Martha Washington

• Martha Washington
• Born: June 2, 1731
• Birthplace: Chestnut Grove plantation, New Kent County, Virginia
• Died: May 22, 1802
• Place of death: Mount Vernon, Virginia

President:George Washington 1789–1797

Overview

Martha Washington remains one of the most admired women in US history. As the wife of George Washington, her status as heroine of the early Republic is assured. Yet, to most people, Martha remains a distant figure about whom little is known in detail outside of her marriage to “The Father of His Country.” Nevertheless, Martha not only was a complex and intriguing person in her own right but also accomplished much as a partner in her husband’s public career, as his lifelong hostess, supporter, and confidante. As the spouse of the new nation’s first president, her actions framed the First Ladyship.

Early Life

Martha was the first of six children born to John and Frances Dandridge. She was born on June 2, 1731, at Chestnut Grove, the two-story Dandridge family home in New Kent County, Virginia. Her father, a county clerk, owned a successful five-hundred-acre plantation on the edge of the Pamunkey River in eastern Tidewater Virginia. The family was prosperous, and Martha’s upbringing put her in contact with members of the Tidewater aristocracy. Although the Dandridges were not among the upper echelons of the colony’s elite families, they were a part of what has been described as Virginia’s “lesser aristocracy.”

Martha’s paternal lineage, the Dandridges, can be traced to the Oxfordshire region of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the late seventeenth century, however, several sons and grandsons of the farming family had done well for themselves. In the year 1715, two descendants of the Dandridge clan decided to pursue their dreams in America. The two—William Dandridge and his younger brother John—found success in Virginia as merchants and landowners. John Dandridge later married Frances Jones, whose family came from a line of well-respected preachers. Unlike her husband, John, Frances had been born in the colony. Her grandfather, the Reverend Rowland Jones, had emigrated from England to establish a ministry in Virginia.

Not much is known about Martha’s childhood, but it appears that her youth was happy and normal for a girl of her time and social class. Martha had brown hair and hazel eyes, and she grew to a height of approximately five feet. Martha seems to have been quite vivacious and spirited as a youth. She liked horses and was said to have been a proficient horseback rider. At age fifteen she was a society belle who had been to the governor’s palace in Williamsburg. Given her family’s status and her father’s involvement in civic affairs, Martha would have been exposed to politics while growing up. She would also have had ample experience with the art of social hosting during her family’s visits to Williamsburg for the social season.

Like most girls raised in the eighteenth century, Patsy, as she was nicknamed, did not have the benefit of a formal education. Her education was at home and might have been supplemented by traveling tutors who frequently lent their services to affluent families in the region. Stressing practicality, Martha’s education focused on domesticity and the social graces, the two pillars in the lives of girls of her social standing. She learned to embroider and sew, studied music and played the spinet, danced, and was taught to cook and manage a household. Little else is known about young Martha’s education, except that it also involved religion. Her father was a church elder and her mother came from a line of preachers. Consequently, Martha was an active churchgoer and was raised in a Christian home.

Martha enjoyed reading and was a reasonably astute observer of the events of her day. Surviving letters from her adult years show her to have been a phonetic speller, which was normal for colonial times. Martha was so self-conscious about her poor grammar that, later in life, she often asked George Washington to pen on her behalf those letters requiring formality. Her upbringing instilled in Martha strong principles, and she became much admired for her proper manners and resolve. Many of her contemporaries were moved to comment on Martha’s charm and warmth. Regardless of her lack of a formal education, Martha’s youth seems to have prepared her well for the challenges she faced throughout her life.

Marriage and Family

It can safely be assumed that young Martha Dandridge would have attracted many suitors. While still a teenager she caught the eye of Daniel Parke Custis, one of the colony’s most eligible bachelors and son of one of its wealthiest citizens. Daniel Custis had been born in 1711, which made him twenty years Martha’s senior. Because both worshiped at St. Peter’s Church and lived in the same county, however, Custis likely knew Martha from her youth. In fact, Custis was a deacon of the church. The Dandridges were members of the congregation and, as a child, Martha frequently played at the church.

At the time Martha and Daniel courted, the Custis family reigned much higher on the social ladder than did the Dandridges. Daniel’s notoriously difficult and domineering father opposed the union, in part because he deemed Martha’s family not wealthy enough for his son, who, in his late thirties, had still not married. Daniel’s father even threatened to remove him as heir to the Custis tobacco fortune. That Daniel Custis still courted young Martha suggests something impressive about her. That the teenage Martha was able to calm the elder Custis’s reservations about the marriage implies she was a confident young woman. Martha and Daniel were married in 1749 at the Custis family home, known, ironically, as the White House. The marriage produced four children: Daniel Parke II (1751–1754), Frances Parke (1753–1757), John Parke (1754–1781), and Martha Parke (1755–1773).

Sadly, Martha’s first two children died in infancy. These years must have been trying times for Martha, as her father, two of her children, and her husband all died within a few years of one another. Daniel Custis had often been sick and passed away during their eighth year of marriage. In 1757, Martha, then twenty-six years old, found herself a widow with two infant children. Both her father and her father-in-law had died a few years prior to her husband, leaving Martha in charge of one of the largest, most prosperous plantations in the colony. To add to her challenge, Daniel Custis had, for unknown reasons, failed to prepare a will, and a complicated lawsuit hung over the family business. Martha endured, maintaining her late husband’s business affairs in England and overseeing the plantation. She was wise enough to accept the counsel of the colony’s most celebrated attorneys and political leaders throughout this ordeal. Martha deserves credit, as the legal matter was resolved and the plantation profited. A year after her husband’s death Martha was mistress of one of Virginia’s largest and most prosperous plantations, two mansions, an abundant slave labor force, and thousands of acres of the colony’s choicest land. She was arguably the wealthiest woman in Virginia.

It was around this same time that fellow Virginian George Washington entered Martha’s life. Washington had recently achieved the rank of colonel and was making a name for himself. Given the prevailing social expectations of the time, it would thus seem that George was a great catch for Martha, as young widows were expected to remarry. Martha was likewise a good spouse for young Washington. George was a highly ambitious young man who had been unlucky in love and long dreamed of becoming a gentleman planter like the wealthy neighbors whom he so admired. The exact details of their meeting remain unknown, although it is likely that Martha and George knew of each other through their mutual Tidewater society connections and may even have met in Williamsburg. One story, given by Martha’s grandson years after her death, suggests that when George was traveling to Williamsburg on business he encountered a neighbor by the name of Chamberlayne, a prominent citizen of the region, who invited George to join him for dinner. Washington is said to have declined, but on Chamberlayne’s insistence the young colonel dined with Chamberlayne and his other guest, the widow Custis.

By 1758, the two were courting. George and Martha married on January 6, 1759, at the White House, the home she had inherited. Under the laws governing marriage and property, George secured for himself not merely a bride but a vast fortune and extensive land holdings, and he began his life as a gentleman planter. The union was a productive one, with the newlyweds sharing many similar interests. Both were dependable, worked hard, valued a solid reputation and social appearances, and refrained from many of the social vices so common among the aristocratic class. So too did they value their home and family life, despite their frustration at not having children together. Martha’s two surviving children, John Parke, who was known as Jacky, and Martha Parke, nicknamed Patsy, were raised as if they were George’s children.

Shortly after their wedding, the Washingtons moved into Mount Vernon, the home George was renting from the widow of his deceased half brother and would soon own. Their beloved Mount Vernon would become the centerpiece of the Washingtons’ lives for the four decades of their marriage. Whatever passion the Washington marriage may have lacked was made up for in mutual respect and a working partnership built around Mount Vernon. George and Martha’s strengths and weaknesses complemented one another as they worked together to turn the estate into one of the colony’s most thriving businesses.

Although Martha’s main interest was always her children and grandchildren, she was a gifted hostess and, with her husband, an efficient comanager of the estate. Over the years, Mount Vernon would regularly host the leading citizens of the colony and, later, the young nation, and it was Martha who served as hostess. Ever humble, Martha once described herself as “an old-fashioned Virginia housekeeper, steady as a clock, busy as a bee, and cheerful as a cricket.” She enjoyed what has been referred to by Washington scholars as the “golden years” at Mount Vernon, the period between the Washington marriage and the start of the Revolutionary War, when her husband and children were at home and Martha played host and baked her famous “great cake” for their many guests.

This period of tranquillity and happiness was interrupted by the tragic death of Martha’s daughter, Patsy, of an epileptic seizure in 1773. Patsy had long suffered from the affliction, and Martha’s continuing efforts to find a cure had proved fruitless. Still in mourning, Martha was unable to attend her son Jacky’s wedding to Eleanor “Nelly” Calvert of Maryland the year after Patsy’s death. Martha did find happiness in her four grandchildren: Elizabeth “Eliza” Parke (1774–1781), Martha “Patty” Parke (1777–1854), Eleanor “Nelly” Parke (1779–1852), and George Washington “Wash” Parke (1781–1857). Mount Vernon was always a house full of children, and Martha welcomed the regular visits of her neighbors’ children and those of her relatives.

Perhaps because of the sudden deaths of her first two children and first husband, Martha constantly worried about the health of those she loved, especially the children. The many letters she exchanged over her lifetime with friends and relatives reflect her fears. In them, Martha dwells on everyone’s health, gives details of the illnesses of those around her, and discusses antidotes and cures. Not surprisingly, she was stricken with grief after her remaining daughter’s death from an epileptic seizure. Because of her fears, Martha was overly protective of Jacky, her youngest and sole remaining child. She therefore prevented Jacky from participating in the Revolutionary War until the end of the conflict, when it was agreed that Jacky would simply join George Washington as the general’s aide. Ironically, shortly after joining his stepfather in 1781, Jacky contracted a severe fever in camp and died.

The golden years of tranquillity and happiness at Mount Vernon were shattered by the momentous events of the American Revolution. George Washington had been serving as a member of the House of Burgesses in Virginia and had gained recognition as an able military officer in the years before the Revolutionary War. He was therefore among those chosen to represent Virginia at the meetings of the First and Second Continental Congresses in 1774 and 1775, where he was picked by the delegates to command the colonial forces in June of 1775.

The war separated Washington from his home for eight years, until he resigned his commission on December 23, 1783. Despite the interruption of her cherished family life at Mount Vernon, Martha was solidly behind the revolutionary cause. Indeed, as a symbolic public gesture, Martha adopted the practice of wearing clothing made in the colonies during the wartime period. She also made several long and often difficult journeys to join her husband at his headquarters in such places as Cambridge in Massachusetts, Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, Morristown in New Jersey, Newburgh in New York, and Annapolis in Maryland. These travels afforded Martha the rare opportunity both to see more of the fledgling nation than most women of her day and to demonstrate her commitment to the revolutionary cause.

As the war wound down, Martha dreaded the thought of a home without any children, so she adopted the two youngest of her four grandchildren. George and Martha certainly had the financial means to do so, the two children were still infants, and the practice of relatives adopting children after an untimely death of one of the parents was common. Little Nelly and Wash came to live at Mount Vernon, while the oldest two grandchildren stayed with their widowed mother, who later remarried. Martha was very close to the two grandchildren and raised them as her own.

Against seemingly insurmountable odds, the continental militia and their commander succeeded in defeating the world’s most powerful military, propelling Washington to the status of hero. Both the general and his wife were eager to return to private life and the comforts of Mount Vernon.

Presidency and First Ladyship

After only a few short years in retirement, the hero of the revolution was again called into service. The Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, had proven ineffectual for the challenges facing the new Republic. Changes were needed, and a new approach to governance was put forward. Because the public was suspicious of power in the hands of government, the advocates of the Constitution needed someone of Washington’s stature to lead the discussion and, in 1787, the drafting of this new system. Once again, duty would take George away from his wife and private life. Martha was understandably uncomfortable with her husband’s return to public affairs. So, too, was she concerned about his health, saying, “I think it is much too late for him to go into public life again.” Still, as she would do many times in her life, Martha placed her interests behind the call of duty.

Washington, the most widely respected man of his time, was chosen to assume the new position of president, which he did in 1789.

As neither the capital city of Washington, DC, nor the White House had yet been built, the inaugural presidency commenced in the temporary capital of New York City. As George had gone on before her, Martha departed from Mount Vernon in the company of her two grandchildren and a few attendants to join the president in New York. The trip was marked by much fanfare, as crowds turned out at each town to greet her, shouting “Long live Lady Washington!” So too was she celebrated by cannonade salutes and soldiers on horseback who escorted her to and from the towns along her journey. Once, while stopped in Philadelphia, Martha went shopping. Her presence attracted huge crowds, who followed her around the city. The trip from Mount Vernon to New York was even covered by newspapers, marking perhaps the first time in the continent that a woman was the focus of reporters’ attention.

Although she appeared surprised by the outpouring of adulation, she responded with humility. It was also during this trip that Martha made what was perhaps her first and only public speech. Recognizing the crowd, Martha is said to have stood in her carriage and thanked them for their appreciation. Her journey marks a point of self-awareness for Martha, for it was during this trip that she pondered the roles and expectations of the president’s spouse. The institution of the presidency was a new and experimental office without precedent. Even the title by which the president would be called remained uncertain, and mixed expectations about the office and the Constitution stirred among the public. In fact, when Washington took the oath of the presidency, two states had yet to ratify the Constitution. Yet, while much uncertainty remained over the exact nature of the presidency, the duties of the presidential spouse had not even been considered. Martha worried about how she would be received and what she would be expected to do. The leaders of the revolution, the American public, and foreign powers all seemed divided in terms of their expectations for the presidency. On one hand, a level of diplomatic protocol modeled on the regal courts of Europe was expected. Yet, others favored democratic simplicity, which they saw as more befitting the new experiment in popular governance. The result was a precarious situation, bound to complicate protocol, the burden of which fell to Martha as the social hostess.

Here, both President and Lady Washington deserve credit for fashioning ceremonies associated with the office that somehow managed to find balance between the two seemingly irreconcilable approaches. Martha’s social events struck a balance between formality and informality, pomp and practicality. Her socials helped lend legitimacy in the eyes of European diplomats and monarchs to both the new Republic and the presidency, while embracing an entirely new and American way of entertaining political guests. In spite of a lengthy and tiring trip to New York City, Martha found herself hosting on her first full day in the new capital. This set the tone for what would be a busy eight-year tenure and set a precedent for the presidential spouse that exists to the present time. Although she had not traveled to Europe and had no experience in the courts of Europe’s monarchs, Martha came to the office well prepared for the social tasks before her. As mistress of Mount Vernon, Martha had decades of experience hosting the leading citizens of the land. Moreover, she was acquainted with the standards of social etiquette. Lady Washington’s social receptions or “levees,” were held on Tuesdays and Fridays and were popular and well attended. Letters written by guests at these functions praise Martha’s abilities as a hostess and speak fondly of her as a person. In fact, Abigail Adams, an astute and demanding judge of character who was destined to be the second First Lady, said of Martha that she felt “much more deeply impressed than I ever did before their Majesties of Britain.” As the wife of the president, Martha hosted visiting dignitaries, met the demands of meeting an endless flow of ladies “calling” on the wife of Washington, and initiated the practice of holding an open house at the president’s residence on New Year’s Day, a tradition that would continue at the White House until 1933. The Washingtons worked hard at making the inaugural presidency work, and they took their responsibilities quite seriously.

The demands of the presidency were considerable. George and Martha were no longer young, and the president experienced health problems during this time. Martha wrote home to friends and family, “I have not had one half hour to myself since the day of my arrival.” In their free time, Martha and George attended the theater, dined out in the capital city, and visited friends; Martha indulged her fondness for waxworks and ventriloquists. She continued to attend church regularly, and the family found time to ride in their carriage. Martha’s two adopted grandchildren, Nelly and Wash, lived with her during the two terms of the Washington presidency, and George and Martha attempted to secure a good education for them. After a year in New York City, the Washingtons moved to Philadelphia. The relocation of the president’s home suited Martha, who much preferred Philadelphia and had numerous friends in the city.

Martha’s contributions to the presidency and the young nation go beyond serving as hostess. The four-decade-long Washington partnership, a marriage built on mutual respect, strong values, and duty, served them well during the presidency. Both George and Martha also seem to have been cognizant of the historic magnitude of the presidency. When George Washington suffered from severe illness while in office, Martha calmed him and demanded the president be allowed rest and quiet. Martha’s warmth and disarming, homespun manner balanced the president’s aloofness and formality. It is clear that George and Martha Washington represent the first in what would become a long line of presidential couples who shared a working partnership.

Through it all, Martha managed to remain rather unaffected by all the pomp and pageantry. She had never been attracted to public life and served only out of a strong sense of duty to her husband’s career and her country. In fact, during the presidential years Martha was much the same person she had always been. She was still an early riser and continued her practice of going to bed early. During social events she would announce that she always retired early and preceded her husband to bed; with that announcement, she would excuse herself from her guests.

Nor did Martha enjoy the presidential years, referring to them as her “lost days” and a “burden.” She appears to have been an unusually strong and resilient woman who took great challenges in stride. This was the woman who traveled long distances to join George at his winter encampments, dealt with the nearly consecutive deaths of her father, her first two children, and her first husband, and dismissed any threats to her safety during the war.

Nevertheless, she often complained of her unhappiness during the presidency. She was an intensely private individual who valued, above all else, her family and home life and who, like George, longed to return to Mount Vernon. Writing to family, she pined that she would “much rather be at home.”

Martha even dismissed her famous levees as “empty ceremonies of etiquette” and failed to join her husband on the dance floor during her socials. Indeed, the celebrated Lady Washington literally counted the days to when her family could return to Mount Vernon. Herein lies another illustration of the sacrifice Martha made in the name of duty. She disguised her feelings when in public and, as she had done her whole life, dedicated herself with resolve to her husband’s presidency, her country, and her sense of service and duty.

Legacy

The peaceful retirement for which George and Martha had longed was not to be: Mount Vernon would receive a steady flow of well-wishers and admirers. The Washingtons did have two years together at their beloved Mount Vernon. After catching a chill while out riding around his farms, George Washington passed away on December 14, 1799. His death drained Martha of much of the enthusiasm she had for life. The once cheerful Lady Washington was reduced to an extended period of mourning, much of it passed in isolation in an upstairs bedroom at Mount Vernon. Martha never again entered the master bedroom at the estate and, in an act that historians still bemoan, burned nearly all of the letters she and George had exchanged.

Still, even the general’s death did not bring an end to Martha’s public life. Despite her grief, she granted audience to those of her countrymen who came to pay their respects. Martha distributed mementos of her deceased husband’s life, such as his signature clipped from his letters, and, against her own wishes, acquiesced to the wishes of Congress for an elaborate funeral for Washington. She died roughly two years later, on May 22, 1802, of “severe fever.”

Martha Washington lived in the shadow of her husband’s greatness. However, she emerged as the most famous woman of her time. She can be credited with shaping the office of the First Lady. In particular, her actions forged a precedent for three roles still identified with the office: public figure, the nation’s social host, and confidante and supportive partner to the president. Martha’s legacy is one of duty and sacrifice. As not only the wife of Washington for four decades but his confidante and supporter, her legacy is interconnected with that of Washington himself. In the words of her obituary, to the foremost man of his times Martha Washington was truly a “worthy partner.”

Bibliography

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