Martha Washington (39 page)

166 “but that plainness”:
Stewart Mitchell, ed.,
New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788-1801
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), 13.

167 “a singular example”:
Ibid., 15.

167 “My station is always”:
Ibid., 34-35.

169 “After it, I had the honour”:
Decatur, 123-24.

170 “first care”:
Fields, 215.

172 “an indecent representation”:
Edgar S. Maclay, ed.,
Journal of William Maclay
(New York: D. Appleton, 1890), 30-31.

172 “order their Servants”:
Frank Monaghan and Marvin Lowenthal,
This Was New York: The Nation's Capital in 1789
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Duran, 1943), 123.

173 “Give sweet little Maria” and all the other quotations on this page:
Fields, 217.

174 “in the windings of a forest obscured”:
Patricia Brady, ed.,
George Washington's Beautiful Nelly: The Letters of Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis to Elizabeth Bordley Gibson, 1794-1851
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 19.

174 “does not Love the water”:
Adams Family
, 29-30.

174 “the shrubs were trifling”:
DGW
, 5:458.

174 “a most Beautifull day”:
Adams Family
, 29-30.

175 “on terms of much sociability”:
Ibid.

175 “It would be hard”:
Fields, 266.

175 “I live a very dull life”:
Ibid., 220.

176 “I have been so long accustomed”:
Ibid., 230.

176 “I am persuaded”:
Ibid., 223.

176 “As my grand children”:
Ibid., 224.

177 “disorderd state of my Head”:
PGWPS
, 4:407.

177 “public characters” and all other quotations on this page:
Adams Family
, 34-35.

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

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

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

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

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

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R. W. G. Vail, ed., “A Dinner at Mount Vernon: From the Unpublished Journal of Joshua Brookes (1773-1859),”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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

194 “spirit of party”:
Ibid.

198 “like a philosopher”:
Fields, 250.

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

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

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

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

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

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

200 “so full of Ice”:
Ibid.

203 “I hope when Nelly”:
Ibid., 282.

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

203 “The old gentleman”:
Ibid., 259.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

211 “May the members”:
Ibid., 35:397.

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

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

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

214 “We once more”:
Fields, 304.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

224 “views with gratitude”:
Fields, 344.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

229 “for the last dress.”:
Ibid.

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

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

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

234 “a hard husband”:
Vail, 81-82.

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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