river and monument. A mule was 
 killed and a horse badly hurt, and finally the 
 immense mass was drawn by long lines of 
 men to its resting-place. 
 
 It rests there still, prone at the base of the 
 half-ruined pile, stained by time and weather, 
 and chipped by vandal hammers, a sight as 
 melancholy as any the sun shines on. A 
 worthier memorial of the American matron 
 whom the nations praised afar off is the 
 sturdy boulder, concealed from the passing 
 tourist by the wall that threw out Mary 
 Washington's grave into the common where 
 cattle browsed and village tramps sauntered 
 and slumbered at pleasure. 
 
 It was reserved for the women whose 
 grandmothers were her contemporaries to 
 right this wrong to her and to their sex. 
 With no blare of trumpets in the way of 
 public demonstration, and no protestation of 
 

 ■%v% 
 
 flf(''\ 
 
 UNFINISHED MONUMENT 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON I 55 
 
 what they meant to accomplish, the mem- 
 bers of the National Mary Washington 
 Memorial Association are moving steadily 
 toward the desired end. By the time the 
 reader's eye rests upon these lines, as we 
 hope fondly, success will be so far assured 
 that we may gratefully look forward to the 
 day when the " sacred column " will be no 
 more a chimera of the oratorical imagination, 
 or a stinging satire upon bombastic patriot- 
 ism that began to build and was not willing 
 to finish. 
 
CHAPTER IX. . 
 
 Madam Washington's great-granddaugh- 
 ter says of her personal appearance, as de- 
 scribed " by those who remembered her in 
 the later years of her life," that she was " of 
 medium size, and well proportioned, the dig- 
 nity of bearing and the erect carriage giving 
 something of stateliness to her presence, 
 while her features were regular and strongly 
 marked, her brow fine, and her eyes a clear 
 blue." 
 
 Lossing, upon the authority of Washing- 
 ton's adopted son, writes : — 
 
 " She was of the full height of woman, 
 and in person compactly built and well pro- 
 portioned. She possessed great physical 
 strength and powers of endurance, and en- 
 joyed through life robust health. Her fea- 
 tures were strongly marked, but pleasing in 
 expression ; at the same time there was a 
 dignity in her manner that was, at first, 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON IS7 
 
 somewhat repellant to a stranger, but it 
 always commanded thorough respect from 
 her friends and acquaintances. Her voice 
 was sweet, almost musical, in its cadences, 
 yet it was firm and decided, and she was 
 always cheerful in spirit." 
 
 Mr. Custis held to the latest day of his 
 life the belief that " there was no portrait 
 extant of the Mother of Washington." 
 The emphatic deliverance casts discredit 
 upon what were else a plausible story touch- 
 ing a picture of Mary Washington taken in 
 her early bellehood, which hung in the bed- 
 room of the first President, at Mount Ver- 
 non. As a member of Washington's family, 
 it was impossible that Martha Washington's 
 grandson should have been ignorant of the 
 existence of a picture said to have been 
 most highly prized by the President. So 
 jealous was his affection for it, that the 
 plausible tale alluded to above dwells upon 
 his reluctance to commit it to an artist, who 
 offered to have mended a " hole ground in 
 the canvas " by an accident, and the picture 
 restored in England. The commission was 
 
1S8 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 finally given, the tale goes on to say, the 
 picture went to England five years before 
 Washington's death, and was forgotten, ap- 
 parently, by him who had been unwilling to 
 have it out of his sight for so many years, 
 certainly forgotten by his executors, who 
 never claimed it. The improbability that 
 Mr. Custis, a zealous antiquarian, and punc- 
 tilious to a fault in treasuring reminiscences 
 of the great man whose adopted son he was, 
 should also have let slip from memory all 
 the interesting particulars connected with 
 the transfer of the valued relic, need not be 
 enlarged upon. The circumstances would 
 certainly have been recalled to his mind by 
 the many questions put to him as to whether 
 or not any likeness of her whom he eulo- 
 gizes as " this distinguished woman " were 
 ever painted. In compiling his Records 
 and Privafe Memoranda of WasJmigton, 
 and in his biographical sketch of Mary 
 Washington herself, the defaced portrait 
 would have been too tempting a subject to 
 be passed over. 
 
 The pretensions to genuineness of the 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 159 
 
 fancy sketch of the Louis Quinze beauty 
 who has done duty as the Rose of Epping 
 Forest in divers periodicals have been dis- 
 posed of by abler pens than mine. The 
 object of this supplementary chapter to a 
 narrative that has been throughout a labor 
 of love is to present a matter that has come 
 to light since Mr. Custis wrote and lived. 
 The history of another picture claiming to 
 be a likeness of Mary Washington is told 
 by Lossing in his Mary and Martha, the 
 Mother and Wife of Washington. From 
 this I compile the Story of a Portrait, which 
 I crave leave to lay before the reader in 
 these concluding pages of my book. 
 
 Mr. George Field, who died in England 
 in 1854, at the age of seventy-seven, was 
 the author of the British School of Modern 
 Artists, and other works upon art and 
 philosophy. In his boyhood, while on a 
 visit to Cookham, Berkshire, England, he 
 saw the " pretty country cottage in which," 
 said neighborhood gossips, " the parents of 
 General Washington had resided " while in 
 England, and from which they removed to 
 
l6o THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 America. In the vicinity of Cookham lived 
 Mrs. Morer, an old woman whose aunt — 
 or so she was fond of relating — had been 
 a maid in Augustine Washington's family 
 and accompanied him and Mrs. Washington 
 to America. Upon quitting England, the 
 niece, whose maiden name was Taylor, said 
 that the Washingtons had presented to her 
 family among other articles of household 
 stuff, ornaments, etc., a portrait of Mrs. 
 Washington taken before her marriage. 
 Mr. Field saw and examined the picture 
 then, and, hearing some years afterward (in 
 1 812) of Mrs. Morer s death, he sent an 
 agent to buy up all her pictures at an 
 auction-sale of her effects. Among them, 
 as he had hoped and intended to do, he 
 secured the portrait he had coveted. By a 
 will dated in 1852, Mr. Field bequeathed 
 this relic, in the authenticity of which he 
 firmly believed, to Mr. George Harvey, an 
 artist who had heard and credited the his- 
 tory of the legacy. After receiving it, Mr. 
 Harvey made it his business to visit Cook- 
 ham to examine the registers of the parish 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON l6l 
 
 and catechise "old inhabitants." The popu- 
 lar tradition that the Washingtons had once 
 been residents of the region was proved to 
 be correct by the frequent recurrence of the 
 names of Washington and Ball in the burial 
 register from 1701 to 1729. As I have be- 
 fore stated, the registers of burials and mar- 
 riages had been maliciously destroyed, the 
 present incumbent of the living explained, 
 " by a rascally lawyer." 
 
 Among the aged residents whom Mr. 
 Harvey interviewed was a man who had 
 once occupied a house " in which it was sup- 
 posed that George Washington was born." 
 He ascertained, moreover, that Augustine 
 Washington was in England in 1729 upon 
 business. 
 
 The next owner of the picture was Pro- 
 fessor S. F. B. Morse, LL. D. He purchased 
 it, with the " pedigree " thereof, from Mr. 
 Harvey. It was accompanied by a certified 
 copy of Mr. Field's will and his reasons for 
 believing in the genuineness of the portrait. 
 Professor Morse brought it to the notice of 
 Dr. Lossing while the latter was on a visit 
 
1 62 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 at the Professor's house in New York. The 
 venerable historiographer was at once struck 
 by the resemblance to the best likenesses 
 of George Washington, and became thor- 
 oughly convinced by examination of letters 
 and written affidavits submitted to him by 
 Professor Morse, that the portrait was that 
 of Mary Ball. 
 
 In the opinion of Mr. Harvey, Professor 
 Morse, and other art-critics, the painting is 
 from the hand of Thomas Hudson, who was 
 a popular portrait-painter in London about 
 1723. 
 
 Here is Dr. Lossing's summing up, after 
 a patient rehearsal of the incidents con- 
 nected with the discovery of the picture and 
 its passage from one owner to another : — 
 
 " At the time of Mary Ball's sojourn in 
 England, Hudson had a summer-residence 
 in Berkshire County, in the neighborhood 
 of the residences of the Washingtons and 
 Balls. May not one of the latter have em- 
 ployed him to paint the portrait of their 
 charming Virginia kinswoman .? Professor 
 Morse expressed his strong conviction that 
 
TH£ story of MARY WASHINGTON 163 
 
 this picture is a portrait of Mary Ball, which 
 had somehow fallen into the possession of 
 Mrs. Morer, and, through Mr. Field and Mr. 
 Harvey, had come to him. And so satisfied 
 am I by the weight of concurrent testimony 
 that it is a portrait of the pretty Virginia 
 girl whom Augustine Washington married 
 in 1730, that I venture to offer a copy of it 
 in this volume as a genuine likeness of the 
 person of the Mother of Washington." 
 
 Thus far had I read when I turned back 
 to study the not very fine engraving, with 
 the facsimile of Mary Ball's signature be- 
 neath it. While I scanned it, a friend was 
 announced, to whom I said, presently, with- 
 out preface, and concealing the name below 
 the print with my hand : — 
 
 " Did you ever see this face before ? " 
 
 " Never," he answered unhesitatingly. 
 
 " What do you think of it.? " 
 
 " Hum-m-m ! I can tell you whom it re- 
 sembles, — General Washington ! " with the 
 air of one who says a preposterous thing. 
 
 His amazement was unaffected when told 
 how nearly he had hit the mark. He had 
 
1 64 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 had no suspicion of the nature of my stud- 
 ies, or that any hkeness of Mary Washing- 
 ton was extant. 
 
 A year or more after this bit of " concur- 
 rent " down had floated to me, a committee 
 appointed by the Managers of the National 
 Mary Washington Memorial Association 
 was permitted, by the courtesy of a daughter 
 of the late Professor Morse, to inspect the 
 picture, which belongs to the Morse estate. 
 The painting has all of Hudson's faults, 
 and few of his merits, but conveys the inde- 
 scribable impression one often experiences 
 in looking at the picture of a person he 
 has never seen, — that the likeness must be 
 excellent. As a work of art, it is below 
 mediocrity, being flat, and without depth of 
 color or vigor of treatment. These blem- 
 ishes may explain why it was not trans- 
 ported to America at a time when freight 
 was troublesome and expensive. There is 
 a tradition that Augustine Washington's 
 family portraits were destroyed when the 
 Wakefield house was burned. It may well 
 have been that he possessed one of his wife 
 
ROOM IN WHICH MARY WASHINOTON DIED 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 165 
 
 which he preferred to what Hudson may 
 have dashed off upon the canvas, in experi- 
 ment or pastime, when they were country 
 neif^hbors. 
 
 The portrait is less than Hfe-size, and rep- 
 resents a sitting figure. The bodice is cut 
 low, and fits loosely upon bosom and shoul- 
 ders. In color the gown is a warm russet, 
 and the drapery has a shadowless effect, as 
 if the thought had been to lay another color 
 over it. The abundant hair is light chest- 
 nut ; the eyes are of a bluish gray, and 
 rather far apart ; the nose is a fine aquiline ; 
 the corners of the mouth are slightly de- 
 pressed. The hands are small, and so badly 
 drawn as to look like stuffed gloves ; one of 
 them holds a lily between thumb and finger 
 as it lies upon the girl's knee. A string of 
 pearls encircles a pretty throat ; the pose 
 is natural and graceful, yet there is some- 
 thins; ungirlish in it. The resemblance to 
 George Washington is startling at the first 
 glance, and it grew upon the little group 
 of gazers until we could hardly withdraw 
 our eyes. 
 
1 66 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 The calm dignity of feature and figure ; 
 the clear, fearless eyes over which the lids 
 drooped heavily toward the temples, — a 
 ma'rked peculiarity in all the Washington 
 portraits ; the half-sad look imparted to the 
 lower half of the face by the downward 
 curve of the lip-lines, — had in them some- 
 thing weirdly familiar and fascinating. We 
 placed the picture in half a dozen different 
 lights, and looked at it from every angle ; 
 then the eyes of each member of the com- 
 mittee were turned upon the others, and all 
 said mutely the same thing. 
 
 Something was said, presently, of a desire 
 to compare the portrait with one of " her 
 son." The phrase dropped naturally from 
 the tongue, and everybody accepted it with- 
 out smile or cavil. Mr. G. W. Story, the 
 courteous and accomplished Curator of the 
 Metropolitan Museum of Art, in whose pri- 
 vate ofhce the painting has been placed for 
 safe-keeping, left us for a moment, and, re- 
 turning, placed an admirable copy of Gilbert 
 Stuart's " Washington " upon a chair in a 
 line with Hudson's picture. A simultaneous 
 
THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 167 
 
 exclamation broke from all present. As the 
 most skeptical among us afterward confessed, 
 — it was like " Q. E. D." ! 
 
 A hundred times since I began this Story 
 have the two faces, as I then beheld them, 
 passed between me and the paper. Gravely 
 meditative, with the subtle intimation of 
 repressed power in every lineament, and the 
 nameless pensiveness bespeaking a strait- 
 ening of soul until a great, overshadowing 
 destiny be accomplished, — these link them 
 together in my memory, and to my appre- 
 hension proclaim them to be of one blood 
 and one spirit. 
 
 However much of this may be fantasy 
 and how much truth, there is no doubt that 
 the attributes which made the greatest 
 American what all ages will acknowledge 
 him to have been were set like type of 
 purest metal in the plastic nature of the 
 " big boy " by her who has slept for over a 
 century upon, the consecrated knoll over- 
 looking the Rappahannock valley. 
 
 Spontaneous generation of virtue is no 
 more a possibility than that physical life 
 
1 68 THE STORY OF MARY WASHINGTON 
 
 should be self-quickened. Washington was 
 not an abnormal product of chance elements, 
 but the natural and glorious upspringing 
 and fruit-bearing, after its kind, of good seed 
 cast into good ground. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 THE WILL OF MARY WASHINGTON, AS REGISTERED IN 
 THE clerk's OFFICE AT FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA. 
 
 In the name of God ! Amen ! I, Mary Wash- 
 ington, of Fredericksburg in the County of Spotsyl- 
 vania, being in good health, but calling to mind the 
 uncertainty of this life, and willing to dispose of what 
 remains of my worldly estate, do make and publish 
 this, my last will, recommending my soul into the 
 hands of my Creator, hoping for a remission of all 
 my sins through the merits and mediation of Jesus 
 Christ, the Saviour of mankind ; I dispose of my 
 worldly estate as follows: 
 
 Imprimis. — I give to my son, General George 
 Washington, all my land in Accokeek Run, in the 
 County of Stafford, and also my negro boy George, 
 to him and his heirs forever. Also my best bed, 
 bedstead, and Virginia cloth curtains (the same that 
 stands in my best bed-room), my quilted blue and 
 white quilt and my. best dressing-glass. 
 
 Item. — I give and devise to my son, Charles 
 Washington, my negro man Tom, to him and his 
 assigns forever. 
 
170 APPENDIX 
 
 Item. — I give and devise to my daughter Bettie 
 Lewis, ray pliaeton and my bay horse. 
 
 Item. — I give and devise to my daughter-in-law, 
 Hannah Washington, my purple cloth cloak lined 
 with shag. 
 
 Item. ^ I give and devise to my grandson, Corbin 
 Washington, my negro wench, old Bet, my riding 
 chair, and two black horses, to him and his assigns 
 forever. 
 
 Item. — I give and devise to my grandson. Fielding 
 Lewis, my negro man Frederick, to him and his as- 
 signs forever, also eight silver tablespoons, half of my 
 crockery ware and the blue and white tea china, with 
 book case, oval table, one bedstead, one pair sheets, 
 one pair blankets and white cotton counterpain, two 
 table cloths, six red leather chairs, half my peuter and 
 one half of my kitchen furniture. 
 
 Item.- — I give and devise to my grandson, Law- 
 rence Lewis, my negro wench Lydia, to him and his 
 assigns forever. 
 
 Item. — I give and devise to my granddaughter, 
 Bettie Curtis, my negro woman, little Bet, and her 
 future increase, to her and her assigns forever. Also 
 my largest looking-glass, my walnut writing desk and 
 drawers, a square dining-table, one bed, bedstead, 
 bolster, one pillow, one blanket and pair sheets, white 
 Virginia cloth counterpains and purple curtains, my 
 red and white tea china, teaspoons, and the other half 
 of my peuter and crockeryware, and the remainder of 
 my iron kitchen furniture. 
 
APPENDIX 171 
 
 Item. — I give and devise to my grandson, George 
 Washington, my next best glass, one bed, bedstead, 
 bolster, one pillow, one pair sheets, one blanket and 
 counterpain. 
 
 Item. — I devise all my wearing apparel to be 
 equally divided between my granddaughters, Bettie 
 Curtis, Fannie Ball, and Milly Washington, — but 
 should my daughter, Bettie Lewis, fancy any one two 
 or three articles, she is to have them before a division 
 thereof. 
 
 Lastly, I nominate and appoint my said son. Gen- 
 eral George Washington, executor of this, my will, and 
 as I owe few or no debts, I direct my executor to give 
 no security or appraise my estate, but desire the same 
 may be allotted to my devisees, with as little trouble 
 and delay as may be, desiring their acceptance thereof 
 as all the token I now have to give them of my love 
 for them. 
 
 In witness thereof, I have hereunto set my hand 
 and seal the 20th day of May, 1788. 
 
 Mary Washington. 
 Witness, John Ferneyhough. 
 
 Signed, sealed, and published in the presence of 
 the said Mary Washington and at her desire. 
 
 Jno. Mercer, 
 
 Joseph Walker.