America's First Ladies

How much do you really know about America’s First Ladies? This podcast takes a deep look at every woman who has served as First Lady, going chronologically and starting at the beginning, with Martha Washington. This is an easy listen, not like sitting through a boring lecture. These women led vibrant lives, and together, we can get to know them better. Each season is a long-form narrative covering the life of a different First Lady. New episodes released on Fridays.

Home at Last 09/12/2025

Episode 1.11 Home at Last 09/12/2025

Episode 1.11 Home at Last Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.11: Home at Last When we left off last week, George and Martha had returned home to Mount Vernon for good, after eight long years of the presidency. Just like after the war, they came back to a dilapidated estate in need of attention. Martha wrote, “We once more (and I am very sure never to quit it again) got seated under our own Roof, more like new beginners than old established residenters, as we found every thing in a deranged [state], & all the buildings in a decaying state.” She wasn’t exaggerating. The floor in the dining room was collapsing, marble mantels were falling off the walls, and everything needed a fresh coat of paint. George was once again happily absorbed with construction plans and planting schedules. He wrote to a friend, “I am surrounded by joiners, masons, painters, etc etc,. I have scarcely a room to put a friend into or to set in myself, without the music of hammers, or the odiferous smell of paint.” In a turn that we modern listeners will recognize, as soon as he was out of office, the press stopped harassing George. One observer wrote, “Although his opponents eventually deemed it expedient to vilify his character, that they might diminish his political influence, yet the moment that he retired from public life, they returned to their expressions of veneration and esteem.” Martha hired a local woman to serve as a sort of household steward, knowing that she was now too old to handle management of the housekeeping on her own. Eighteen-year-old Nelly was also an enormous help, entertaining guests by playing her harpsichord and singing, and tending to ill family members. Nelly also spent a fair bit of time with her sisters. Patty and Eliza were both living in the new capital, which was technically called Federal City but was starting to be known as Washington City. She also had many friends in Alexandria. Her grandparents figured she was much more likely to find a husband in one of these cities than hanging around Mount Vernon. In addition to George’s work repairing the house and working up crop plans, he spent a lot of time dealing with the properties he owned in the new capital, as well as gathering and organizing his official presidential letters for publication. And then of course there were the visitors. Mount Vernon had always received a lot of visitors, but George was more famous now than ever, and the tide of company never seemed to end. In July, George wrote to a friend, “unless someone pops in unexpectedly, Mrs. Washington and I will do what I believe has not been within the last twenty years by us, that is to sit down to dinner by ourselves.” In August 1797, George asked one of his nephews, Lawrence Lewis, to come live at Mount Vernon as a sort of deputy host. George needed more freedom from entertaining guests and thought Lawrence could stand in for him. Lawrence was 30 years old and a widower. His wife had died in childbirth, as had the child. In his letter to Lawrence asking him to take the position, George wrote, “As both your Aunt and I are in the decline of life, and regular in our habits, especially in our hours of rising and going to bed; I require some person (fit and proper) to ease me of the trouble of entertaining company; particularly of Nights, as it is my inclination to retire…either to bed or to my study, soon after candle light.” Lawrence accepted and came to live at Mount Vernon. In September 1797, Wash was expelled from Princeton where he had been “studying” for about a year. I put “studying” in quotation marks because he was as hopeless a student as his father Jack had been. George was exasperated with Wash, and after consulting with Wash’s step-father David Stuart, they decided to enroll him at St. John’s College in Annapolis, knowing that it was probably pointless. George wrote to the head of the school, “there seems to be in this youth an unconquerable indolence of temper and a dereliction to all study.” Wash would eventually be kicked out of St. John’s as well. On George’s birthday in February 1798, he, Martha, and Nelly attended a ball in Alexandria. Nelly spent most of that winter in Washington City, attending a number of balls, cotillions, and tea parties, some thrown in her honor. But Nelly wasn’t interested in any of the young men she met at these balls and parties, and she returned to Mount Vernon to be with her grandparents. The summer of 1798 was another tense one, politically, and quite nearly dragged George back into public service. Without getting too bogged down in the details, the government of France, which was still in the midst of its Revolution, was becoming increasingly belligerent toward the United States, seizing American ships at sea and refusing to accept the credentials of the American ambassador to France. The possibility of war between America and France was coming dangerously close. President John Adams asked George to command the American army once again. George reluctantly accepted, but said that he would take the field only if France invaded America. George spent six weeks in Philadelphia that summer, organizing the army. But thankfully, France didn’t invade, and gradually the threat of war receded without George ever having to formally go back to army command. When George returned to Mount Vernon from Philadelphia, he discovered that Nelly and his nephew Lawrence had become engaged while he was away. No one had seen this coming. Nelly was intelligent and vivacious, and Lawrence was not at all lively, but he was kind. Most biographers speculate that the fact that Lawrence was related to her beloved grandfather was part of the attraction, as was the fact that they would be able to live near Mount Vernon. If she had married someone from another part of Virginia, or even from another state, she would have had to leave her grandparents behind, and she couldn’t bring herself to do that. In a letter to a friend shortly before the wedding, Nelly wrote, “Cupid a small mischievous Urchin who has been trying some time to humble my pride, took me by surprise…in the very moment that I had…made the sage and prudent resolve of passing through my life, as a prim starched Spinster…& thought my Heart impenetrable he slyly called in Lawrence Lewis to his aid, & transfixed me with a Dart, before I knew where I was.” Nelly and Lawrence were married in a candlelight ceremony at Mount Vernon on George’s 67th birthday, February 22, 1799. George gave her away wearing his old Continental Army uniform. Per Virginia tradition, the wedding festivities lasted for about a week. Nelly and Lawrence then departed for a round of visits to family and friends. When they returned to Mount Vernon after a few months away, Nelly was pregnant. George offered them 2000 acres of land within the Mount Vernon estate where they could build a house of their own. In the meantime, they lived at Mount Vernon. Nelly gave birth to a girl November 27, 1799. Her mother and sisters came to Mount Vernon a few days before, when it was clear that Nelly was in labor. They named her Frances Parke Lewis, thus bringing the Parke naming tradition back into play. The girl was even nicknamed Parke, rather than Fanny, which was the usual nickname for Frances. Nelly’s mother had never borne children easily. She had always suffered greatly and taken a long time to recover from childbirth. And the poor woman suffered at least 20 pregnancies in her life. Thankfully, young Nelly didn’t seem to have as much trouble with childbirth. Within a few days of the birth, Nelly’s mother could see that Nelly was faring well, and she returned to Hope Park. Nelly was ordered by the doctor to remain in bed until she recovered from the physical strain of giving birth, which was expected to be a few weeks. But Martha was there to care for her. On December 9, Lawrence and Wash set out for a trip down to New Kent County to check on Wash’s estate lands there (the old Custis lands passed from Daniel Sr. to Jack to Wash). George stayed behind to work on some crop rotation plans for his own estate. By December 12, the weather was already cold and snowy, and George went out for his usual daily rounds on the estate, despite snow that morning, followed by hail and cold rain. He returned uncharacteristically late for dinner and didn’t bother to change out of his cold, wet clothes. The next day he had a sore throat but went out again anyway to supervise the removal of some trees. By dinner that evening, he was growing hoarse. Very early the next morning (more like the middle of the night), he woke Martha because his sore throat was worse, and he was having trouble breathing. She wanted to get up and call the doctor, but he wanted her to wait until the slaves lit the fireplaces. The house was freezing cold without the fires, and he didn’t want her to get sick too. When the house slave came to light the fire, Martha asked her to fetch Tobias Lear, who was once again living with the Washingtons at Mount Vernon and helping George organize his official papers. Tobias sent for the doctor, and Martha prepared one of her home remedies for sore throats. She had used this concoction many times for George and others in the past. But one of the primary ingredients was molasses, and George could barely swallow the remedy. As the day progressed, not one, but three doctors were sent for. George was bled with leeches repeatedly, which was 18th century medicine’s response to everything. Tobias seemed to think George had quinsy, which is a severe sore throat. They didn’t know this at the time, but quinsy is also called a peritonsillar abscess, and is a complication of tonsillitis, which is often caused by the same bacteria that cause strep throat. A pus-filled pocket forms near one of the tonsils and makes swallowing and breathing difficult. George had almost died of quinsy during the war. Later in the afternoon, George asked Martha to go to his study and retrieve his two wills. There was an older one written in 1775 as he headed off to war, and a new one he had just written earlier that year. He asked her to burn the older one. Other than fetching medicines and the wills, Martha was with him the entire day. It was at least the third time she had sat by what was expected to be George’s deathbed. George asked for Lawrence and Wash, but they were still in New Kent. George then asked the doctors to stop treating him. He said, “Doctor I die hard but I am not afraid to go. I believed from my first attack I should not survive it. I feel myself going. I thank you for your attentions, but I pray you to take no more trouble about me. Let me go off quietly; I cannot last long.” Later that night, around 10 pm, he said to Tobias Lear, “I am just going. Have me decently buried and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead.” After confirming that Tobias understood and would follow his wishes, George said, “Tis well.” A short time later, around 10:20 pm on December 14, 1799, George Washington died. Martha was sitting at the foot of his bed and finally asked if George was gone. Tobias lifted a hand in an affirmative gesture. Martha then said, “Tis well. All is now over. I shall soon follow him. I have no more trials to pass through.” You might have noticed that George’s last recorded words were instructions to Tobias rather than some sort of sweet farewell to his wife of more than 40 years. The records of what happened when George died come from Tobias Lear’s diary and some notes made by one of the doctors. It’s quite possible neither of them thought it was important or proper to record George’s parting words to his wife. George’s body was removed and taken downstairs. It was laid out on the dining room table, which seems like an odd place to put a corpse. Undoubtedly there was no other table large enough to accommodate George’s giant body. Martha never again entered the bedroom she and George had shared. Instead she made her bedroom a small room inconveniently located in the attic up a narrow staircase. From the window she could see the family burial vault. Over the next couple of days, Patty Custis Peter and her family arrived, as did Eliza Custis Law and her family. Nelly and David Stuart came with their children. Lawrence and Wash did not return to Mount Vernon until after George’s burial. Martha instructed Tobias to order a casket from Alexandria, and it was delivered on December 17. George was buried in the Mount Vernon vault the following day. Martha did not leave her room to attend the funeral, and Nelly was still confined from her pregnancy. It’s likely that they each watched the funeral procession from their windows. Helen Bryan describes the funeral in detail in her book, Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty. “The procession consisted of troops on horses and on foot, a military band playing a dirge, members of the clergy, George’s riderless horse with his saddle, holster, and pistols led by house slaves Cyrus and Wilson, dressed in black. The coffin was carried by Freemasons and officers.” The same minister who had performed Nelly and Lawrence’s wedding ceremony earlier that year also performed the funeral service, at Martha’s request. Tobias Lear wrote to his mother that he wasn’t sure the reality of George’s death had fully sunk in for Martha. “She has preserved the same pious fortitude. It afflicts me to see her. The world now appears no longer desirable to her—and yet she yields not to grief.” While it’s unknown whether Martha finally did give in to her grief and cry over the loss of her husband, it is known that she never left Mount Vernon after his death, not even to attend church. Government leaders attended a memorial service held in Philadelphia, along with more than 4000 other people. Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee, a Revolutionary War comrade of George’s began his eulogy, “First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life.” On December 23, Congress passed a resolution asking all Americans to wear a crepe mourning band on their arms for 30 days. They also passed a resolution to write a letter of condolence to Martha, wherein they also requested that George’s body be interred in the Capitol building. Martha was presumably grieved by this request, because it meant that she would not be able to be buried next to George when she died. But bowing to her sense of duty once more, she agreed to the request. Thankfully, the transfer never took place, and George remains in the family vault at Mount Vernon. Because George had no sons of his own, his heir had originally been his nephew George Augustine. After George Augustine died, another nephew named Bushrod Washington became his heir. But Martha had the right to control and receive the income of the entire estate for her lifetime. She and Bushrod stayed in close communication over various estate details, including selling off some properties and personal goods. George had decided to free all of his slaves in his revised will, the one he wrote not long before he died. This obviously didn’t apply to any of the dower slaves that Martha had inherited from her first husband Daniel. George thought that losing 123 of the total 300 slaves on the estate would be too difficult for Martha, so he stipulated that they would not be freed until after Martha died. And this is how George inadvertently created a situation where 123 people would be enormously better off if one old woman died. Abigail Adams visited Martha at Mount Vernon in December 1800 and later wrote, “in the state in which [the slaves] were left by the General, to be free at her death, she did not feel as tho her Life was safe in their Hands, many of whom would be told it was there interest to get rid of her—She therefore was advised to set them all free at the close of the year.” There was at least one documented incident where someone tried to set fire to Mount Vernon. It’s not known whether it was a slave trying to speed Martha’s demise, but it certainly made her fears worse. On January 1, 1801, just over a year after George’s death, Martha freed all of the Mount Vernon slaves subject to George’s will. Some of the freed slaves stayed at Mount Vernon to continue living with their families still in bondage, but some left. Martha was inundated with letters and visits after George’s death. Every letter was replied to, but Tobias and Nelly often wrote the replies on Martha’s behalf. The amount of mail was so substantial that Congress granted Martha “franking” rights, which meant she could send mail without paying postage. Visitors making the pilgrimage to Mount Vernon continued to be received graciously. Because Nelly was living at Mount Vernon, she handled a lot of the hostess duties on her grandmother’s behalf, but Nelly’s elder sisters and mother were also frequently on hand to help entertain the never-ending stream of well-wishers. In December 1800, the nation’s capital officially moved from Philadelphia to Washington City, and many government officials took advantage of proximity to Mount Vernon to pay Martha visits. Her old nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, had won the presidential election of 1800. One visitor in early 1802 recorded this account: “We were all Federalists, which evidently gave her particular pleasure. Her remarks were frequently pointed, and sometimes very sarcastic, on the new order of things and the present administration. She spoke of the election of Mr. Jefferson, whom she considered as one of the most detestable of mankind, as the greatest misfortune our country had ever experienced.” Martha made her own will in 1800. She could not bequeath any property or slaves to her heirs, but she had cash, bonds, investments, a plot of land in Alexandria that was a gift from George, and the contents of the house at Mount Vernon. She made such detailed bequests to her grandchildren, extended family, and friends that supposedly the only thing remaining in the house when Bushrod Washington took possession was a portrait of Lawrence Washington. Martha and the house at Mount Vernon continued to deteriorate throughout 1801. Nelly took over most of the management of the house, but without George’s meticulous oversight of the estate at large, things were slipping. Notes from the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association recount the following: “Visitors to Mount Vernon recorded disrepair and shabbiness, which reflected the loss of both George Washington’s strong management ability and attention to detail, as well as Mrs. Washington’s depression. One visitor noted about the stable that it had ‘nothing in its appearance very neat or remarkable’ and told of seeing a barnyard, ‘which is not very clean’ … a situation Washington would have abhorred. Of the furnishings in the mansion, this same individual remarked that ‘in general, it may be said of the furniture, chairs, carpet, and hangings, &c. that they had seen their best days.’” The same could be said of Martha herself. In early May 1802, Martha fell ill with bilious fever, which was an affliction she suffered from intermittently throughout her life. The term isn’t used any more, but in the 18th century it was used to describe any fever accompanied by nausea or vomiting. Often the underlying cause was malaria, and Martha had certainly had malaria more than once in her life. It was a common illness in colonial and early American Virginia. She was sick for three weeks, but seemed to know, much like George had, that this was going to be her final illness. Her relatives gathered with her in the small room she had occupied since George’s... /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37914470

Life in Philadelphia and a Second Term 09/05/2025

Episode 1.10 Life in Philadelphia and a Second Term 09/05/2025

Episode 1.10 Life in Philadelphia and a Second Term Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.10: Life in Philadelphia and a Second Term We left off last week with George and Martha settled into life in Philadelphia with little Nelly and Wash. Philadelphia was still the preeminent city of America. A French observer claimed, “It is certainly the most beautiful and best-built city in the nation, and also the wealthiest, though not the most ostentatious.” Abigail Adams described it as, “one continued scene of Parties upon parties, balls and entertainment equal to any European city.” Nelly was settled in a new school, but Wash was so lackadaisical about education that he was not eligible to be enrolled in a school, so a private tutor was engaged to come to the house for his lessons. A dancing teacher came to the house three days a week, and they invited other children to be part of the lessons, because dancing lessons work better with a crowd. In March 1791, George set off to tour the southern states. As a southerner himself, he had toured the northern states first so as not to show favoritism toward the south. Say what you will about George Washington, he always tried hard to be impartial. Martha was ill most of the spring. She had always had complaints of stomach aches over the years, but as she got older, she seems to have been sick more often. In March 1791, Tobias and Polly Lear had a baby boy. Back at Mount Vernon, Fanny gave birth to a second baby boy in June. They named him Charles Augustine. George Augustine’s tuberculosis was getting worse, and he was now coughing up blood. He took a trip to some warm springs in Virginia to try to improve his health. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t help, and by August he was so sick he could no longer sit on his horse, which meant he couldn’t effectively manage the estate. Martha and George packed up the children and they all headed to Mount Vernon. One of George’s nephews was hired to be the new plantation manager, and the family spent much time visiting with Nelly, David, and their children. This was the only time of year that little Nelly and Wash got to see their mother. The Washingtons were back in Philadelphia by October when Congress reconvened. The following February, a birthday ball was held in George’s honor. For some anti-Federalists, this was too similar to the annual celebrations of the King’s birthday that had taken place during the colonial years. Rival political factions were coalescing into parties, and 1792 brought a lot of discord into George’s life, and therefore into Martha’s life. On one side were Alexander Hamilton, who was still trying to get the new nation’s financial house in order, and John Adams. They favored a strong central government, a strong executive, and a decidedly British-influenced way of setting up government. On the other side were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who were still trying to undermine a strong central government and a strong executive. They were anti-British and pro-French. The French Revolution had started in 1789, and by 1792 France was veering closer to anarchy. But many Americans harbored favorable views of France thanks to its financial help during the American Revolution. George’s views were more in line with Hamilton and Adams, rather than with his fellow Virginians Jefferson and Madison. A battle between the factions played out in the newspapers. No one was criticizing George, per se, but by criticizing Hamilton, they were indirectly criticizing George. He was sick of it. He instituted formal cabinet meetings hoping that by forcing everyone to be in a room together they would be less venomous toward one another, but it didn’t help. George was already looking forward to retiring at the end of his four-year term in April 1793, and he informed Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Henry Knox of his intentions in the spring of 1792. They all begged him to stay on for a second term. Hamilton and Jefferson couldn’t agree on literally anything else, but they agreed that George was still much needed by his country. Hamilton wrote to George, “on patriotic and prudential considerations, the clear path to be pursued by you will be again to obey the voice of your country…I pray God that you will determine to make a further sacrifice of your tranquility and happiness to the public good.” George had a conversation with Thomas Jefferson in the fall of 1792 on the subject. Jefferson recorded (presumably in his diary) that George had said that if he was needed to “save the cause to which he had devoted his life principally, he would make the sacrifice of a longer continuance.” And George wrote to his aide David Humphreys, “Perhaps in no instance of my life have I been more sensible of the sacrifice than in the present. For at my age, the love of retirement grows every day more and more powerful.” It’s interesting that the word “sacrifice” appears in all of these quotes. George and Martha were ready to serve their country yet again, but they were very aware of what they were giving up by doing it. The electoral college met on December 5, 1792. There were now 132 electors, because Vermont and Kentucky were now states in the Union. George received another unanimous election to the presidency, and John Adams received 77 (a majority) of the votes for the vice presidency. We’ll have a lot more to say about John and Abigail Adams next season, but this quote from a letter he wrote to his wife after the 1792 election is too good not to include now. “The Noise of Election is over….Four years more will be as long as I shall have a Taste for public Life or Journeys to Philadelphia. I am determined in the meantime to be no longer the Dupe, and run into Debt to Support a vain Post which has answered no other End than to make me unpopular.” Early 1793 brought bad news after bad news. In January, Martha’s brother-in-law (and Fanny’s father) Burwell Bassett died after falling off a horse. And the French beheaded their King, Louis XVI, but the Americans wouldn’t hear about it until later in the spring because of the delay in trans-Atlantic news. The Queen, Marie Antoinette was beheaded later that same year. In February, George Augustine finally succumbed to tuberculosis and died. He and Fanny had moved with their children to her family home in Eltham hoping the milder southern Virginia weather would help. It obviously did not. And Fanny was also getting sicker from her own tuberculosis. Martha would have liked to go to Eltham to comfort Fanny, but she couldn’t leave George and Philadelphia. Also, it was winter, so the journey probably would have been difficult. George wrote to Fanny, offering her and her three children the use of either Mount Vernon or a house he owned in Alexandria. She chose Alexandria thinking it would be easier to manage the children’s education in the city. Martha sent her much advice for setting up a household, and offered her any of the housewares at Mount Vernon that might be useful to her in Alexandria. Martha and George both did what they could to support Fanny from afar. There was no big, fancy celebration of George’s birthday that February. Martha and George weren’t in the mood. They wanted to be preparing to move back to Mount Vernon, but instead they were embarking on another four years of public service. On March 4, 1793, George Washington was inaugurated into office for his second term as president. This time, Martha was there, along with their four grandchildren, Betsy, Patty, Nelly, and Wash. Almost immediately, things got complicated. France’s Revolution was turning into a full-blown European war. France was already at war with Austria and Prussia. In February, France had declared war on Britain and Holland; and in March, it had declared war on Spain and Portugal. America was caught in the middle between France and Britain. Under the treaty signed by France and the United States at the end of the American Revolution, the U.S. was obligated to support its French ally. The U.S. also had war debts that were owed to France. But the question of whether the U.S. should honor those obligations turned on what was meant by “France.” The treaty had been signed with, and the debts were owed to, the monarchy of France. Well, the monarchy was gone, and a French Republic had taken its place. All of the aristocrats who had personally helped America in its Revolution were now either imprisoned or being executed by the French Republic. Thomas Jefferson was firmly on the side of supporting the French Republic, while Alexander Hamilton, you might guess, was firmly against it. George wanted to stay out of the whole mess. The United States had neither an army nor a navy to speak of. He felt that they should avoid European entanglements, and to that end he signed the Neutrality Proclamation on April 22, 1793. Neutrality was unpopular with many Americans, but George held tight to his view that America should not get involved in wars that didn’t affect its own interests. Martha seems to have supported him in this. She never commented publicly on this sort of political matter, but made her feelings known privately at parties where politics was discussed. The summer of 1793 was a deadly one in Philadelphia. A yellow fever outbreak started in July, and by August it was killing about 50 people every day. By the time it was over, between four and five thousand people had died, nearly 12% of the city’s population. Polly Lear fell sick with a fever in July and died on July 26. She may or may not have been one of the first victims of the epidemic. People fled Philadelphia as fast as they could, if they had the means to. Congress and most of the cabinet had left, along with nearly half the total population of the city. George wanted Martha and the children to evacuate to Mount Vernon in early August, but she refused to go without him. George wrote in a letter, “Mrs. Washington was unwilling to leave me surrounded by the malignant fever wch. prevailed, I could not think of hazarding her and the Children any longer by my continuance in the City…[it] was becoming every day more and more fatal.” They all finally left on September 10 and headed to Mount Vernon. They spent the fall in Virginia, tending to the estate and spending time with Fanny and her children. Because yellow fever is mosquito-borne, cold weather put an end to the epidemic. Martha, George, and the children returned to Philadelphia in November. The city was much changed, with empty houses, failed businesses, and overcrowded graveyards. In January 1794, Martha wrote to Fanny, “They have suffered so much that it can not be got over soon by those that was in the city—almost every family has lost some of thair friends—and black seems to be the general dress of the city—the players are not allowed to come hear nor has there been any assembly.” I think we can all relate to these sentiments after going through the global Covid pandemic. Congress and many other prominent residents of Philadelphia refused to return to the city. Back then, people didn’t know that yellow fever was carried by mosquitoes, so they didn’t know that the cold weather protected them. They had decamped to Germantown, just outside of Philadelphia, and in Germantown they remained. So George rented a house in Germantown and the family temporarily moved there. Everyone, Congress included, returned to Philadelphia in December, presumably after the city had gone several months without anyone dying of yellow fever. On the political front, Thomas Jefferson had resigned as Secretary of State. His divisions with other cabinet members (and with George) over support for the French Republic had become too much for him. He was hard at work formalizing his political party. Instead of being called anti-Federalist, they would have their own name and identity. It was to be called the Republican Party, but don’t confuse that with the modern-day Republican Party. The parties and their names and beliefs will shift quite dramatically over the next two hundred years. On the home front, Martha and George enjoyed a visit in February 1794 from their granddaughters Betsy and Patty. Wash had finally been accepted as a student at a boys’ academy in Germantown, and Nelly was learning practically everything she could: French, Italian, English, geography, mathematics, history, drawing, painting, singing, and music. Martha and George were determined to give her every opportunity and encourage her in all the things. George ordered a harpsichord from England to encourage her musical talents. Although Philadelphia society was quiet that winter post-epidemic, Martha made use of the time by expanding her reading materials. She had always been a faithful reader of the Bible and the Anglican prayer book, but she started to enjoy works of history and novels. Philadelphia was the publishing capital of America, and there were many well stocked bookstores at Martha’s disposal. She also subscribed to a number of magazines, and read all the newspapers that George received. The formal dinners and Drawing Room receptions continued in George’s second term, but now there was an additional daily ritual where Martha would receive visitors in more informal circumstances between 11 am and noon. In the summer of 1794 George had yet another health scare when he had an incident while riding along the Potomac. He had taken a quick trip to Mount Vernon without Martha and the family. His horse had slipped on some rocks and he had wrenched his back in the process of trying to keep the horse from throwing him off. He was probably bed-ridden for several days, but he made no fuss about it, merely informing Martha about it in his regular letter to her. She was very worried about him and wrote to Fanny, “I have been so unhappy about the President that I did not know what to do with myself. Don’t let me be deceived….I beseech you to let me know how he is soon as you can and often.” Fortunately he recovered and was soon back in Philadelphia. The family never did make it to Mount Vernon that summer. Instead they went only as far as Germantown. Everyone feared a repeat of the previous summer’s yellow fever outbreak, but fortunately that didn’t happen. Instead, a rebellion broke out in Western Pennsylvania. Known as the Whiskey Rebellion or the Whiskey Insurrection, it was an uprising of whiskey producers upset by taxes on whiskey. They refused to pay the tax and attacked the tax collectors. George was not going to allow anyone to defy the federal government, so he called up several state militias in late September. He even put on his old uniform and was prepared to lead them into battle. Thankfully it didn’t come to that. The upstart rebels gave in without engaging in battle. Many arrests were made, and two leaders were sentenced to death, but George later pardoned them. The situation created an uproar among the anti-Federalists/Republicans. Newspapers in early America were more like propaganda machines than impartial reporters of events. Different newspapers were run by members of different factions. The Republican press was engaged in an all-out attack on George. Papers accused him of keeping the “seclusion of a monk and the supercilious distance of a tyrant,” of “harboring dark schemes of ambition,” of “political degeneracy,” calling him “a swearer and blasphemer.” George did not comment publicly on these attacks, but privately he and Martha were disgusted and irate about the exaggerations and fabrications. It was well known to both George and Martha that Thomas Jefferson had private involvement in the Republican press and encouraged the attacks. It led Martha to later call Jefferson, “one of the most detestable of mankind.” Tobias Lear had left his position as George’s right-hand man at the end of 1793, and by the fall of 1794, he had proposed to the widowed Fanny, despite the fact that she had tuberculosis. Tobias was in business in Georgetown, part of the new capital city still being constructed, and Fanny was living in Alexandria, just a few miles away. They married in August 1795 and went to live at a home George owned not far from Georgetown. With them were Fanny’s three children from her marriage to George Augustine and Tobias’s son from his marriage to Polly. As 1795 began, George and Martha were at the halfway point of the second term. As far as they were concerned, the end couldn’t come soon enough. They continued to be involved in family affairs as much as possible. Their second eldest granddaughter, Patty, was married in January 1795 to Thomas Peter, the son of a Georgetown merchant. Martha was unable to attend due to official responsibilities, but Nelly, who was now 14, was there with their eldest sister Betsy. Betsy then came to stay with the Washingtons in Philadelphia in the spring. George’s birthday was celebrated as usual on February 22 with a grand ball. It was perhaps not the wisest choice to continue this quasi-royal extravagance at a time when the partisan Republican newspapers were accusing George of harboring monarchical tendencies, but it was held nonetheless. According to an attendee of the ball, Martha was dressed in a fine silk gown but with no jewels or other ornaments, which contrasted sharply with the wives of foreign dignitaries who were “glittering from the floor to the summit of their headdress…such superabundance of ornament struck me as injudicious. We look too much at the gold and pearls to do justice to the lady [wearing them].” Political matters were as tense in 1795 as they had been in 1794. Despite being neutral in the European war still raging, Britain refused to accept America’s neutrality and had been seizing ships of commerce while at sea. John Jay was dispatched to England to negotiate a treaty with the British. When its terms became known in spring 1795, many Americans were outraged, believing that it was too generous to the British. The treaty was ratified by the Senate in June 1795, and as its benefits slowly became apparent, some of the outrage abated. In July 1795 Martha and the children went to Mount Vernon for a long visit. Nelly was now 16, and her mother was worried that she was being spoiled by her fancy life in Philadelphia as the president’s adopted daughter. She proposed, and Martha accepted, that Nelly spend the winter at Hope Park with the Stuarts. The elder Nelly and David Stuart now had 12 children of their own (soon to be 13), so Nelly probably had her hands full helping with her half-siblings. Shortly after her stay at Hope Park began, Nelly wrote to a friend, “I have gone through the greatest trial, I have ever experienced—parting with my beloved Grandmama. This is the first separation for any time since I was two years old. Since my father’s death she has been ever more than a Mother to me, and the President the most affectionate of Fathers. I love them more than anyone. You can guess then how severely I must feel this parting, even for a short time. I have been so long from My Mama that Grandmama thought it proper & necessary for me to spend this winter with her.” Nelly clearly had absorbed her grandparents’ sense of duty and honor during her years living with them. Martha returned to Philadelphia with Wash in October. The family spent Christmas 1795 at home in Philadelphia and held a New Year’s Day reception. In January 1796 Patty and her husband had their first child, Martha’s first great-grandchild, a girl named Martha Eliza Eleanor Peter. Nelly wrote, “Thus all the names of its nearest relations... /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37914430

President and Mrs. Washington 08/29/2025

Episode 1.9 President and Mrs. Washington 08/29/2025

Episode 1.9 President and Mrs. Washington Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.9: President and Mrs. Washington We left off last week with George riding from Mount Vernon to New York City to be inaugurated as America’s first president. Considering that he left a mere two days after receiving news of his election, it’s not super surprising that Martha didn’t go with him. They were essentially moving to New York for four years—you can’t just do that on a whim. On the other hand, it’s not like George’s election as president was a surprise. Even though the election results weren’t certified by Congress until April, news of the unofficial results filtered out to the country throughout the winter. Martha surely knew George was going to be president and that they were going to have to move to New York. She could have started preparing months in advance. The fact that she didn’t is in line with her general disinclination to go back into public service. But she knew it was her duty. In her letter to her nephew just after George left for New York, she added, “Our family will be deranged as I must soon follow him.” George’s planned route to New York was published in all the newspapers, and he was mobbed by people at every stop, beginning at Alexandria, a mere 10 miles from Mount Vernon. Hundreds of people gathered to see him and wish him well. Bruce Chadwick writes in The General and Mrs. Washington, “Crowds jammed every ferry stop he arrived at and lined the dirt highways that his carriage rolled down. Hundreds of cheering men, women, and children packed the village greens of tiny hamlets he traveled through, and tens of thousands filled the streets of cities. People shouted out his name with great joy and many just held their hands in the air, simply trying to touch the first president, the hero of the revolution, the great man.” When he reached New York, the crowds were overwhelming. One eyewitness wrote, “he frequently bowed to the multitudes and took off his hat to the ladies at the windows, who waved their handkerchiefs and threw flowers before him, and shed tears of joy and congratulations. The whole city was one scene of triumphal rejoicing.” On April 30, 1789, wearing a dark brown suit that had been made in Connecticut, George Washington was inaugurated into office as the first President of the United States of America. The ceremony took place on the balcony of Federal Hall in front of a large crowd in lower Manhattan. Back at Mount Vernon, Martha was preparing for her move to New York to support and be with her husband, just as she had done throughout the war. Only this time, it was a more permanent move. Fanny was to be left in charge of Mount Vernon. Her husband George Augustine was already serving as the estate manager, but she would be responsible for the household. She had given birth to a daughter named Maria in March 1788, and her husband was getting sicker, so she had her hands full. Martha left Mount Vernon on May 16, taking with her little Nelly and Wash, one of George’s nephews, and six slaves. She hoped for a quiet journey to New York. She did not get one. Her travels were every bit as celebrated as George’s had been. Once again, the newspapers printed her route, and huge crowds turned up at every stop. In Baltimore, there was a large fireworks display in her honor. Outside of Philadelphia, a contingent including the governor, state officials, and a troop of horsemen met her and escorted her to the ferry. She finally reached New York on May 27, and wild crowds gathered to welcome Lady Washington to the capital. The presidential residence, which also served as the presidential office, was a modern house on Cherry Street, three blocks from the East River facing St. George’s Square. The house is no longer there, but in 1789 it was a three-story brick home with seven fireplaces and a pump and cistern for water in the yard. It must have been a wild improvement over the cramped quarters of winter camps during the war. Martha seems to have approved, writing, “The House he is in is a very good one and is handsomely furnished all new for the General.” The house was on a busy street with lots of foot and wagon traffic traveling to and from the wharves along the river. Patricia Brady writes in Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, “The sounds and smells of the neighborhood came through the open windows—ships’ bells, rumbling ironclad wheels of wagons on the way to nearby Peck’s market, stray dogs, horses, carriages, street vendors, hogs grunting and rooting in the open gutters, stevedores unloading ships on the riverfront. In the country, noises and voices were familiar, and the arrival of a carriage represented the height of excitement; in New York, everything was new, and strangers thronged the streets. The children were entranced, especially Nelly. Martha wrote home that she ‘spends her time at the window looking at carriages etc. passing by which is new to her and very common for children to do.’” George and Martha were overwhelmed with visitors during the early days of the presidency. In a letter to David Stuart, George wrote, “I was unable to attend to any business whatsoever; for Gentlemen, consulting their own convenience rather than mine, were calling from the time I rose from breakfast—often before—until I sat down to dinner.” Similarly, Martha wrote to Fanny two weeks after her arrival, “I have been so much engaged since I came here. I have not had one half hour to myself since the day of my arrival.” It was clear that some boundaries needed to be established, and quickly. The main problem was that there was no existing protocol or precedent for any of this. Every single thing George and Martha did as President Washington and Lady Washington set a new standard. George’s schedule was formalized such that visitors not on government business would be received from two until three in the afternoon on Tuesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays from three until four, George hosted a reception, called a presidential levée. Any respectable-looking man could come see the president without an appointment during these receptions. They were very formal: George wore his hair powdered with a black velvet suit and dress sword. Each visitor was announced by the aides, and everyone remained standing. Once all guests had arrived, George would walk around the circle of men, greeting each one and chatting briefly. Then the guest would depart. Referring to this reception as a levée was Alexander Hamilton’s idea, and would come back to haunt them in the future. The term levée referred to a French court ritual and was used in France and England to refer to a reception held after the king got out of bed in the morning. “Levée” literally means “raised” in French and is used to refer to rising from sleep. This would later be used against George by anti-Federalists like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who thought George was tending toward too many royal behaviors. But we’re not there yet. Martha was expected to host two official gatherings per week: a formal dinner party on Thursdays and a “Drawing Room” reception on Fridays. To her astonishment, when she arrived in New York on a Wednesday, she discovered that a reception for the Friday two days later had already been announced in the papers. The Drawing Room receptions were held weekly whenever Congress was in session. Formally attired ladies could visit Martha without an appointment, along with their husbands, fathers, or other male escorts. We have an excellent description of one of these Drawing Room receptions from Abigail Adams, who was Second Lady because her husband John was vice president. Although, again, she wasn’t actually called that. When Abigail attended the Drawing Rooms, she would be seated next to Martha. She wrote this description to her sister after one of the August receptions, “I found it quite a crowded Room. The form of Reception is this, the servants announce & Col. Humphreys or Mr. Lear, receives every lady at the door, & Hands her up to Mrs. Washington to whom she makes a most respectful courtesy and then is seated without noticing any of the rest of the company. The President then comes up and speaks to the Lady…The company are entertained with Ice creams and Lemonade and retire at their lesure [sic] performing the same ceremony when they quit the Room.” The Thursday dinners were much more structured. Dinner began promptly at 4 pm and was never held back for a late guest, regardless of their position or rank. The guests were predominantly men, and sometimes exclusively men. Government officials, members of Congress, and foreign dignitaries made up the guest list. Martha usually sat at the head of the table, with George halfway down on her left. But if ladies were present, then Martha sat across from George. The dinners were two courses. A guest at one of the dinners noted that the first course included soup; fish roasted and boiled; meats; gammon; fowls; and pickled and fresh vegetables. The second course was apple pies and puddings, iced creams, jellies, and more. Fresh fruits were served at the end, including watermelons, musk melons, apples, peaches, and nuts. Beverages included beer, cider, and wine with dinner, ending with Madeira for toasts. The guest list for these dinners was tightly controlled to avoid any appearance of favoritism. There was usually a balance between northerners and southerners and between members of different political persuasions. Political parties weren’t technically a thing yet, but there were definitely political divisions. The old Federalist/anti-Federalist divide from the Constitutional Convention was still present. This divide reared its head in many circumstances, including the discussion of what title the president should have. John Adams (who was a Federalist) thought something royal-sounding was appropriate, to convey the president’s authority. Titles such as His Highness and Excellency were suggested. One source says that George preferred His High Mightiness because that’s what the Elector of Holland was called. One anti-Federalist Senator fumed that they were “determined on…all the fooleries, fopperies, fineries, and pomp of royal etiquette.” In the end, as you probably guessed, all the titles were rejected, and the House and Senate both voted to call the president Mr. President. Martha was to be known equally simply as Mrs. Washington, but the press and public continued to call her Lady Washington. Aside from the Drawing Room receptions and Thursday dinners, Martha’s ability to socialize was severely curtailed. Once again, because this was all new territory, George was making things up as he went along and trying mightily to avoid any appearance of favoritism. To that end, he had it announced in the papers that he and Martha would neither host nor attend any private gatherings. That meant she couldn’t even dine or visit with her friends, which was a limitation on her life that Martha was not prepared for. Martha’s fashion in these days was fine but not elaborate. A woman who attended a party with the Washingtons wrote to her mother, “Mrs. Washington was dressed in a rich silk, but entirely without ornament. Next to her were seated the wives of the foreign ambassadors, glittering from the floor to the summit of their headdresses…Such superabundance of ornament struck me as injudicious.” Abigail Adams described Martha this way after their first meeting, “[she received me] with great ease & politeness. She is plain in her dress, but that plainness is the best of every article….Her Hair is white, her Teeth beautiful, her person rather short than other ways….Her manners are modest and unassuming, dignified and feminine.” In a different letter, Abigail wrote, “A most becoming pleasantness sits upon her countenance & an unaffected deportment which renders her the object of veneration and Respect. With all these feelings and Sensations I found myself much more deeply impressed than I ever did before their Majesties of Britain.” Not long after Martha arrived, George had a serious health situation. He developed a carbuncle on his left thigh. I had to Google this to find out what it is—turns out it’s a pus-filled mass that forms under the skin, usually when a hair follicle gets infected. Gross. Also, it had to be cut out of his leg. Without anesthesia. Yikes. Side note: there’s a Sherlock Holmes story called The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, but in that case, a carbuncle is a gemstone. I don’t know how we went from carbuncle meaning pus-filled mass in the 1790s to carbuncle meaning an unfaceted gemstone in the 1890s, but it’s interesting nonetheless. My bookshelf dictionary lists both as a meaning for carbuncle, which is insane. Those things could not be more different! Anyway, the surgery was successful, but George was in agonizing pain during his recovery. There was some danger that he would die, and large crowds gathered outside the house on Cherry Street every day to hear news of his condition. He spent six weeks forced to lie down while the wound continued to drain. Even his carriage was altered to accommodate him lying down when he wanted to get out of the house. He continued working during his recovery, but his weekly levées and Martha’s Drawing Rooms were cancelled until he fully recovered. It would have been pretty awkward for him to try to receive callers while lying down. Another of Martha’s priorities after arriving in New York was to arrange schooling for little Nelly and Wash. Although their tutor Tobias Lear was also in New York, he was serving as an assistant to George and was much too busy to continue his tutoring duties. Nelly was 10 and Wash was 8, and their discipline when it came to studying was a weird parallel to their dad Jack and his sister Patsy. Jack had never been diligent with his studies, and neither was Wash. Whereas little Nelly, much like her Aunt Patsy, whom she never met, was a great student and loved learning and meeting new school friends. In the fall of 1789, Wash was sent to a small school where he could get a lot of attention, and Nelly went to a fashionable new boarding school as a day student. It’s not surprising that Martha didn’t want little Nelly to live away at school. She enjoyed having her grandchildren/adopted children at home with her. Martha and George also took advantage of living in a city with lots of things to do. They took the children to see many strange exhibitions. There was Dr. King’s exhibition of orangutans, sloths, baboons, monkeys, and porcupines. A “speaking doll” that was suspended from the ceiling of a temple by ribbon and answered questions asked by the audience. And there was a waxworks exhibition that included likenesses of the British royal family. Martha and George had always enjoyed the theater—you may recall during the war George gave special permission for the officers to stage plays in the winter camp to keep the soldiers’ spirits up. New York offered them a bounty of plays. One of their favorites was The School for Scandal, which they saw repeatedly. Patricia Brady in Martha Washington: An American Life writes, “One of the president’s more puritanical guests found the play, with its glittering dialogue, attempted seductions, and ill-natured gossip, ‘an indecent representation before ladies of character and virtue.’ That one remark says everything about the cultural differences between northern Presbyterians and southern Episcopalians.” On the weekends, the family would ride around town in their coach, sometimes going out into the countryside. Sunday mornings they would go to church, and Sunday afternoons were usually spent writing letters and reading. George still had lots of ideas for improving Mount Vernon, and much like he wrote extensive letters to his cousin Lund during the war, now he wrote extensive letters to his nephew George Augustine. Martha also sent many letters to Fanny at Mount Vernon and to her remaining family members elsewhere. After Congress adjourned in October, George set out to tour all the northern states. He wanted to listen to public opinion throughout the country. He took two aides and six servants and was gone about a month. Their first Christmas as President and Mrs. Washington was spent at home in New York with family. Due to New York’s Dutch traditions (it had originally been founded as New Amsterdam, after all), New Year’s Day was a major holiday. There was a special cake, oddly called a “New Year’s cookie,” and a drink called cherry bounce, which was rum or brandy sweetened or flavored with cherries. Don’t ask me how they acquired cherries in the dead of winter. Maybe they had been soaking in the rum and brandy since the summer. Actually, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. New Year’s Day fell on a Friday that year, so Martha’s weekly Drawing Room reception was packed to the gills with members of government, foreign dignitaries, and various citizens coming to pay the compliments of the season. When Congress reconvened on January 4, 1790, George gave an address to describe the state of the nation—something we now know as the State of the Union Address. It’s actually constitutionally required, but the details aren’t specified. Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 states, “[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress information on the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” George set a precedent by delivering the address in January; it continues to be delivered in either January or February in most cases. Until 1913, most presidents submitted their State of the Union in writing, but Woodrow Wilson renewed the tradition of presidents delivering their report in person in front of the whole Congress. The first time a newly inaugurated president delivers the address to Congress, it’s not an official State of the Union address, but it is delivered in person to the full Congress. By February 1790, the house on Cherry Street was overflowing with residents as George took on more aides and secretaries to assist him with government work. One of the most elegant homes in New York became available when the tenant vacated it. Congress took a one-year lease on it, and the official residence and office of the President moved to Broadway Avenue. This was a more suitable location anyway, because the majority of government officials lived in this neighborhood, along with several foreign diplomats. It was a four-story house with drawing rooms that were perfectly sized for the receptions held by the Washingtons. Their household also grew when Tobias Lear married his New Hampshire sweetheart, Polly, and brought her back to New York to live in the residence with him. Polly became a sort of social secretary for Martha, and was someone for her to have by her side as company on a daily basis. Early 1790 was a challenging year for politics. First there was a heated disagreement in Congress over whether a national bank should be established, whether the federal government should assume the war debts of the states, and whether government securities should be issued to finance this debt. George and Alexander Hamilton were in favor of all of the above (in fact, Hamilton was the author of the entire plan), while James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were vehemently opposed. By April, Madison’s group had won the battle, and then a new battle broke out over where to place the permanent capital. Hamilton, most New Yorkers, and most New Englanders wanted the capital to remain in New York. Another group was in favor of Philadelphia. And a third group, including Madison and Jefferson, favored a... /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37914400

Yorktown and Peace 08/22/2025

Episode 1.8 Yorktown and Peace 08/22/2025

Episode 1.8 Yorktown and Peace Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.8: Yorktown and Peace When we left off last week, George Washington had just left Mount Vernon after a brief stay and was headed toward Yorktown, Virginia, where General Nathaneal Greene was preparing to face Lord Cornwallis in battle. We’re in September 1781, just to reorient everyone. When George left Mount Vernon, Jack Custis rode with him. Jack had not enlisted in any militia or taken part in any battles. His primary concern during the war years had been fathering an heir, which he had now done. (Remember, in this time period, girls were not considered heirs. They could inherit money from their fathers, but they rarely inherited property, and any money or property they controlled would be turned over to their eventual husband. So only sons were considered heirs. Now that Jack and Nelly had a son, Jack apparently felt more comfortable going off to see the war and the camp up close. But George promised Martha he would keep her only remaining child far from battle.) During the three days George spent at Mount Vernon, 18,000 American troops had filtered south into Virginia from New York, and French Admiral de Grasse commanded a fleet that was sailing into the Chesapeake Bay to lend support to the Americans in the coming battle with Lord Cornwallis. The Americans and the French laid siege to Cornwallis’s army in Yorktown, bombarding the town with cannon fire for about a week, from October 9 until the 17th. On October 17, Lord Cornwallis sent an officer to Washington with a white flag to discuss the terms for a British surrender. Two days later, Articles of Capitulation were signed, and the surrender was official. It was the single greatest American victory of the entire war. More than 7000 British troops and German mercenaries were now prisoners of war. Although the war dragged on for another two years, Yorktown was essentially the final nail in the coffin for the British. It wasn’t all celebration after Yorktown though. It’s hard to overstate just how cramped and dirty war encampments were. Even though people could be inoculated against smallpox, there were plenty of other diseases they could not be inoculated against. And Jack Custis caught one of them. It was called “camp fever,” but it was likely typhoid, which is a bacterial infection of Salmonella Typhi. It’s transmitted through contaminated food or water, and is fatal when untreated. Antibiotics didn’t exist in the 18th century, so typhoid killed a lot of people, including Jack Custis. Fortunately, Martha and Nelly were able to be with him when he died. He had been moved from the camp outside Yorktown to his uncle’s home at Eltham. You’ll remember this is Burwell Bassett, the widower of Martha’s favorite sister Nancy. A note was dispatched to Martha at Mount Vernon, and she and Nelly traveled as quickly as possible to Eltham. They sat with him for several days as his condition worsened. Martha sent word to George, still outside Yorktown, to come at once. His diary for the day he received her letter stops mid-sentence. He jumped on a horse and rode all night, arriving at Eltham just in time to say goodbye to Jack. Jack Custis, the last of Martha’s children, died on November 6, 1781, just a few weeks short of his 27th birthday. Because they were in southern Virginia, he was able to be buried at the old family burial ground at Queen’s Creek, where his father was buried, along with his brother Daniel and his sister Fanny. Of Martha’s four children, only Patsy was not buried at Queen’s Creek. Helen Bryan was the only biographer to comment on the strange parallels between Martha’s first marriage and Nelly’s. Nelly was now a Custis widow with four young children and an estate to manage at the age of 23 after seven years of marriage. Martha had also become a Custis widow with young children and an estate to manage at the age of 25 after seven years of marriage. A few days after Jack’s burial, Martha, Nelly, and George returned to Mount Vernon. George was needed in Philadelphia to meet with Congress, but family came first. After spending a week at Mount Vernon, George and Martha left together for Philadelphia. Despite the fact that the British still held New York and parts of the South, the mood in Philadelphia was jubilant. People were still celebrating the victory at Yorktown when George and Martha arrived on November 28. The Washingtons spent four months in Philadelphia that winter, and they were busy. There were endless dinners, visits, and other social engagements. George was also occupied in meetings to discuss campaigns to come in 1782. Although people were talking about peace, until there was a treaty, they were still at war. In late March 1782, George and Martha left Philadelphia and went to Newburgh, New York, which is where the Continental Army was encamped for the winter. Headquarters was a small one-story house that was so cramped that the parlor also had to be used as a guest bedroom on occasion. Martha stayed in camp with George until mid-July. Informal peace negotiations were taking place in Paris between the British, Americans, and French, but nothing was settled. British ships had fought and defeated French Admiral de Grasse in the West Indies, but then, the British evacuated Savannah, Georgia in August 1782. No one really seemed to know whether the war was on or off. Parliament had voted against continuing the war, and a preliminary peace treaty was signed in November. In December, the British abandoned Charleston, South Carolina, but they still held New York. George went into winter quarters fairly early in October 1782 because the weather was uncooperative. He had been hoping to be back at Mount Vernon permanently by the winter of 1782-83, but no such luck. So once again, he sent for Martha. Winter quarters were in the same small house in Newburgh, and Martha arrived in December 1782. The winter of 1782-83 was full of departures. With peace imminent, George’s aides resigned and returned to their lives. The French troops also left and headed back to France. But George wasn’t willing to leave his post as Commander-in-Chief until peace was official. There was less for Martha to do than in winters past. There was no need to sew shirts or socks for the men, so she mostly entertained and worked on personal sewing projects. The officers and enlisted men had not yet disbanded. Most of them were still waiting for pay. In some cases, they were owed years of back pay. Neither Congress nor the states had really done much of anything to figure out how to pay these men for their service. The most obvious solution was to levy a tax, but taxes had been what got them into this war in the first place, so everyone was hesitant to do that. In winters past, there had been quite a few mutinies and near-mutinies by enlisted men, but in the spring of 1783, there was a near-mutiny by the officers. A pamphlet was distributed calling for use of military force against Congress to make them pay what was owed. George set a meeting with the officers for March 15. At this meeting, he successfully quashed the budding mutiny by reminding them what he, personally, had given to the war. Two books quote him somewhat differently, but I prefer this one from Patricia Brady’s book: “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray, but almost blind, in the service of my country.” The officers stood down. But unpaid troops marched in the streets of Philadelphia in the summer of 1783, causing Congress to flee to Princeton, New Jersey. George and Martha joined them there in August, after Martha recovered from a serious fever. The war was essentially over by this point. Preliminary articles of peace had been signed in January, and Britain had announced the end of hostilities in February. This news finally reached America in April 1783. Martha went back to Mount Vernon in early October, anticipating that George would follow not far behind her. He was waiting only for the final peace treaty to arrive and for the British to evacuate New York. Finally, in November 1783, word of the final peace treaty arrived in America. On November 25, the British finally evacuated New York, and on the same day, General George Washington and Governor George Clinton rode into the city at the head of a small, symbolic force. New York had been occupied by the British for seven years, and for every minute of those seven years, it had been George’s goal to reclaim it. We can only imagine how he must have felt when he finally achieved that goal. We know that George was looking forward to retiring from public service and returning to Mount Vernon because he wrote about it in letters to many people. There were rumors, of course, that he wanted to be king or some sort of military dictator, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Congress had convened in Annapolis, Maryland, so George traveled there in December to give his farewell address and submit his formal resignation. He also wanted to submit an account of his expenses during the war. You may recall that he had declined a salary when Congress first put him in charge of the Continental Army, and asked only that his expenses be paid. He also submitted for reimbursement of all the traveling expenses Martha had incurred going back and forth between Mount Vernon and the winter camps for eight long years. He had originally paid all those expenses from his own money, but he concluded that her travels to camp each year had been in service of the country and the army, and could have been avoided if Congress and the army had been in a less “embarrassed situation.” Because he couldn’t go home to Mount Vernon without risking the disintegration of the army, having Martha come to him was a justifiable public expense. On the evening of December 22, a grand ball was held in Annapolis, and on December 23, in front of a packed house, General George Washington delivered his resignation via a farewell address to Congress. In his own words, “I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.” George Washington was once again a private citizen. And as a private citizen, he was in a hurry to get back to Mount Vernon. He left immediately and arrived home on Christmas Eve 1783. It was a rather different home than the one he had left in 1775, and even different than when he had left it in 1781 to head to Yorktown. For starters, little Nelly and baby Wash, who were now almost 5 and about 2 ½, were living full-time at Mount Vernon and had essentially been adopted by Martha and George after Jack’s death. The elder Nelly had been grieving Jack and still recovering from giving birth to Wash when George and Martha returned to Mount Vernon after Jack’s burial. It was not uncommon for children to be raised in households other than their parents’, and although George and Martha never legally adopted little Nelly and Wash, they were commonly referred to as their adopted children. They would reside with George and Martha for their entire childhoods. Additionally, the elder Nelly had remarried in November 1783. She married David Stuart, a Scottish physician who practiced in Alexandria. Nelly and Jack’s elder daughters, Betsy and Patty, remained with their mother and step-father. They lived at Abingdon, where Nelly and Jack had lived, so they visited Mount Vernon often, and Martha and Nelly remained close. Beyond the changes to the family, Mount Vernon itself had changed in the eight years George had been away. Stables and outbuildings were in disrepair. Fences had fallen down and needed to be replaced. Gutters leaked. Stones in the driveway were loose. Windows lacked glass and were covered with wood planks. Most of the improvements George had planned before he went to war were unfinished. Despite sending his cousin and estate manager Lund Washington detailed instructions throughout the war for what he wanted done, eventually there was neither money nor workers to complete the work. While George resettled himself into the daily affairs of the estate, Martha was thrilled to have children in the house again. And she was finally able to honor her promise to her deceased sister Nancy by bringing Nancy’s daughter Fanny to Mount Vernon to live and enjoy the society of Northern Virginia. Fanny was now 16, and it was time for her to find a husband. As it turns out, she didn’t have to go far to find one. George’s nephew George Augustine Wasington was also staying at Mount Vernon. He had served as a soldier during the Revolution but his health was not good. He suffered chest pains, fatigue, and fever and was recuperating at Mount Vernon. He and Fanny took an instant liking to each other and were soon engaged. In May 1784, George paid for George Augustine to go to the West Indies for treatment. It was apparently clear to everyone that George Augustine had tuberculosis (which was called consumption back then) but no one seemed to think that was an impediment to his courtship of Fanny. He returned to Mount Vernon in May 1785, and he and Fanny were married in October that year. George Augustine also became Mount Vernon’s plantation manager because George needed help getting it back into shape. In addition to getting the house and estate back into good health, the Washingtons were inundated with visitors and guests. Strangers from around the country wanted to come meet the famous general who had won the war. Even visiting Europeans traveled to Mount Vernon to see the great hero of the Revolution. In June 1784 Martha wrote to her sister-in-law that she hoped to be able to visit her, but at the moment it was impossible for “the general” to leave home. “[H]e has so much business of his own, and the public’s, together that I fear he will never find leisure to go see his friends.” The Washingtons were also getting kind of old. In 1784 Martha turned 53 and George turned 52. Quoting here from Helen Bryan’s book Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, “The Washingtons’ joy at being home and resuming their lives at Mount Vernon was tempered by the effect on their health of eight years of constant strain, uncertainty, anxiety, difficult living conditions, and poor food. Both were physically exhausted. George was growing deaf, and he had very few teeth left ... .Martha, less physically robust than her husband, felt the cumulative effects of the years of strain, camp conditions, and the long trips to and from camp even more than George, but both were worn-out. In January 1784 she wrote a friend in New Jersey, Hannah Boudinot, that she very much hoped the Boudinots would pay them a visit at Mount Vernon because her ‘frequent long Journeys have not only left me without inclination to undertake another, but almost disqualified me from doing it, as I find the fatiegue [sic] is too much for me to bear.’” In April 1785, Martha’s mother died, and nine days later, her last surviving brother, Bartholomew, also died. Of the nine Dandridge children, only Martha and her youngest sister Betsy remained. At the end of 1785, a tutor for little Nelly and Wash joined the household. He was a New Hampshire native and Harvard graduate named Tobias Lear. They brought him on for a year-long trial as tutor, but he ended up becoming quite an integral part of the family. In addition to trying to get Mount Vernon back into shape, George was also involved in some work related to the western frontier of Virginia. Late in 1784 he had made a trip to his lands west of the Appalachian mountains—a journey of 680 miles round trip. He found squatters on some of his lands, and had difficulty extracting rent from his tenants who were legally occupying other parcels of land. He became interested in developing a company to make the upper reaches of the Potomac River navigable. This would enable the quick transport of soldiers to the western border of America, and also make trade easier. Because the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay ran through and bordered both Virginia and Maryland, it made sense for those two states to work together on this endeavor. George and James Madison were both involved in this from the beginning. In 1786, their vision expanded, and the state of Virginia invited all 13 states to a convention in Annapolis to discuss trade and commercial matters. Only 5 states sent representatives, but the discussions must have been fairly useful, because those 5 states then issued a joint call for a convention of all states to be held in Philadelphia the following May. There was another reason for the states to all send representatives to a convention. America was being governed by a document called the Articles of Confederation. The Articles had been debated at the Second Continental Congress and took effect on March 1, 1781, after all 13 former colonies/new states ratified them. The Articles of Confederation had a lot of problems. They put Congress in charge of the country, but gave Congress no actual power. Congress could not levy taxes, it could only request money from the states. And the states usually ignored Congress’s requests. Congress could pass laws but had no way to enforce them. There was no judiciary, and the executive was a figurehead elected by the members of Congress. The so-called United States of America were not at all united. It was obvious to many that a new governing document was required and that an overarching federal government that could supersede the individual states was necessary in order for the new country to survive. James Madison of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York were the loudest voices calling for a Grand Convention, and they basically begged George to attend. George was reluctant to be drawn back into public life, but he agreed that a strong central government was necessary. He was named a delegate to the Grand Convention at a preliminary Virginia convention held in Richmond. George left Mount Vernon (again) for Philadelphia (again) in May (again) 1787. It was starting to look like 1775 all over again. George rode to Philadelphia without Martha. She was busy at home, taking care of the house and children. She was also tending to Fanny. She had given birth to a baby boy in April 1787, but he died shortly after birth. She was still recovering from that, and also had developed a cough, which wasn’t surprising, considering that her husband had tuberculosis! On May 25, delegates to the Grand Convention unanimously elected George as president of the Convention. The original aim of the convention was to revise the Articles of Confederation, but the Federalists wanted to scrap the Articles completely and write a new Constitution. The anti-Federalists insisted that it was sufficient to revise the Articles. They fought over this until the end of July when the Federalists finally won. The delegates then spent the next two months hammering out the details of the new Constitution, finally adopting it on September 17, 1787. George left Philadelphia the next day, eager to get back to his beloved Mount Vernon. Each of the 13 states now needed to hold a ratifying convention. As soon as 9 states ratified the new Constitution, it would become the law of the land. The Constitution established the three-part government that stands today: an executive in the form of a president, a legislative branch with two parts, and a judicial branch. The exact duties of the president were vague, but everyone assumed George would be the first president, and they all had complete faith in him. George made it clear that he didn’t actually want to be president, which only made everyone want him to be president even... /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37914365

The Slog of War: 1778-1781 08/15/2025

Episode 1.7 The Slog of War: 1778-1781 08/15/2025

Episode 1.7 The Slog of War: 1778-1781 Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.7: The Slog of War: 1778-1781 We left off last week in January 1778. George and his army troops were in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania for the winter, and he had written to Martha to ask her to join him for this third winter of the war. Martha left Mount Vernon shortly after the birth of Jack and Nelly’s second child, Patty, and she arrived in Valley Forge in early February 1778. Obviously Jack and Nelly stayed behind, now with two little girls to take care of. It was a good thing too, because the winter of 1777-78 was brutal. Martha had to deal with excessively bad weather during her journey. The weather caused her and the 18 slaves traveling with her to spend the night at an inn on Brandywine Creek, and by the time they woke up the next morning, snow had made the road completely impassable for the carriage. So Martha, never one to let a major obstacle get her down, hired a sleigh to transport her, the slaves, and all of her supplies from Brandywine to Valley Forge. Presumably it took many trips to get everything to camp. The men cheered when Martha arrived, because that meant the fighting was paused for a while. It was literally the only thing they had to cheer about. Conditions in Valley Forge were deplorable. In letters to Congress, George said that without better provisioning, “this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things. Starve—dissolve—or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.” He later described the hellish first few weeks at Valley Forge, “men without clothes to cover their nakedness, without Blankets to lay on, without Shoes, by which their Marches might be traced by the Blood from their feet….Marching through frost & Snow, and at Christmas taking up their Winter Quarters within a day’s march of the enemy, without a House or Hutt to cover them till they could be built & submitting to it without a murmur.” Things were bleak. Some of the diaries of Continental soldiers have survived. Helen Bryan quotes one particularly vivid account in her book, Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty. “December 14…The Army which has been surprisingly healthy hitherto, now begins to grow sickly from the continued fatigues they have suffered this Campaign…I am sick…Poor food—hard lodging—Cold Weather—fatigue—Nasty Cloaths—nasty Cookery—Vomit half my time—smoak’d out my senses…Here all Confusion—smoke and Cold—hunger and filthyness….There comes a bowl of beef soup—full of burnt leaves and dirt, sickish enough to make a Hector spue….December 21 preparations are made for huts…Provisions Scarce…my Skin and eyes are almost spoil’d with continual smoke. A general cry through the Camp this Evening among the soldiers, ‘No Meat! No Meat!’ —the Distant vales Echo’d back the melancholy sound ‘No Meat! No Meat!’” It was so bad that the soldiers had to resort to mixing a little flour with water and cooking it on a hot stone among the ashes of the fire. They called them “ash cakes.” Thankfully firewood was plentiful because they were surrounded by woods. Besides near starvation and lack of clothing and shoes, illness was also running rampant through camp. Smallpox, dysentery, and putrid fever were the worst of it, but the cold, wet weather also brought on bouts of rheumatism. Horses died because there was nothing to feed them, and their corpses rotted in the open air. There were very few houses in Valley Forge, and the ones that were there were claimed by the officers. The men had to build their own huts to sleep in, 12 men to a hut. George was holding the Army together through sheer force of will, and constantly haranguing Congress for more supplies. This was the state of affairs when Martha arrived in February. If anyone ever doubts that Martha Washington loved her husband, just tell them about the time she voluntarily joined him in the filthy, pestilent winter camp at Valley Forge. George had taken up residence in a small house with lots of fireplaces, but not a lot of space. There was one reasonably sized room on the ground floor that was George’s office, and the sitting room for receiving guests. There was no dining room, so squeezing in 15-20 aides and officers every afternoon for dinner was a real problem. George eventually had a separate log cabin structure built where they could hold dinners. George spent most of his day with his aides and generals. They all dined with Martha at three in the afternoon, and then they went back to work. Martha had work too. She organized a sewing circle with the other ladies in camp, including Kitty Greene and Lucy Knox. They would knit socks, patch torn garments, and make fresh shirts. They would then go around to the huts and deliver the clothing items to those in most need. With 12,000 men in camp, there was no way a small group of women could knit or sew fast enough to clothe them all. Martha had brought a number of provisions such as ham, salt herring, and dried fruit with her to Valley Forge. In addition to distributing clothing, she would also sometimes deliver a bowl of soup or some other treat to the soldiers in the hospital. She also sat and prayed with the soldiers, especially the ones who knew they were dying and nothing could be done. Dinners at Valley Forge could not have been more different than the elaborate meals served at Mount Vernon in the early days of their marriage. Instead of multiple courses and six different kinds of meat, they merely had a piece of salted fish, a few potatoes, and spring water. Dances and balls were out of the question in the cramped and miserable quarters of Valley Forge, but on George’s 45th birthday, Martha managed to find some musicians and organized a concert. On other nights, the officers and their wives would gather with the Washingtons in the log cabin dining room and sing and drink tea. They also enjoyed several plays put on by the younger officers. As a true sign that Congress has always been full of men with terrible ideas, they had forbidden theatrical performances during the war, and had passed a resolution threatening to dismiss any soldier who attended a performance. As if they could spare the men. Knowing how counterproductive that resolution was, George gave permission for these performances to help with morale. There was one very fortunate thing about that winter in Valley Forge, and that was the sheer laziness of General Howe. If you recall, Howe and the British Army were occupying Philadelphia. They had plenty of lovely houses to occupy, lots of food to eat, and a glittering society to enjoy. They were only about 20 miles from Valley Forge, and we’ve seen the sad state that the Continental Army was in. If Howe had bothered to march on Valley Forge, he could have obliterated the Continentals and probably ended the revolution. Helen Bryan is blunt when describing Howe’s winter of 1778. “He was having a splendid time that winter in Philadelphia and preferred to spend the cold months there enjoying the company of his mistress, Mrs. Loring, the wife of one of his officers. It has been said no patriot could have done more than Mrs. Loring to prevent a British attack when the Continental Army was at its most vulnerable and that America has yet to acknowledge her invaluable contribution to the cause.” As winter turned to spring, the food situation in Valley Forge improved. There was a run of shad in the Schuylkill River that kept the camp fed for several days. And then the local farmers were persuaded to set up a market of sorts where the men could purchase food. This was a mild improvement for the farmers, because the soldiers had been stealing what food they could before this. But the payment was made in Continental scrip, which was borderline worthless. The army was also getting better at actually being an army, instead of a ragged collection of farmers and townspeople with muskets. This was thanks to Baron von Steuben, a Prussian soldier who arrived in camp shortly after Martha did. He was essentially serving as a drillmaster, running drills with the troops and whipping them into fighting shape. (Not literally whipping them, of course.) On May 10, 1778, George received very welcome news: France had recognized the United States as a country and had entered into official treaties of commerce and alliance. France had been secretly supporting the Americans ever since the Declaration of Independence back in 1776. France and England had been enemies going back centuries, and after losing to Britain in the French and Indian/Seven Years War, France was looking for a way to undermine Britain in any way it could. France had been selling gunpowder and ammunition to the Americans since the beginning of the war, and it’s thought that the American victory at Saratoga could not have happened without French aid. By signing a treaty with the United States and declaring war on Britain, France was now helping the Americans out in the open. One major advantage France could bring to the war was their navy. Britain’s navy was huge and world-renowned. America had no navy. French ships could now bring the battle to the British on the seas while the Americans fought them on land. George ordered a day of celebration on May 11. The treaty was read aloud to the assembled troops, the King of France was praised, there was a military parade and drill, and then an evening of celebration. The army could not have been more excited. One officer wrote, “I was never present where there was such unfeigned and perfect joy as we discovered in every countenance. The entertainment concluded with a number of patriotic toasts attended with huzzas. When the general took his leave, there was a universal clap, with loud huzzas, which continued till he had proceeded a quarter of a mile, during which time there were a thousand hats tossed in the air. His Excellency turned round with his retinue and huzzaed several times.” The British were considerably less excited to hear that they were now also at war with France. Worried about defending against the French navy, they decided to concentrate their forces in New York, which meant pulling out of Philadelphia. Sir William Howe resigned as commander, and he sailed home to England later that month. Sir Henry Clinton was now the commander of the British forces in America. On June 9, 1778, Martha left Valley Forge to return to Mount Vernon. On June 18, the British abandoned Philadelphia and marched toward New York. Within the hour, the Continental Army marched into Philadelphia and reclaimed the city. The American troops skirmished with the rear guard of the British troops all the way across New Jersey, and mounted an attack at Monmouth Courthouse on June 28. Proving that an army is only as good as its generals, the Continental Army had a plan for their attack, but General Charles Lee, who was leading the advance, retreated instead of pressing forward. George had to use his usual organizational skills to form the retreating Americans into enough of a force to stop the now-advancing Brits. When the fighting stopped, it was clear that the British forces had much higher casualties than the Americans, but it wasn’t a definitive victory. The British troops slinked off in the night, and that was the end of that. Congress returned to Philadelphia on July 2, just in time to celebrate the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Back at Mount Vernon, Martha turned to her usual summer activities of trying to get the house back into shape after her long winter and spring absence. While she had been away at Valley Forge, Jack had been elected as a delegate to the Virginia General Assembly, he and Nelly had purchased a property called Abingdon, which was about 12 miles north of Mount Vernon, and Nelly was pregnant again. France entering the war on the side of the Americans didn’t have the immediate effect that everyone had hoped it would. French ships under the command of Admiral d’Estaing arrived in New York in July, but the sound was too shallow for the ships to reach the city where the British were encamped. An attempted attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island was thwarted by bad weather. The French flagship was damaged, and d’Estaing insisted on sailing the fleet to Boston for repairs. Once back in fighting shape, the French left the New England area altogether and headed south to the West Indies to fight against the British there. Both England and France had colonies and sugar plantations in the West Indies, so even though it had nothing to do with the United States, it was part of the war as far as the European powers were concerned. By the fall it was clear that the war was not going to magically be over in 1778, and that George would spend another winter encamped with his army. In early November George sent one of his deputies to Mount Vernon to accompany Martha to Philadelphia. We don’t have a detailed account of her travels like we do for the prior year when she traveled to Valley Forge, but she didn’t reach Philadelphia until December 17, so there must have been bad weather and possibly other problems along the way. George and the army had made winter camp in Middlebrook, New Jersey. The conditions were much, much better than at Valley Forge. They were on the Raritan River, and maintaining a supply chain from Philadelphia to Middlebrook was reasonably easy. There also were mountains nearby, with plenty of wood for fires and for building log cabin huts for the men. Several rooms in a large house were secured to serve as headquarters, and there was plenty of flat land for Baron von Steuben to continue drilling the troops. George joined Martha in Philadelphia on December 22, and they spent the next several weeks in that city. George’s main reason for being in Philadelphia was to talk Congress out of an idiotic plan to invade Canada, which was something the French wanted to do but served no real purpose. On January 6, 1779, George and Martha’s 20th wedding anniversary, they attended a ball at the home of Samuel and Elizabeth Powel. They hadn’t been together for their anniversary since the first winter of the war in Cambridge in 1776. After finally convincing Congress not to invade Canada, George and Martha left Philadelphia on February 2 and went to Middlebrook to join the rest of the army in winter camp. They lived in a brand-new, two-story house that was thankfully much more spacious than the previous winter’s headquarters. The winter of 1778-79 was also fairly mild, weather-wise. Food wasn’t exactly plentiful, but the situation was not as dire as the year before. A typical dinner with the General and Lady Washington was likely to be ham and roast beef, some greens or beans, and maybe even apple pie if the cook was amenable. While Martha was still in Middlebrook with George, Nelly gave birth to another daughter on March 21, 1779. They named her Eleanor Parke Custis, and in typical confusing fashion, decided to call her Nelly. So now we have Nelly and baby Nelly on the scene. The rest of the spring was relatively quiet, but in early June, the British finally moved up out of New York City and were sailing up the Hudson River. Martha left Middlebrook for Mount Vernon, and George led the army into upstate New York to protect West Point and other key locations on the Hudson. When Martha returned to Mount Vernon, she took over the care of baby Nelly. All of Nelly’s pregnancies and births had been hard on her, and this one seems to have been particularly difficult. Months after the birth she was still not well enough to take care of the baby. Martha still hoped to bring her niece Fanny to live with her at Mount Vernon—you’ll recall this is her sister Nancy’s daughter, and she had promised to bring up the girl properly after Nancy died. But between taking care of baby Nelly and the ongoing war and her annual visits to winter camp, it just was never the right time to bring Fanny to northern Virginia. The war still wasn’t going great, despite the involvement of the French, and also the Spanish, who had entered the war as an ally of France. The Brits captured two important garrisons along the Hudson River. New Haven, Fairfield, and Norwalk, all in Connecticut, had been burned to the ground by British troops. In the fall of 1778, Savannah, Georgia had been taken by the British. In October 1779, the French Admiral d’Estaing and the French fleet attempted to retake Savannah, but failed and retreated to the West Indies once again. It was by now assumed that Martha would join George in the winter camp, wherever it would be. In an effort to avoid the difficult, snowy travels of years past, they began preparations in November. Martha returned baby Nelly and her nurse to Jack and Nelly at Abingdon and set out for New Jersey in late November. Winter quarters were to be in Morristown, where they had also spent the winter of 1776-77. Martha only made it as far as Philadelphia in early December before the weather made the continuation of her journey impossible. That winter was one of the snowiest on record. Twenty-six storms hit the Atlantic states that season, and six of them qualified as blizzards. It was also bitter cold, with temperatures dropping well below zero. The Delaware River froze over in December and stayed frozen until March. Baltimore Harbor froze over, and for the only time in recorded history, New York Harbor (which is very deep) froze over. The British were able to ride across the Hudson River on horseback. Martha and George were forced to spend Christmas apart because she was still stuck in Philadelphia. She finally made it to Morristown right around New Year’s Eve. The camp brought back memories of Valley Forge two years prior. Still not enough food, still not enough clothing. It had taken the men the whole month of December to build log cabins to house themselves, due to all the snow. It’s a miracle that the whole army didn’t just give up and go home. The Washingtons were housed in another too-small house. It was called the Ford House, and Mrs. Ford remained in the house along with her servants. So two sets of servants were trying to use one kitchen. George and Martha used one of the upstairs bedrooms, and all of his aides shared the other upstairs bedroom. Mrs. Ford and her children lived downstairs in the parlor, and George used a small downstairs room as his office. It was cramped, to say the least. Martha found it more difficult than usual to cheer up George that winter. This was the fifth winter of the war. There were no major accomplishments to point to, and the French had not proved very useful. The persistent shortages of food and clothing, despite George’s constant begging to Congress to send supplies, was wearing him down. On December 15, George had written to Congress, “our prospects are infinitely worse than they have been at any period of the war….unless some expedient can be instantly adopted a dissolution of the army for want of sustenance is unavoidable.” When things looked bleakest, George was able to convince the governing body of the county, called the Freeholders, that they needed to help. It actually seems that he threatened them, telling them that if they couldn’t convince the local farmers to sell the army all the cattle and food they had, he would declare martial law and seize it at gunpoint. Things were desperate. Thankfully, the Freeholders came through. The locals helped to clear the roads that were covered in between four and ten feet of snow so that the cattle could be herded to the camp. And the farmers sold all the food they could to the army, even though they were paid in nearly worthless Continental scrip. George had saved his troops and held them together,... /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37823895

1776 08/08/2025

Episode 1.6 1776 08/07/2025

Episode 1.6 1776 Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.6: 1776 When we left off last week, Martha, Jack, and Nelly had arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where George and the Continental Army had set up their winter quarters. I know I titled this episode 1776, but we’re still in the last months of 1775 as we pick up the story again. Army Headquarters and George’s residence in Cambridge were one and the same, and that’s also where Martha, Jack, and Nelly settled when they arrived. The house they were in had belonged to British sympathizers who had fled to Nova Scotia and was known as the Vassal House. George’s aides-de-camp stayed in the house as well, so it was a cramped situation. Once Martha arrived in camp, it was a signal to other officers to invite their wives to join them too. The Vassal House became the social hub of winter camp, with George and Martha hosting frequent dinners. There were also a number of visitors from other states who wanted to see General Washington, Lady Washington, and the Continental Army. Martha was probably entertaining in Cambridge as much as she had done at Mount Vernon, but in smaller quarters, with fewer provisions, and with less assistance from the house slaves. The enlisted men of the army were living in decidedly less comfortable circumstances, despite how crowded Vassal House was. They were set up in everything from tents to lean-tos constructed from boards and sailcloth. Conditions were bad but they had been even worse when George arrived in July. In The General and Mrs. Washington, Bruce Chadwick describes the scene that greeted George: “Disorder was everywhere. No troops were being drilled. Men drank all day. Gambling was rampant. Men who had never fired a musket shot themselves while trying to do so. Soldiers relieved themselves on the streets. Tents and huts were flimsy and shabbily built. Garbage piled up outside the tents and no one collected it. Officers feuded with each other. Men from city militias did not want to be housed next to men from country militias. Ethnic groups fought with each other. The Virginians did not like the men of Massachusetts and the men from Massachusetts did not like the Virginians; nobody liked the Pennsylvanians.” One observer called the army the “most wretchedly clothed, and as dirty a set of mortals as ever disgraced the name of a soldier.” There were no women in the camp, and therefore no one to do laundry. Men were letting their shirts literally rot on their bodies because God forbid they do their own laundry! Some men will do literally anything to avoid housework. George’s first order of business had been to bring some semblance of order to the chaos. Rules of behavior were implemented and enforced. Drills were held and the men learned how to maintain and fire muskets. The men built barracks, repaired wagons, and took turns cooking for their companies. They also dug latrines and fortifications. By the time Martha arrived in December, things were much better, but still not great. One unexpected benefit of Martha being in camp was her diplomatic abilities. George was overwhelmed with trying to manage an army of amateurs, with barely any supplies, and even less experience. As Helen Bryan explains in Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, “With the constant struggle to obtain supplies from the Congress, and so much to do to set up a military chain of command, whip the camp into order, and enforce discipline and authority between the ranks, George had had little time for the finer points of military etiquette. Relations between his staff and other officers were riven with petty jealousies, as the officers jockeyed for position around their commander. Under impossible pressures, George admitted to Martha his own harassed manner often led to unintentional offences that at best undermined morale and at worst could lead to the formation of dangerous cabals that would jeopardize the fragile structure of military authority. It was a possibility that added immeasurably to George’s difficulties. Martha, at home in social situations since childhood, began smoothing ruffled feathers. She made friends with the other officers’ wives, among them Lucy Knox, the large, bossy, and rather loud wife of General Henry Knox, and Kitty Greene, the pretty but scatterbrained young wife of Quaker general Nathanael Greene…With her knack of getting on smoothly with people, Martha unobtrusively managed to take the social lead without upsetting other women. Had she had a more abrasive personality, it would have elicited a different response from the other wives and simply exacerbated the existing tensions in camp.” There was a lot of competition among the officers for who got to spend time socially with George, so Martha set up a rotating schedule so that each officer, and his wife if she were in camp, dined at headquarters on a regular basis. Everyone was surprised by how friendly and charming the General’s wife was. She could converse with people on any topic, from child care to ice skating. After meeting Martha, Mercy Otis Warren wrote to Abigail Adams, “I will tell you I think the complacency of her manners speaks at once of the benevolence of her heart, and her affability, candor, and gentleness qualify her to soften the hours of private life or to sweeten the care of the hero and smooth the rugged paths of war.” Everyone loved Martha, and that made George’s life easier. Nothing about the war was making George’s life easier. Before Martha had even arrived in camp, George had sent 1,100 men north into Quebec, Canada, to block the British, who intended to sweep down from the north on the Americans. The expedition was led by General Richard Montgomery and General Benedict Arnold (you know, before he became the most famous traitor in American history). The expedition turned into a disaster. Supply chains had completely broken down, leaving the men without shoes, clothing, or food. The ones who didn’t die of hunger, thirst, or cold came down with smallpox. A large number of men deserted the failed mission. Oh, and General Montgomery was killed and General Arnold was wounded when they decided to attack Quebec on December 31, despite the sorry state of their troops. They tried to besiege the city, but British reinforcements under General Burgoyne were fast approaching. It was the first major offensive attack made by the Continental Army, and it was an epic fail. In better news, General Henry Knox had successfully taken the British Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, capturing its valuable store of cannons and artillery. They spent the rest of the winter slowly moving this artillery down to Cambridge. The British forces trapped in Boston were faring even worse than the Continentals camped in Cambridge. The Americans had set up a successful blockade of the city, so no food or other supplies could get in. The Brits had resorted to tearing apart the wharves to get wood for fires. The soldiers couldn’t afford what little food was left in the city. Although we think of the British Red Coats as a professional army with trained soldiers, the fact is that Britain’s army was spread pretty thin around the world at this point. England had resorted to conscripting felons into the army, just to fill the ranks. In early March, 1776, the stalemate in Boston finally broke. Under the cover of a general bombardment, George ordered the artillery that Knox had brought down from Fort Ticonderoga to be placed in Dorchester Heights, which overlooked Boston. On March 5, the British army woke up to the sight of enough cannons and mortars to blow them all away. The British contemplated a counterattack, but they did not have good positioning for it, and then a fierce storm blew in. So instead they decided to withdraw from Boston and cede it to the Americans. Boston was basically in ruins, but at least it wasn’t held by the British any longer. The next target was New York City. George thought it was likely that the British would attack New York because it was a strategic location and had a large population of Tories. On April 4, the Continental Army began marching from Boston to New York, arriving on April 13. Martha, Jack, and Nelly took a different route and arrived four days later. Jack and Nelly didn’t stay long in New York. Nelly was pregnant again and wanted to get home to Mount Airy well before giving birth. They left around the end of April. Martha remained in New York with George, but not for long. Smallpox was running rampant through the city. Smallpox was horrible, highly contagious, very deadly, and hard to contain. It’s estimated that nine times as many soldiers died of smallpox as were killed by the enemy. George was immune because he had caught it in Barbados in his 20s. But Martha had never had it, and was definitely not immune. It was possible to inoculate a person against smallpox by infecting them with a small amount of the disease, prompting the immune system to respond, but hopefully not making the person sick enough to be seriously ill or, you know, die. In early May, Martha left New York and went to Philadelphia to be inoculated. (Side note: if you’re interested in the technical differences between inoculation and vaccination, I’ve put a link to the Wikipedia page on the website for this episode.) George went with Martha to Philadelphia because he and Congress had some things to discuss with regard to the army. Congress was still debating whether they should officially declare independence from Britain. George felt it was unnecessary. He thought the fact that they were at war with each other was all the declaration they needed. Martha was inoculated with the smallpox virus around May 23, and on June 4, George wrote a letter to Burwell Bassett that she was handling it well, had gotten through the fever, and had only about a dozen pustules. After her recovery, Martha left Philadelphia and rejoined George in New York, where he had arrived on June 6. She wasn’t there long though, because on June 29 British General William Howe and fifty British warships arrived on the scene in New York. They set up a camp on Staten Island to await further reinforcements from Britain. Martha and the other officers’ wives were hustled out of New York and back to Philadelphia. Martha was in Philadelphia on July 2 when Congress voted for independence, on July 4 when the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted, and on July 8 when it was publicly proclaimed. George didn’t find out about it until July 9 when a copy reached him in New York. George spent the summer of 1776 skirmishing with the British. General William Howe’s troops had been joined by Admiral Lord Richard Howe (his brother) and his fleet. British troops outnumbered American by about two and half to one. The Americans were defeated at the Battle of Long Island on August 28, and shortly after that, George called for the Continental Army to abandon New York City and retreat. On August 29, a severe storm blew in, bringing with it heavy fog. Throughout the night of August 29-30, small boats slowly ferried 9-10,000 Continental troops across the East River in complete silence. When the fog cleared mid-day on the 30th, the British realized the Americans were gone. A classic Washington retreat that preserved the army to fight another day. Unfortunately, the Americans were then defeated in a series of battles throughout New York state, until they had finally retreated all the way to Pennsylvania. Martha was no longer in Philadelphia, having finally returned to Mount Vernon in early September. She had stayed in Philadelphia throughout the summer hoping to eventually be able to rejoin George in New York, but the fighting had made that impossible. With the Continental Army in retreat, and the British in control of New York and New Jersey, Congress abandoned Philadelphia and reconvened in Baltimore, Maryland by early December. Martha probably stopped at Mount Airy on her way back to Mount Vernon. Nelly had given birth to a daughter on August 21. They named her Elizabeth Parke Custis, and she was called Betsy. As with all of Martha’s children, all of Jack and Nelly’s children would bear the middle name of Parke so they would be eligible to inherit the Parke fortune, which was tied up in the Custis fortune. In Jack’s words, Betsy was “as fine a Healthy, fat Baby as ever was born.” He must have been right, because Betsy survived into adulthood, unlike so many others. In November 1776, Mount Vernon was in a pretty sad state. George had been away for 18 months, and Martha had been gone nearly a year. Lund Washington was trying to keep the estate going, but Martha had taken many of the house slaves with her, and many of the field slaves had abandoned the estate, lured by the false promise of freedom if they fought for the British. Martha would have liked to go south to see her relatives, especially her favorite sister Nancy, who was ill, but she was too tired from the long journey to Massachusetts, then New York, then Philadelphia, New York, Philadelphia again, and finally back to Mount Vernon. And there was too much to be done at home. One of the most concrete things Martha did to help the Continental Army was to make clothes for them. Congress was not sending the army anywhere near enough supplies, including clothes. Mount Vernon was well equipped to produce flax and wool cloth and sew them into clothing. Martha had been outfitting hundreds of slaves for years. She and the house slaves set to work spinning thread, making cloth, knitting stockings, sewing shirts, and making new shirts. Meanwhile, George and the army had retreated to Princeton, New Jersey, and they were in a bad state. Helen Bryan put it this way, “By December George’s troops were licking their wounds in Princeton, and the seventeen thousand strong army George had had in February 1776 had dwindled to three thousand cold, ragged, hungry, ill-shod, and badly provisioned men, not all of whom were able-bodied enough to fight by the time December arrived. One observer called them animated scarecrows. Desertion was rife. Men who had been absent for over a year wanted or needed to return to their farms. Many had heard the stories of British atrocities and feared for the safety of their women. The troops simply melted away.” The winter of 1776-77 was bitter cold. Roads were frozen and snowdrifts were piled high. After Princeton, the Continental Army retreated further to Trenton, New Jersey, and then across the Delaware River to the Pennsylvania side of the river. They either took or burned all the boats on the New Jersey side, stranding the British with no way to pursue them until the river froze over enough that they could cross on foot. There were 10,000 British soldiers and Hessian mercenaries on the New Jersey side of the river, with only 3000 American troops on the Pennsylvania side. Philadelphia had managed to raise a militia of 2000 townsmen, which joined George’s troops in December. George and his men were the only thing standing between the British and Philadelphia. In desperation, George hatched a plan to prepare a sneak attack on the British and Hessians on Christmas Day 1776. The Delaware River was frozen in chunks, but not fully frozen over yet. George assembled 2500 men and artillery on flat-bottomed boats and spent hours ferrying it all across the river. At 4 am they finally had everyone and everything assembled on the New Jersey side. It was freezing cold and snowing hard, but the troops managed to quickly cover the nine miles from the riverbank to the enemy encampment in Trenton. Before dawn on December 26, the Continental Army attacked the sleeping Hessians and took more than 1000 of them prisoner, ferrying them back across the Delaware River to the Pennsylvania side. With Trenton now back in the hands of the Americans, George and the Continental Army routed the British at Princeton on January 3, 1777. The British had abandoned stores of food and ammunition as they retreated from New Jersey, and the Continentals were more than happy to take ownership of both. The British retreated back to New York, but the Continental Army was hit with another outbreak of smallpox, preventing them from pursuing. They spent the winter in Morristown, New Jersey, but had no proper camp established. Instead, the soldiers were quartered in various homes, and George set up headquarters inside a tavern. In February 1777, George was seriously ill, and some of his staff thought he might die, but thankfully, he didn’t. Martha left Mount Vernon in late February, this time traveling without Jack and Nelly. She arrived in Morristown sometime in mid-March. She and George hadn’t seen each other since she had quickly left New York on June 29 the previous summer. The army’s presence in Morristown was wearing on the residents. In Helen Bryan’s words, “George was losing the battle for the hearts and minds of both his troops and the local residents. The impact of thousands of ill, ragged, starving men quartered on the town had been immense. The Presbyterian and Baptist churches had been turned into makeshift hospitals for the soldiers suffering from smallpox or those recovering from inoculation. The townspeople resented the measures, which quartered three or four men in their homes, particularly as the soldiers brought smallpox and dysentery with them. Before the winter was over, smallpox and dysentery killed a fourth of the inhabitants of Morristown. In the countryside farmers resented the depredations of foraging expeditions, and those soldiers well enough to complain grumbled at the poor conditions and lack of supplies.” Martha had brought with her a supply of cloth and wool and was soon hard at work sewing shirts and knitting socks for the soldiers. Some of the ladies of Morristown were quite surprised by how down-to-earth the General’s wife was. Upon paying a visit to Martha, one woman commented, “We dressed ourselves in our most elegant ruffles and silks and were introduced to her ladyship. And don’t you think, we found her knitting, and with a specked apron on! There we were without a stitch of work…but General Washington’s lady with her own hands was knitting stockings.” Another woman on that same visit commented, “She seems very wise in experience, kind hearted and winning in all her ways. She talked much of the suffering of the poor soldiers, especially the sick ones. Her heart seems full of compassion for them.” As usual, Martha’s presence in winter quarters was a signal to the other officers to invite their wives to join them. In addition to the women, there were two other famous additions to George’s military family at this time. Twenty-year-old Alexander Hamilton was one of George’s aides-de-camp and right hand man. And from France the 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette had joined the Patriots’ cause. He and George became quite close, with George almost considering him a son. Martha tried to provide a social outlet for George and the other officers, but it was more challenging than it had been in Cambridge. With so little food available, dinner parties were scaled back, and the balls that were held were usually in cramped, unfestive quarters. And one of the most sociable of the wives wasn’t in camp that winter. Kitty Greene had recently given birth to a daughter that she and Nathanael named Martha Washington Greene. She was one of many babies named after Lady Washington. George had taken advantage of the winter downtime to have most of the Continental Army inoculated against smallpox. Because the recovery took several weeks, they inoculated soldiers on a rotating schedule so they weren’t all recovering at the same time. But the ranks were greatly depleted throughout the inoculation campaign, and... /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37722945

The Lady Washington 08/01/2025

Mrs. Washington 07/25/2025

Episode 1.4 Mrs. Washington 07/24/2025

Episode 1.4 Mrs. Washington Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.4: Mrs. Washington When we left off last week, the Widow Custis had married Colonel George Washington, thus becoming Mrs. Washington. The wedding festivities probably lasted several days, maybe even a week. When all the guests were finally gone, the newlyweds remained at White House. Construction was on-going at Mount Vernon, and it was not yet ready for its new inhabitants, namely, a young woman and her young children. The House of Burgesses was scheduled to convene on February 22 (George’s birthday), so he and Martha moved to Williamsburg with Jacky and Patsy. I will now start referring to Martha as Martha instead of Patsy. For one, it’s too confusing to refer to both mother and daughter as Patsy. And also, Martha did start going by Martha some time after she and George were married. George and her family continued to call her Patsy, but we’re sticking with Martha from here on out. Part of the Custis estate included a home in Williamsburg called Six Chimneys House, and that’s where the family stayed from February until April, 1759. They were able to enjoy the social scene of Williamsburg and most likely attended many dinners and balls. George wanted to get to Mount Vernon in time for the spring planting season. Mount Vernon was about 50 miles from Williamsburg, which at that time was about a 5-day carriage ride. They left Williamsburg on April 2 and arrived at Mount Vernon on April 6. Martha and the children rode in the Custis carriage, George was on horseback, and the household goods and slaves traveled in wagons. Martha brought mostly furniture and housewares with her from White House to Mount Vernon. She left behind all of her clothes, as well as the children’s clothes, purchasing new items after arriving at Mount Vernon. She also purchased new toys for the children, a variety of new housewares, and even new horses. In her book Martha Washington: An American Life, Patricia Brady provides an inventory of the items Martha did take with her: “stone pots of raisins, two Cheshire cheeses, a barrel and twenty-two loaves of sugar, ten dozen bottles of wine, one tierce (a giant cask holding about forty-two gallons) of rum, brandy, cider, nutmegs both plain and candied, a half pound each of cloves and mace, three pounds of comfits, six pounds of white sugar candy, eight pounds of almonds, two bags of salt. From the Custis houses, she took a mahogany desk, a table and cabinet, two chests, three looking glasses, and six beds with their ‘furniture,’ that is, counterpanes and bed curtains. The amount of linen Martha considered necessary for her new home included twenty-four pairs of sheets, fifty-four tablecloths, ninety-nine napkins and towels, twenty-five pillowcases. For the dining room, she took two cases of knives and forks, a tea chest, at least sixty glasses, and uncountable numbers of dishes—two sets of china, a tea set, a crate of earthenware, and much more.” Can we just pause for a minute here to consider why someone would need 54 tablecloths. And what’s up with having 99 napkins and towels? Why not an even 100? And in case you’re wondering what on earth a loaf of sugar is, I Googled it for us, because I was also wondering. It turns out that until the mid-1800s when granulated sugar and sugar cubes became available, sugar was sold in loaves. They didn’t look like a loaf of bread though. They were tall conical shapes with a rounded top. I’ll put a photo on the website, along with a link to the Wikipedia entry. It’s fascinating. People would snip off pieces of sugar as they needed it with a tool called sugar-nips—like special scissors. The loaves weighed from about 5 pounds to more than 30 pounds, but the smaller loaves were higher quality sugar. And that’s our fun fact for today, friends! During the journey to Mount Vernon, George sent a messenger ahead to the plantation manager to prepare the house for their arrival. He wanted the house cleaned and aired out, beds prepared, fires built, and some eggs and chickens procured. He also specifically instructed that the staircase be polished to make it look its best. Mind you, he only gave the plantation manager one day’s notice to complete all of this! And despite the fact that they had spent the winter in Williamsburg, construction on Mount Vernon still wasn’t finished. The main point of the project was adding a second story to the house, where the bedrooms were going to be. But since they weren’t finished, the beds had to be set up in the downstairs hall. Mount Vernon had (and still has) beautiful wide lawns and lovely views of the Potomac River, so the approach probably made a good impression on Martha and the children. The river created the boundary between the colonies of Virginia and Maryland, and the Maryland side was heavily forested, so the views were picturesque. There was no doubt a lot of work for Martha and the household slaves to do to transform a literally dusty bachelor pad into a family home, so it probably took weeks before the house felt put together. Martha had never been this far away from home before, and all her friends and family were in southern Virginia. The only member of her family who ever made the trip north to visit her was her favorite sister, Anna Maria, with her husband Burwell Bassett. Anna Maria was confusingly nicknamed Nancy, and that’s how she’s referenced in all of Martha’s letters. In addition to socializing with the nearby Fairfaxes, George and Martha had several other friends reasonably close by. And the new port city of Alexandria was only 10 miles away. It was much smaller than Williamsburg, but it provided a variety of entertainments, such as fish feasts, barbecues, tea parties, horse races, balls, and informal neighborhood dances. George had to go to Williamsburg regularly, and Martha often accompanied him, taking the opportunity to visit her mother and other family members in southern Virginia. They were happily married, and enjoying their country lifestyle. In a letter shortly after their marriage, George wrote, “I am now I beleive fixd at this Seat with an agreable Consort for Life and hope to find more happiness in retirement than I ever experienced amidst a wide and bustling World.” [NOTE: for those reading the transcript, this was the actual spelling from the quoted letter.] Helen Bryan gives us a remarkably detailed look at the typical day that George and Martha had at Mount Vernon. I’m paraphrasing here, rather than directly quoting. George rose at 4 am, shaved, and dressed quietly, so as not to disturb Martha. He went to his study to handle correspondence and plantation business. Martha rose around dawn, got dressed, and gave housekeeping orders for the day to the household slaves. She would then unlock the food cabinets and dole out what was needed for the day’s meals, and also distribute food rations for the slaves either directly to them or to their overseers. Martha and George would have breakfast together—at 7 am in the summer and 8 am in the winter, along with any overnight house guests. More on that later. Breakfast was typically meat-heavy, with roasted fowl, ham, venison, and game, along with eggs, a sweet bread, butter, gingerbread, spoon bread, hominy, molasses, biscuits, cream, and copious amounts of tea and coffee. Honestly, with breakfasts like that, it’s not surprising that Martha was always referred to as plump throughout her life. George limited himself to Indian cakes, which were cornmeal pancakes with butter and honey. He had trouble with his teeth his whole life, and Indian cakes were something he could eat without difficulty. Side note: George Washington never had wooden teeth; that’s just a myth. But he did pay some of his slaves for their teeth which were then wired together into a sort of rudimentary set of dentures. Yikes. After breakfast, George rode out onto the estate and spent the rest of the day overseeing work, joining in with projects, and checking on things. The plantation totaled 4000 acres over 5 farms. After George went out for his ride, Martha spent an hour reading her Bible and praying, and then went back to work, overseeing everything that took place in the house and surrounding buildings. She also had a never-ending supply of sewing to be done, as well as looking after the children. George returned home at 2:45 every day. No one mentions how he managed to be so punctual. It’s possible he was just looking at the sun to estimate time, or he might have had a pocket sundial, which was the primary portable means of telling time in colonial America. Upon returning to the house, George cleaned up, changed clothes for dinner, and powdered his hair. He didn’t wear a wig, but kept his hair fashionably long and wore it in a little ponytail they called a queue. Dinner was the main meal of the day and was served at 3 pm. It often included guests, some who were invited and some who just dropped by. Dinner was a multi-course situation. Quoting from Bruce Chadwick’s book The General and Mrs. Washington, “A simple dinner might include a ham, goose, pickled pork, boiled turnips, apple dumplings, cinnamon, sugars, beef, mutton, fowl, lamb, turkey, tongue, turtle, pigeon sausage, eggs, vegetables, and mince pie. The Washingtons often ate fish, usually herring and shad, caught by the fishermen that operated George’s schooners on the Chesapeake. Desserts at a single dinner seating might include jellies, custards, cakes, and pies. The entire meal might be topped off with several bowls of fresh fruit and the nuts that George loved.” Helen Bryan quotes from a letter written by a guest at Mount Vernon, “The dinner was very good, a small roasted pigg, baked leg of lamb, roasted fowles, beef, peas, lettuce, cucumbers, artichokes, etc. puddings, tarts, et. etc. We were desired to call for what drink we chose.” [Again, for those reading the transcript, this is an exact quote, spelling errors and all.] When dinner finished, the ladies would retire to another room to sew and talk. The men stayed at the table and drank. After the candles were lit in the evening, everyone would gather in the parlor where they would talk, read, write letters, dance, sing, or play cards. Around 8 pm a light evening meal of tea and toast was served. Bedtime was at 9 pm. And that’s what they did EVERY DAY. Except on Sundays when they went to church. I can’t even imagine how much money they spent on food, especially because they were feeding themselves, all their slaves, and guests several times a week. Mount Vernon records show that the Washingtons had as many as 677 dinner guests in a single year. 677! In one year! That’s too many guests. It was so common for them to have guests that George thought the lack of guests was noteworthy enough for his daily diary. The entry for June 4, 1771 notes “at home all day without company.” And in addition to their food expenses, they weren’t exactly living a frugal lifestyle. They had Martha’s share of the Custis fortune, and they spent it. George loved the finer things in life: elegant carriages, finely made clothes, ornately decorated dishware and wine decanters, handsome furniture, and elaborate gardens. The annual orders to England grew longer and more extravagant. They ordered new wardrobes for themselves and the children, and even the house slaves were outfitted in matching scarlet and white uniforms. George was a flashy dresser who wanted to wear the most fashionable clothes from London, whereas Martha had simple, but elegant, tastes. She did, at least, attempt to be somewhat mindful of spending on clothing for the children, knowing that they would outgrow things quickly. In a letter to a London hatmaker, she asked the woman to look for genteel and proper clothes for Patsy, “provided it is done with frugality, for as she is only nine years old; a superfluity or expense in dress would be altogether unnecessary.” They ordered perfumed hair powders, stays for corsets, laces for the stays, both fancy and everyday handkerchiefs, silk, linen, and satin shoes, cotton stockings, gloves, bonnets, and ornaments, and ribbons and trimming for dresses. They also ordered sewing supplies such as scissors, binding tape, thread, embroidery silk, sewing pins, and hair pins. Helen Bryan’s book Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty includes an example of an order George sent to London in September 1759: “A light summer suit made of Duroy or by the inclosed measure; 4 pieces best India Nankeen; 2 best Beaver hats; 1 ps Irish Linnen; 1 ps of black E Sattin Ribbon; 1 Salmon-colored Tabby of the enclosed pattern, with Sattin flowers, to be made in a sack and coat; 1 Cap, Handkerchief, and Tucker Ruffles of Brussells lace or Point…to be worn with the above negligee; 1 piece Bag Holland; 2 fine flowered Lawn Aprons…a puckered petticoat of a fashionable color a silver Tabby petticoat…1 black Mask.” And no, I don’t know what half those words mean. It might not be terribly surprising to learn that by 1763, all the Custis money Martha brought to the marriage had been spent, and the Washingtons were in debt. It wasn’t just the things they ordered from England, but also construction projects at Mount Vernon. George had endless ideas about how to improve Mount Vernon, and he had no qualms about spending his wife’s money to complete them. As far as we know, she had no qualms about him spending the money this way. They seem to have spent many evenings (when they didn’t have guests) talking over ideas and plans for Mount Vernon. It also didn’t help that George’s tobacco crops never fetched as high a price as the Custis tobacco. Northern Virginia was not as well suited to growing tobacco as the fertile southern lands, and George had had a few bad harvests. He spent a lifetime experimenting with new crops and money-making ideas, even sending extensive letters during the war to the cousin he left in charge of Mount Vernon. Ultimately, George’s plantation never made as much money as Daniel Custis’s had. You might wonder why they had to order all of this stuff from England in the first place. It was one of the ways that England exerted control over its colonies. The colonies were forbidden from trading with any country except England. So if colonists wanted to order Spanish sherry, the sherry had to be shipped from Spain to England, with the appropriate taxes and duties paid, and then the sherry was sold to American colonists at an inflated price and shipped from England to America, incurring more taxes along the way. This was one of many factors that led the colonists to revolt against England in the first place. The other problem was that there was no uniform currency in America. Each colony issued its own currency, and no colony would accept another colony’s currency as payment for goods, which made inter-colony trade difficult. In 1760, there was a change in the British monarch when George II died and his son George III became king. The French and Indian slash Seven Years War was still going on, and England was spending a lot of money to fund the war. George III and his advisers decided that the colonies needed to shoulder more of the financial burden of the war. To this end, the 1760s were a decade of numerous Acts of taxation that were issued and then repealed by Parliament. Patricia Brady provides a lovely, concise summary for us. “Colonial leaders resisted each attempt to impose taxes and tighten royal control in a series of increasingly acrimonious disputes beginning in 1763. They sent agents like Benjamin Franklin to represent their interests in London, waged newspaper warfare, established intercolonial ties, wrote countless letters and broadsides, and formed committees to enforce their refusal to buy British goods. Boston took the lead, followed by New York City, both their genteel leaders and their mobs of ordinary citizens profoundly suspicious of British intentions and authority. Virginians watched and waited; radicals like Patrick Henry were ahead of the rest. The Proclamation of 1763, the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, the Declaratory Act, and the Townshend Acts—through the 1760s, the British Parliament passed and then repealed a string of measures, which seldom added to their revenues, eroded imperial control over the colonies, and drove more and more Americans toward defiance and ultimately revolution.” While these larger-scale events were taking place, life went on at Mount Vernon. In 1761, Martha and George had hired a live-in tutor, Walter Magowan, to handle Jacky and Patsy’s education. Magowan left them in 1768, when Jacky was 14 and Patsy was about 11 or 12. Jacky was old enough to be sent away to school, so they arranged for him to attend a boarding school near Fredericksburg. Around the same time, Patsy suffered her first epileptic attack, a condition that would plague her the rest of her life. I should note here that only Patricia Brady refers to this as Patsy’s first epileptic seizure. Bruce Chadwick indicates that her epilepsy began around the age of 2 and worsened during puberty. At any rate, Patsy had epilepsy, and it became severe during her teenage years. There was no treatment for epilepsy in the 18th century. The seizures were referred to as “fits,” and a wide variety of unhelpful medicines were administered to Patsy over the years. They tried herbal remedies, powders, and pills. They used valerian root, which was mostly harmless, but also mercury, which was poisonous. They purged Patsy’s blood with leeches, and took her to hot springs to try to improve her health. Martha and George did their best to provide Patsy with some semblance of a normal life, inviting friends to stay with them, and attending dances when possible. It seemed clear to everyone that Patsy was unlikely to ever marry and have children in her condition. All Martha’s hopes were now pinned on Jacky. By 1769, George’s political career had advanced and he was representing Fairfax County, which was more prestigious than Frederick County. At the spring legislative session, the colonial burgesses presented a document called the Virginia Resolves, opposing taxation without representation and other British infringements on the Americans’ rights. The royal governor dissolved the assembly, which was his right, because the colonial legislatures were basically operating at the pleasure of the sovereign, and the royal governor was the sovereign’s appointed representative in the colony. The burgesses met instead at a local tavern and started organizing a boycott of British goods until the taxes in question were repealed. As you can probably guess based on the earlier description of all the things the colonists ordered from England, it was no easy task to find local replacements. One way the Washingtons tried to do their part was to increase production of cloth at Mount Vernon. Flax and wool could be woven into linen and woolen fabrics and then clothes could be made from the fabric. In 1770, Jacky’s school was relocated to Annapolis, which was within easy traveling distance of Mount Vernon. Jacky was never a good student. He had very little discipline, and Martha spoiled him. He liked to gamble, attend horse races, and generally spend a lot of money on dumb things. The school master wrote, “I must confess to you that I never in my Life knew a Youth so exceedingly Indolent or so surprisingly voluptuous; one wd. Suppose Nature had intended him for some Asiatic Prince.” By 1773, George was considering sending Jacky away to college in New York City. Jacky had other plans, having fallen in love with the sister of one of his friends from school, a girl named Eleanor Calvert, who... /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37539410

Episode 1.5 The Lady Washington 07/24/2025

Episode 1.5 The Lady Washington Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.5: The Lady Washington We left off last week just after Jack Custis married Nelly Calvert, and shortly after Patsy Custis died of an epileptic seizure. In between Patsy’s death in June 1773 and Jack’s marriage in February 1774, a very important event took place. One which all my American listeners will recognize: the Boston Tea Party. Without taking too much of a detour, let’s talk about the Boston Tea Party and what led up to it. You may recall in the previous episode I outlined a series of acts Parliament imposed on the colonies—collectively known as the Townshend Acts because Charles Townshend was the Member of Parliament who sponsored them. Import taxes were implemented on all sorts of things, including lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea. The residents of Boston were perhaps the most incensed by these taxes, and they spearheaded a boycott of British goods as a protest against the taxes. The Bostonians also committed a great deal of harassment and vandalism against British officials and merchants who continued to import and sell British goods. In response to this, the colonial administrators requested additional protection, and in the early months of 1770, Parliament sent British troops to Boston under the Quartering Act. If you’ve ever wondered why the Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the quartering of soldiers in a house without the consent of the owner—well, this is why that’s there. Colonists were required to put up with British soldiers taking over their houses. The British soldiers raised the tension level in Boston, and this eventually led to the event known as the Boston Massacre, but honestly, that name is not a good representation of what actually happened. The British soldiers did not line up a bunch of protesters and shoot them point blank, which is how it’s depicted in a famous engraving made by Paul Revere. What actually happened is that there was a mob of protesters threatening a sentry at the Customs House. In order to help the sentry, a captain led seven British soldiers over to the Customs House. As they were taunted by the mob, one of the soldiers was jostled by the mob and fired his musket. Then the other soldiers, hearing the musket fire, thought a general order to fire had been given, so they opened fire. In total, five protesters died, and the captain and seven soldiers were arrested. Many months elapsed before their trial, during which time the colonial rabble-rousers, Samuel Adams chief among them, set their propaganda machine to work and cast the incident as a massacre. I promise I’m getting to the Tea Party. After the so-called Boston Massacre, all the import duties were lifted, except for the one on tea. The Quartering Act was also repealed, and the British troops left Boston. But the tax on tea really irritated the colonists, so on the night of December 16, 1773, a group of radicals known as the Sons of Liberty dressed up like Mohawk Indians, boarded a British ship docked in Boston Harbor that carried a shipment of East India Company tea, and dumped the crates of tea overboard into the harbor. The incident was originally called The Destruction of the Tea, which sounds way less fun than the Boston Tea Party. It only came to be known as the Boston Tea Party in the early 1800s, as the event gained legendary status in American history. And here’s a fun fact for you: nine days after the Boston Tea Party, on December 25, 1773, there was a Philadelphia Tea Party. But it was much less destructive. Rather than throwing the crates of tea overboard, the protesters merely prevented a ship from docking and caused it to return to England. I find it pretty hilarious that Philadelphia’s tea party was so dainty compared to Boston’s. So. What does any of this have to do with Martha Washington? Admittedly, not that much. But it is important background context for the events that are going to unfold next. In response to the Boston Tea Party, which Britain rightfully viewed as an act of treason, they introduced a new series of acts that were known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts. As part of the Intolerable Acts, the British closed Boston Harbor, which cut off Boston, and most of New England, from all trade. This created an uproar throughout the colonies, and was more or less the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as George Washington was concerned. Up until that point, he and Martha had remained loyal British subjects and had no intention of rebelling against the Crown. But after the Intolerable Acts were passed, George wrote that they were “an unexampled testimony of the most despotic system of tyranny that was ever practiced in a free government.” George Washington and fellow Virginian George Mason organized another boycott and called for a national day of fasting for June 1, 1774, the first day that Boston Harbor was scheduled to be closed. In response to this, the royal governor of Virginia dissolved the House of Burgesses and the burgesses met instead at a local tavern. If this all sounds familiar, it’s because basically the same thing had happened in 1769 during an earlier colonial protest against taxation without representation. But this time, things went much further. Massachusetts had called for a Continental Congress to meet in Philadelphia in September 1774, and all the colonial newspapers carried word of this. The Virginia burgesses, George Washington among them, held a Virginia Convention in August and nominated seven delegates to represent Virginia at the Continental Congress. George was one of those seven delegates. The purpose of the Continental Congress was to discuss a collective response to the growing encroachment of Britain. The night before leaving for Philadelphia, two other Virginia delegates, Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton, dined and spent the night at Mount Vernon. Pendleton wrote, “I was much pleased with Mrs. Washington and her spirit. She seemed ready to make any sacrifice and was cheerful though I knew she felt anxious. She talked like a Spartan mother to her son on going to battle. ‘I hope you will stand firm—I know George will,’ she said. The dear little woman was busy from morning until night with domestic duties, but she gave us much time in conversation and affording us entertainment. When we set off in the morning, she stood in the door and cheered us with the good words, ‘God be with you gentlemen.’” Philadelphia was the largest and most elegant city in colonial America, so it made sense for this historic gathering of colonial representatives to gather there. In addition to daily meetings of the delegates, there were a number of dinners and balls, as well as outings to the theater. George made it a point to get to know as many delegates as possible, including John Adams, a delegate from Massachusetts. When the Congress was finished, Patrick Henry was asked who the key players had been. He replied, “If you speak of eloquence, Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, is the greatest orator; but if you speak of solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is by far the greatest man on that floor.” The Continental Congress lasted two months, and the delegates agreed to enter into a joint non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation association, as well as to prepare addresses on their grievances to present to the King. They also agreed to meet again the following May, in 1775. George returned to Mount Vernon on October 30. Upon his return, he was asked to command a local militia group based in Alexandria. Similar militias were forming throughout the colonies. Tensions in Virginia were increasing. Colonists were beginning to divide themselves into Loyalists, or Tories, who were still loyal to King George and Parliament, and Patriots, or Whigs, who were ready to take any measures necessary to preserve Americans’ perceived rights. Watching this rising division, many slaves decided that they stood a better chance with the Loyalists, and there was a rumor that Britain would free them, because the anti-slavery movement within England had grown quite large by this point. On April 19, 1775, the first shots were fired in what would become the War of American Independence, aka the Revolutionary War. Two Massachusetts militia companies engaged British soldiers in the towns of Lexington and Concord. The Americans killed and wounded 269 British soldiers, while the militias had only 90 dead or wounded. The British retreated into the city of Boston and were hemmed in by a growing force of militia that eventually reached nearly 20,000 men. The Siege of Boston had begun. On May 4, 1775, George Washington left Mount Vernon to ride to Philadelphia once again as a Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress. Bruce Chadwick put it nicely in his book, The General and Mrs. Washington, “Washington rode away from his beloved Mount Vernon that morning in May of 1775 as a little-known Virginia businessman, and he would not return home for six long years. When he did, it would be as the most famous man in the world on the eve of a battle that would change the course of history.” When George left Mount Vernon that day, Martha had no reason to expect him to be gone any longer than he had been for the First Continental Congress the previous autumn. She had many things to deal with in his absence, running the plantation household, keeping up with the never-ending stream of guests, and helping her 16-year-old daughter-in-law Nelly prepare for the birth of her first child, Martha’s first grandchild. It’s probably not a coincidence that George rode to Philadelphia wearing his old colonel’s uniform from his days as a British colonial regimental soldier. He wore it throughout the convention and volunteered to serve on a congressional military committee that was charged with deciding how to fight the British. Their other assignment was to name a commander-in-chief for the American forces. It’s presumed that George and Martha discussed the possibility of military action before he left Mount Vernon. After all, shots had already been exchanged in Lexington and Concord, and it was likely that direct confrontation would escalate. It was logical that he could be put in charge of all of Virginia’s militia, not just his local militia, because he was the only Virginian with substantial military command experience. But did either of them ever expect that George would be put in charge of the whole Continental Army? It’s hard to say for sure, but probably not. It’s also hard to say whether he wanted the job. He never asked for it. But by parading around the Continental Congress in his military uniform, he was subtly campaigning for it. He had no desire to leave Mount Vernon, Martha, and Jack & Nelly, but he also was the most logical choice as commander of the combined colonial forces. One of the other candidates was John Hancock, who was from Massachusetts and was serving as president of the Congress, but he had no military experience. Another was Charles Lee, but he was British, for god’s sake. He had military experience because he had been in the British Army, but he had a thick English accent and an abrasive personality. George Washington was the obvious choice for another reason: he was from Virginia, which was the largest and richest colony. Massachusetts could not stand up to the British on their own and they needed the conflict to involve all of the colonies. Having George Washington as commander in chief would help bring the southern colonies into the fold. When George accepted the command, he also announced that he would not take any salary for the position, no matter how long he stayed in it. He asked only for his expenses to be paid. Considering how long the war dragged on, he probably lived to regret that decision, even though he never admitted as much. It’s also a pretty good example of George’s high-mindedness. He was in debt, he had started another construction project at Mount Vernon before leaving for the Second Continental Congress, and trade with England was at a standstill. He really could have used whatever little money Congress could pay him in salary. But he thought it was more honorable to decline any salary. Pfft. George knew Martha was not going to be happy that he had accepted command of the Continental Army. I’m going to quote extensively from the letter he wrote her on the occasion, because it’s one of the few we have at our disposal. “Philadelphia June 18, 1775 My dearest, I am now set down to write you on a subject which fills me with inexpressible concern—and this concern is greatly aggravated and increased, when I reflect upon the uneasiness I know it will give you. It has been determined in Congress that the whole Army raised for the defence of the American Cause shall be put under my care, and that it is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take upon me the command of it. You may believe me my dear Patsy, when I assure you, in the most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being too great for my capacity, and that I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home than I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times seven years.” Methinks the colonel doth protest too much. He obviously knew Martha was going to be angry with him, and yet, he accepted anyway. George encouraged Martha to go visit her relatives in southern Virginia, and basically to do whatever would make her happiest during his absence. He also wrote to Martha’s brother-in-law Burwell, asking him and his wife (Martha’s favorite sister Nancy) to visit her and convince her to spend some time with them in the south. In the end, Martha decided to stay at Mount Vernon. George had expressed some hope of being able to return to Mount Vernon by the fall, which was only a few months away. Spoiler alert: it was a lot longer than that. On June 17, 1775, the Americans and the British had fought the Battle of Bunker Hill (which technically was fought on Breed’s Hill, but I’m trying not to get too deep into the weeds of Revolutionary War history here). Casualties were heavy, with the American killed and wounded totalling 441, and the British 1,150. In the end, the colonial militias retreated, making the battle a technical victory for the British, but at a heavy loss of men. Two weeks later, on July 2, 1775, George Washington left Philadelphia and rode to Cambridge, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, to take command of the combined colonial forces. In September, Martha was at Mount Airy with Jack and Nelly when Nelly gave birth to a baby girl who died nearly immediately. None of the biographers provide a name for this child, so she probably died so quickly that Jack and Nelly didn’t have time to give her a name. During this same period, there was a fairly serious threat against Martha’s safety. Because Mount Vernon was positioned on the banks of the Potomac, and because the Potomac was a large, navigable river, it was easy to sail right up to Mount Vernon from Norfolk Harbor. This was advantageous when it came to delivering goods ordered from England in more peaceful times, but now it meant that a British warship could sail up to Mount Vernon and kidnap Martha. The former royal governor of Virginia had abandoned Williamsburg at the start of the war, and was living on a ship in Norfolk Harbor. He ordered several British warships to sail up the Potomac, burn Mount Vernon and George Mason’s plantation home Gunston Hall, and capture Martha Washington. Martha was at first determined to stand her ground at Mount Vernon, but she did eventually leave for two days after receiving an emergency communication from George Mason. There’s no word on where she stayed for those two days, but she returned to Mount Vernon after receiving another note that the British had retreated back to Norfolk Harbor. Some combination of bad weather and a large militia had convinced the British to abandon their kidnapping plot. It doesn’t appear that any future kidnapping attempts were made. While all this was going on, George was attempting to create a cohesive national army out of a collection of regional militias. Congress had named four Major Generals to serve under George. All of them had military experience from the French and Indian War. He also began assembling a staff of aides-de-camp; these were officers who assisted him in writing and filing letters, carrying orders and confidential messages, entertaining guests, and discussing ideas and strategies. They would come to be known as George’s “family.” For the first few months, George still planned to go back to Mount Vernon for the winter. War was not a year-round situation back then. Most major engagements took place during the months with good weather, and each side stayed relatively quiet in winter camps each year. Depending on the weather, “winter” camp could last all the way through spring. In many cases, the officers of an army would return home to see their families while the enlisted men stayed in the camps. But by October 1775, George had realized that if he left camp, it would all fall apart. The militias were barely holding together as it was. These were regular citizens, not professional soldiers. Most of the men had enlisted for short periods of time; after all, they had families and farms or businesses to look after back home. As soon as their enlistments were up, they headed out. Coordinating departing men and incoming men was a big job, one that George felt he personally needed to be present for. So instead of going home to Mount Vernon, he wrote to Martha and asked her to join him in the winter camp at Cambridge. While the idea of soldiers’ wives coming to join them at an army encampment in the middle of a war sounds strange to our modern ears, it wasn’t really that unusual in the 18th century. Again, because the fighting more or less paused for the winter, it was reasonably safe for non-combatants to be present in camp. George sent letters to Mount Vernon constantly, both to Martha and to his cousin Lund Washington, who was managing the plantation. If you think the U.S. Postal Service has delivery issues now, you would have hated to see the shambles it was in in 1775. The mail service was transitioning from the Royal Mail to a new continental service. Benjamin Franklin was actually the postmaster general. On October 22, 1775, Lund received a packet of letters from his cousin, dated October 2nd, 7th, and 9th. One of these was George’s letter to Martha asking her to join him in camp. But Martha was no longer at Mount Vernon. She had left on October 17 to travel south with Jack and Nelly. They visited George’s mother in Fredericksburg, then George’s sister Betty and her husband Fielding Lewis. They reached their destination of Nancy and Burwell’s home at Eltham on October 28. Lund sent George’s letter forward to Martha at Eltham. She debated whether or not to join George in Massachusetts. On one hand, it was very far to travel, and traveling in bad weather was insanely difficult in those days. And Nelly was still recovering from the death of her infant and could use all the comforting Martha could provide. But there was a development that made up Martha’s mind for her. A pro-British newspaper had printed an article claiming that Martha was not with George in Cambridge because she was “a warm loyalist” and had left George and was living in New York under the protection of the British Army. There was a second article, also completely fabricated, that George had... /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37539355

Mrs. Custis: From Newlywed to Widow 07/18/2025

Episode 1.3 Mrs. Custis, from Newlywed to Widow 07/17/2025

Episode 1.3 Mrs. Custis, from Newlywed to Widow Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.3: Mrs. Custis, from Newlywed to Widow. Last week we learned about Pasty Dandridge’s childhood and eventual marriage to Daniel Custis, a wealthy landowner 20 years older than she was. When we left off, Patsy and Daniel had moved to their new home, White House, which was only about 4 miles from Patsy’s childhood home at Chestnut Grove. Patsy was now a very wealthy woman, thanks to her husband. In addition to the plantation home, they also owned houses in Williamsburg and Jamestown, close to 18,000 acres of land, nearly 300 slaves, and several thousand pounds sterling in English Treasury notes and cash. To put it in today’s parlance, they were hella rich. Considering the age difference and the large difference in their families’ wealth, Patsy and Daniel could have had a challenging marriage. But they didn’t. They actually had a very happy marriage. Patsy was thrilled to be a wife, and couldn’t wait to be a mother. Daniel was quite ready to enjoy marital bliss after a lifetime without a mother and with a difficult father. It also helps that Daniel was a good steward of their wealth. He didn’t gamble or rack up debts, and he made good investments. He even had enough ready cash at his disposal that he was able to make loans to other Virginia planters when they needed something to tide them over before receiving the proceeds of selling their tobacco. Let’s talk a bit about how trade between the colonies and England worked at this time. By the mid-1700s, the Virginia gentry had stopped relying on making everything themselves and had started buying things—lots of things—from England and Scotland. The planters would write out orders for what they wanted, and the ships carrying their tobacco harvest each year would take the orders to England along with the tobacco. Each planter worked with an agent in England. These agents were known as factors, but I’m using the more familiar term “agent.” The agent was responsible for selling the planter’s tobacco, and then the agent would purchase the items listed on the order using the proceeds from selling the tobacco. You can see how there would be a lot of room here for dishonesty, so it was important to try to find a trustworthy agent to work on your behalf. And even then, the colonists still had to deal with substandard goods being pawned off on them. The snobbery of the British toward their American colonies was staggering. Daniel kept good records of his annual orders, so we know the sort of things the Custises ordered: China, satin suits, nutmeg, scythes, axes, chairs, tablecloths and napkins, fabric, tea sets, serving dishes, and flatware. Interestingly, chairs were a status symbol, and the wealthy would make a show of having not only enough chairs to go around the dining room table, but also extra chairs lined up against the walls of the dining room and hallway. The dining room itself was also a relatively new idea. Previously meals had been served in the main room of the house, some sort of parlor or hall. But having a separate room used only for dining was a new luxury. And you know what else was new? The fork! People had been eating only with knives, stabbing their food and biting it right off the point. By the 1750s, wealthy households were using forks, and it was a sign of wealth and status to have individual flatware sets for each person at the dining room table. Patsy didn’t have to wait long to become a mother. On November 19, 1751 (about 18 months after she and Daniel were married), Patsy gave birth to their first child, a boy named Daniel Parke Custis, after his father. Childbirth was generally managed by women. The pregnant woman’s female relatives such as her mother and aunts were usually present, along with a midwife and housemaids. Childbirth took place at home, because there were no hospitals yet. After giving birth, a new mother was “confined” for about a month. She would rest in bed, nurse her child, and recover from the physical ordeal of childbirth. I should say that a wealthy new mother had the luxury of this extended recovery/confinement. Patsy had the benefit of slave labor to run the household while she recovered. Because the Custises had close to 300 slaves, they could afford to allocate some of them to household duties instead of field work. And the baby would have been assigned a slave nursemaid to handle diaper changes and baths. But Patsy likely breast-fed her children personally, as most women of means did. Patsy and Daniel Sr. both doted on baby Daniel. They were thrilled to be parents, and equally thrilled to welcome their first daughter in April 1753, about 17 months after Daniel Jr. was born. The girl was named Frances Parke Custis, after both her grandmothers, Frances Dandridge and Frances Custis. Attentive listeners will have noticed that both baby Daniel and baby Frances had the same middle name: Parke. Daniel Sr. also had the middle name Parke, and this is thanks to a quirk of inheritance. Daniel’s mother had been named Frances Parke before she married Daniel’s father John Custis. Frances Parke’s father (also named Daniel) made it a condition of his will that no one could inherit unless they carried the name Parke. So all the Custis children and grandchildren had the middle name Parke. (That’s P-A-R-K-E for those who care.) Baby Frances was nicknamed Fanny, which was a common nickname for Frances. In fact, both Patsy’s mother and Daniel’s mother had gone by Fanny. So to re-anchor us, it’s mid-1753 and Patsy and Daniel have two children, Daniel Jr. and Fanny. Sadly, 10 months later, in February 1754, Daniel Jr. died of a fever at the age of 2. He was buried at the family burial ground called Queen’s Creek, a few miles from White House. Daniel’s mother and sister were also buried there. Fever was a very common ailment in colonial times, especially in swampy Virginia. Basically everyone contracted malaria at some point in their lives, but most people survived it. After baby Daniel’s death, Patsy developed an intense fear for the health of her children and children more generally that she would carry throughout her life. Shortly after burying little Daniel, Patsy became pregnant again. She gave birth to their third child, another boy, in the fall of 1754. They named him John Parke Custis after both of his grandfathers, but he was called Jacky or Jack his entire life. In 1756, Patsy gave birth to her fourth and final child, a girl named Martha Parke Custis. And you’ll never guess what her nickname was…Patsy! Because that’s not confusing at all! Around the same time that Patsy gave birth to baby Patsy, Patsy’s mother gave birth to her ninth child—the one I previously mentioned who was born after Patsy had married and left home. Considering that Patsy’s mother was 46 at the time this ninth child was born, it was a bit of a surprise. Unfortunately, Patsy’s father John dropped dead of a stroke shortly after this surprise baby, leaving Patsy’s mother widowed with multiple children still to look after. Patsy’s eldest surviving brother, who was 22, took over management of Chestnut Grove, but Daniel also started adding items for the Dandridge family to his annual orders from England. Patricia Brady’s book Martha Washington: An American Life provides a short list of some of the things he ordered around this time, including, “fashionable hats, leather and silk shoes, a quilted cap, stays, an expensive Dolly, necklaces, kid gloves, ten shillings’ worth of toys, ribbons for the girls, and a saddle and bridle for Jacky.” But tragedy wasn’t finished with Patsy Custis just yet. In April 1757, just before her fourth birthday, little Fanny Parke Custis died. No one says what killed her, but it was most likely some sort of illness. She was buried next to her brother in the family plot at Queen’s Creek. And just when you think the Custis family has had all the death they can stand, on July 4, 1757, both Daniel Sr. and Jacky fell ill with fevers. Patsy sent for medicine from Williamsburg but it didn’t help, so she sent for one of Williamsburg’s best doctors. Colonial medicine wasn’t super effective. There was no such thing as antibiotics back then, and most doctors thought illness could be cured by purging the patient of bad blood. They literally put leeches on sick people to suck the blood out of them. Honestly, it’s a miracle anyone survived treatment by doctors back then. Based on the medicinal pastes that the doctor prepared and placed on Daniel and Jacky’s gums and tongues, it’s supposed that they were sick with some sort of throat infection, such as scarlet fever, strep, diphtheria, or quinsy. Amazingly, Jacky survived. But Daniel died on July 8. He was buried next to his mother, sister, and two of his children at Queen’s Creek. Patsy was now a widow at age 26, with a huge estate and two children to look after. She couldn’t afford to spend time in grief though. Within two weeks of Daniel’s death, she had taken up the record-keeping and preparation of orders for items from England. Interestingly, Daniel had died intestate, which simply means he hadn’t made a will. In a time period when people died suddenly and often at an early age, it’s a little odd that such a conscientious business man hadn’t made a will, but it worked out in Patsy’s favor. Under English common law, which governed the colonies, widows of property-owning men automatically inherited one-third of their husband’s estate, with the remainder going to surviving children. Conveniently, Daniel and Patsy had two surviving children, so Jacky inherited one-third of the estate and little Patsy inherited the remaining one-third. Our Patsy only had the right to her one-third of the estate during her lifetime. After her death, her one-third would revert back to the larger estate and be divvied up among any heirs remaining at that point. Remember back in episode 1.1 when I described the dower slaves that Patsy brought to her marriage with George? They were part of the one-third of Daniel’s estate that Patsy was able to enjoy the benefit of while she was alive. Because Jacky and little Patsy were minor children, their portions of the estate had to be administered separately and controlled by an estate administrator. Detailed records had to be kept of every expense and allocated appropriately to the relevant portion of the estate. When Patsy bought clothes or anything else for Jacky, the cost of those items was subtracted from his share of the estate. And the same for little Patsy. If Daniel had made a will before he died, it’s quite possible he would have assigned a trustee or administrator for the estate. Patsy’s estate and the children’s estates would have been managed by this trustee, and Patsy would have had no control over any of it. But Daniel didn’t make a will, and didn’t assign any trustees for the estate. Many young widows in Patsy’s situation would have turned to other male family members for help, but her father was dead, her father-in-law was dead, Daniel had no brothers, and Patsy’s brothers were all younger and even less experienced than she was. So she did it herself. She settled accounts, and wrote letters to all of Daniel’s British business contacts letting them know that Daniel had died and that she would be managing the Custis estate going forward. She requested an updated account from each agent and told them that she expected them to sell her tobacco at a good price, making it clear that she would go elsewhere if she felt taken advantage of. She even continued Daniel’s practice of making loans with interest to local planters who needed the cash, keeping meticulous records of each transaction. Patsy may have been a young widow, but she had common sense, experience managing a large household, and plenty of money. And back then, as now, money made all the difference. But as well as Patsy was doing with managing the large Custis estate, it wasn’t something she wanted to do forever. Widows and widowers generally didn’t stay single for long. Most men who lost a wife needed a new wife to take care of their household and children. And most women who lost a husband needed a new husband to provide for them. Patsy was doing fine on her own and technically didn’t need a new husband to provide for her, but she was still young, and she wanted to marry again and have more children. She loved children and loved being a mother. Having lost two of her four children to early deaths, she expected to have more children to enrich her life. As a wealthy widow, Patsy would have had no shortage of suitors. The Virginia gentry were a gossipy bunch, and everyone would have known exactly how much money she controlled in the Custis estate. She was the most eligible widow in the colony. Quoting again from Patricia Brady’s Martha Washington: An American Life, “As an intelligent woman, though, she had to be careful in her choice of a second husband. At this time, she was a feme sole in English common law, free to make her own decisions about her property. Wealthy widows were the most economically and personally independent of all American women. As soon as she married however, she would become a feme covert, her legal status, wealth, children, and place and manner of life controlled by her husband. Colonial husbands enjoyed almost unlimited legal power over their wives, even in the event of a separation. Overbearing or spendthrift stepfathers were unfortunately commonplace, a danger to be avoided by a woman with beloved children and their wealth to protect.” By March 1758, 10 months after Daniel’s death, Patsy had two serious suitors: Charles Carter and George Washington. Charles Carter had some things in common with Daniel Custis. For one, he was very wealthy, controlled thousands of acres of tobacco plantation land, and he was a member of the elite. He also was a similar age as Daniel, being 49 to Patsy’s 26. He was already a widower twice over. His second wife had died about six months before he began wooing Patsy. Patsy didn’t necessarily want to marry another much older man. It was kind of a “been there, done that” situation. And what’s more, Charles Carter had a dozen living children! Ten of them were still living at home and ranged in age from 2 to 20. Charles’s two eldest daughters were already married, and the eldest was almost Patsy’s age. Charles even had a grandson already. Even though it was surely flattering to Patsy that Charles was genuinely in love with her, he wasn’t what she was looking for in a second husband. Enter Colonel George Washington. He was not wealthy and did not come from an elite family. But he also wasn’t old enough to be Patsy’s father. In fact, he was 8 months younger than Patsy, having been born February 22, 1732. And here’s a little fun fact about George Washington’s birthday—he was actually born on February 11, 1732, but when England switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, the calendar shifted, and the old February 11 became the new February 22. George always celebrated his birthday on the 22nd. George was a colonel in a colonial regiment of the British Army. He very much wanted to be commissioned as an officer in the regular Army, not just a colonial regiment, but the British looked down on the colonists and didn’t think any of the colonial regimental soldiers were worthy of being real British Army officers. George also had a plantation in Northern Virginia along the Potomac River called Mount Vernon. It had come to him in a complicated way. George’s mother had been his father’s second wife, so he had several elder half-siblings. When George’s father died, Mount Vernon was inherited by George’s half-brother Lawrence. But then Lawrence died in 1752, leaving Mount Vernon to his daughter, and then to George, if his daughter failed to grow up and produce heirs of her own. As fate would have it, the girl died two years after Lawrence, so George did inherit Mount Vernon several years before he married Patsy Custis. However, Lawrence’s widow had the right to live at Mount Vernon and enjoy its benefit for her lifetime. She was remarried and had moved to her new husband’s home in a different county, so she agreed to lease Mount Vernon to George. She died in 1761, just a couple of years after George and Patsy moved to Mount Vernon, so it belonged to him outright from that date forward. Because of his military duties, George could not live at and take care of Mount Vernon full time, so he hired his younger brother Jack to manage the plantation when George was away. By the time Patsy Custis was Virginia’s most eligible widow, George was so frustrated with his lack of advancement in the British Army, he was ready to give up his military commission and become a full-time planter. He was working on a construction project to expand the house at Mount Vernon and was ready to find a wife. I also should note that George was almost certainly in love with a woman named Sally Fairfax, who was married to George William Fairfax. The Fairfaxes were related to members of the British aristocracy and were fabulously wealthy. They lived just a bit downriver of Mount Vernon at their plantation called Belvoir. George’s older brother Lawrence had married a Fairfax, which is how George first came to know the family. It was obviously very inconvenient for George to be in love with a married woman and to be close friends with that woman’s husband. It’s really hard to know what, if anything, ever happened between George and Sally Fairfax. But George had good reason to want to settle down and marry so he could get over his feelings for Sally. George Washington and Patsy Custis met at the home of William Chamberlayne, a New Kent County neighbor of Patsy’s and a mutual connection. It’s entirely possible that Patsy and George had crossed paths at an earlier time when both of them were in Williamsburg for court sessions, but if they did, there’s no record of it. The name of Colonel Washington was certainly known generally among the planters of Virginia because of his military actions against the French during the French and Indian War, which lasted from 1754 until 1763 and was still going on at the time Patsy and George met in 1758. This war was called the Seven Years War in Europe, but some quick math will tell you that 1754 to 1763 is nine years, not seven. This isn’t because Europeans are bad at math, but because the war in Europe didn’t start until 1756. This war was wide-ranging, and battles were fought in various places all over the world. It all ended via treaties signed in 1763. While we’re on this tangent about the French and Indian slash Seven Years War, I might as well tell you the main reason Colonel George Washington was so well known, because it’s actually quite relevant to General George Washington’s success in the Revolutionary War. The fighting in Virginia took place on the western frontier of Virginia, on the border with what was known as the Ohio territory. The British were trying to gain a foothold over this territory with new colonial settlements, but the French and their Indian allies kept attacking the settlements. In 1755, Britain sent General Edward Braddock to America with a force of British regulars. George Washington’s colonial regiment was attached to General Braddock’s force, and they attempted to attack the French on the frontier, but they ended up being ambushed, taking heavy casualties, and losing their commander when General Braddock was killed in the fighting. The only saving grace in this debacle was that Colonel Washington cleverly led the surviving soldiers to safety. It was the first in... /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37449025

Little Patsy Dandridge 07/11/2025

Episode 1.2 Little Patsy Dandridge 07/10/2025

Episode 1.2 Little Patsy Dandridge Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.2, Little Patsy Dandridge. Last week I shared some background information and context for evaluating Martha Washington’s life in the 18th century. But now let’s start at the beginning. Sometime between noon and 1 pm on June 2, 1731, Frances Dandridge gave birth to her first child with her husband, John Dandridge. It was a baby girl, and they named her Martha. As I mentioned in the introduction, families tended to use the same names repeatedly. Martha’s grandmother and great-grandmother were both also named Martha. And she eventually had a daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter named Martha in her honor. Martha was nicknamed Patsy (which was sometimes spelled P-A-T-S-Y and sometimes spelled P-A-T-C-Y). It’s less important for a podcast though, amirite? I’m going to refer to her as Patsy over the next few episodes, because that’s what she went by at this stage of her life. Upon her marriage to George Washington, she started going by Martha, so when we get to that point, I will start referring to her as Martha. Little Patsy Dandridge had brown hair, hazel eyes, and fair skin. She was always small—even in adulthood she only reached 5 feet tall. This would later prove somewhat comical when she married 6-foot-3 George Washington, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Patsy was born in New Kent County, Virginia. New Kent County is in southern Virginia, roughly 25 or 30 miles north of Williamsburg, which was the capital of the colony of Virginia. Today we call it “colonial Williamsburg” but back then it was just regular Williamsburg. On her mother’s side, Patsy’s family in Virginia went back at least four generations. Her family lived on a small plantation called Chestnut Grove. At that time, the word “plantation” was used to describe any agricultural property devoted to growing a single crop for export, regardless of how large the property was. All of New Kent County was rural agricultural property, and the crop of the day was tobacco. Patsy’s family was well-off, but not wealthy. For context, Chestnut Grove was about 500 acres. The family of Patsy’s first husband owned about 17,000 acres and were considered very wealthy. Lord Fairfax, a prominent British landowner in Virginia owned 5 million acres. The house at Chestnut Grove was a two-story frame house with three rooms on each floor. The rooms were paneled in planks of pine wood, and there were fireplaces at each end of the house to provide warmth. It was surrounded by chestnut trees and an orchard of fruit trees, and it was located on the bank of the Pamunkey River, which is a branch of the York River in Virginia. Like most plantation properties, the house at Chestnut Grove was surrounded by a number of outbuildings. Kitchens were always separate buildings because of the risk of fire—no one wanted a kitchen fire to burn down the entire house. I want to quote here from Helen Bryan’s book Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty because it’s a great list of the other buildings on a typical plantation property: “A tobacco-drying house, a washhouse, a smokehouse, a still room for making beer and cordials, a springhouse, a poultry yard, a pigpen, a barn, a stable, slave quarters, a kitchen garden, an herb garden, a privy, an orchard, and sometimes a building used as a schoolhouse.” You can imagine how much land all those buildings, gardens, and yards would take up. Because of this, homes were spread out and neighbors were not close by. The Virginia planters wanted to be like the British aristocracy, so their children were educated similarly. Proper manners and posture were very important. Girls learned to manage wide skirts and were always corseted when in public. Corsets were pieces of fabric that had firm support rods sewn into them. The supports were often made of whalebone and were sometimes called “stays.” The purpose of a corset was to force a lady to stand and sit up straight and cinch in the waist. They were mighty uncomfortable, but they were a standard part of a lady’s wardrobe. Bruce Chadwick in The General and Mrs. Washington writes, “Martha appreciated luxurious dresses and bonnets at an early age and enjoyed the company of other girls who enjoyed being well-dressed.” Throughout her life, Patsy/Martha would be admired for her elegant, but not elaborate, style. Ladies also learned how to decorate a home, dress stylishly, host guests, converse in mixed company, sing, dance, and do needlepoint and embroidery. Many of these skills would surprisingly come in handy during the Revolutionary War. Here’s a quote from the book Martha Washington: An American Life by Patricia Brady: “Besides the mundane tasks like sweeping and mopping, here are some of the things Patsy learned to do at her mother’s side: kill, pluck, and draw fowls, from the smallest hen to the largest turkey; track down setting hens, gather their eggs, and candle them; make dyes; spin, weave, and dye wool and linen; make clothes, sheets, towels, pillowcases, mattress covers, quilts, curtains, bed curtains, tablecloths, napkins, underwear, menstrual pads, diapers, and nightwear; stuff pillows and mattresses; beat dust from the rugs; turn mattresses and even out the feathers; gather useful herbs, plants, berries, and roots in the woods; concoct home remedies and beauty aids; salt and smoke hams, bacon, beef, and fish; make vinegar, sauces, syrups, and jellies; preserve fruit and vegetables; cook large meals over the fire in an open hearth; bake in a brick oven; make soap from lye and household grease; make furniture and silver polish and use them; wash clothes weekly in a huge boiling kettle without shrinking or discoloring them and spread them to dry; crimp ruffles and press clothes with heavy irons heated in the fireplace; darn, mend, and patch; and knit, knit, knit—woolen stockings wore out fast. The most common verb in this long list is ‘make,’ and that’s what colonial women did.” My god, I’m exhausted just from reading that list. So the next time you feel like complaining about having to do laundry, just be glad that you don’t have to boil it in a large cauldron! In addition to all this, Patsy was educated in reading, writing and arithmetic, probably by her mother, since the Dandridges weren’t wealthy enough to employ a private tutor. As the eldest child, Patsy also would have helped take care of the younger children. She was the eldest of 8—3 brothers and 4 sisters, Her mother also had a 9th child late in life after Patsy was already married. It’s no small feat that none of Patsy’s siblings died in infancy, nor did her mother die in childbirth as so many women did. But her brother John died at the age of 16, her sister Frances died at 13, and her sister Mary at age 7. Patsy also possibly had an illegitimate half-sister who was raised at Chestnut Grove with the other children. Details on this half-sister are sketchy, because most families didn’t want to air their dirty laundry, so to speak. Her name was Ann, and she was quite a few years younger than Patsy. They shared a father, but Ann’s mother seems to have been a Native American woman. The only biographer to mention Ann Dandridge was Helen Bryan in her book Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty, published in 2001. The claim that Ann Dandridge was Martha Washington’s half-sister is supported by family lore but not by any documentary evidence. In her book Martha Washington: An American Life, published in 2005, Patricia Brady completely discounts the existence of Ann Dandridge by pointing out that Ann and her offspring never appeared on the 1786 or 1799 lists of Mount Vernon slaves, which were quite meticulously prepared. However, if Ann Dandridge’s mother had been Native American, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Ann was a slave. Children born to slaves automatically became slaves too, so if Ann’s mother had been an African slave, then she would have automatically been a slave. But if Ann and her mother weren’t slaves, there would be no reason for Ann or her children to appear on the list of Mount Vernon slaves. We’ll almost certainly never know for sure. Patsy and her siblings would have done a lot of the household work with their mother. Chestnut Grove is estimated to have had 15 to 20 slaves, but they would have been needed in the fields and rarely available to help with the housework. Religion was a big part of Patsy’s life, and colonial life in general. Sunday church was an opportunity to see neighbors, socialize, conduct business, and get a break from housework. Sunday church is also where invitations were exchanged for dinners or dances at neighbors’ homes. Because of the size of most plantations, neighbors were miles away from each other. There was little chance of just bumping into someone randomly, but visits were common, and Virginians were known for their hospitality. If someone stopped by, you would always ask them to stay for a meal, and sometimes even overnight. Visitors were never turned away. Twice a year the planters and their families would travel to Williamsburg for the spring and fall session of the colonial legislature. These were known as court sessions or court days, because this was the time of year when all legal matters were handled at the courthouse. The full-time population of Williamsburg was about 1000 people, but the population doubled during the bi-annual court days. There were also a number of balls, teas, and dinners during court sessions. These social occasions gave young people a chance to meet each other and find spouses. In 1748, a man named Daniel Parke Custis started courting Patsy. He was a New Kent County neighbor who had crossed paths with Patsy many times throughout her life. He would have seen her grow up from a girl into a young woman. Patsy was petite at barely five feet tall. She had dark brown hair, tiny hands and feet, and beautiful white teeth, which was very rare at that time. Throughout her life she was described as plump. Daniel was five foot six, dark-haired, and had large dark eyes. He was an active man, described as stout. Oh, and he was also supposedly the third-richest man in Virginia. Daniel was 37 at the time, and Martha was 17. There was nothing unusual about the age difference. Because of the high rate of death during childbirth, men often married multiple times during their lives and often married women much younger than themselves. What was unusual about Daniel is that he was still a bachelor at 37. Most men had married at least once by that age. But Daniel had an extremely difficult father. The Custis family was very wealthy, and the very wealthy usually married the very wealthy. Brides generally came into a marriage with a dowry of money, slaves, and/or land. The wealthier the family, the larger the dowry. The Dandridges had a large family but not a large fortune, so Patsy could not hope for a large dowry. Daniel Custis’s father, John Custis, was appalled at the idea of Daniel marrying Patsy Dandridge because her family was not near wealthy enough. But he had also objected to Daniel’s previous choices for marriage, even though they had been on equal terms, monetarily speaking, with the Custises. The fact is that John Custis was just a jerk. He had been unhappily married, and he enjoyed lording his money over his two children. He had already disowned his daughter for marrying without his consent, and Daniel was worried he would do the same to him. What’s mildly ironic about this is that a substantial portion of the Custis fortune was technically brought to the estate by John’s deceased wife, Frances Parke. He may have hated his wife, but he sure loved her money. I might as well tell you a story that was mentioned in all the books I read. John Custis and his wife argued constantly, both in private and in public. During one heated argument taking place while they were out riding in their gig (which was kind of like a chariot, but with seats; it had two big wheels and then an open bench seat and was pulled by horses - I’ll put a photo on the website if you’re curious. Go to to find it). Anyway, John turned the horses so that they headed into the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Frances asked where he was going, and he supposedly replied, “To hell, Madam.” To which she then supposedly replied, “Drive on, Sir.” Needless to say, they did not enjoy a happy marriage. She died when their two children were young, so Daniel never really knew his mother. John Custis never remarried, not wanting to make another marital mistake. Anyway, back to Patsy—Daniel appealed to friends and business associates to advocate on his and Patsy’s behalf to his father, but nothing worked. It’s a bit of a mystery why John Custis eventually did consent to the marriage. Somehow, it appears that Patsy went to see John and made her case in person. There’s no record of what she said, or even when or where this meeting supposedly took place. But John Custis consented, and then did everyone involved a huge favor by dying. This was November 1749, so over a year since Daniel had first started courting Patsy. In order to observe a mourning period, they put off the wedding until May 1750. On May 15, 1750, 19-year-old Patsy Dandridge married 39-year-old Daniel Custis in the parlor of Chestnut Grove, with friends and family in attendance. Virginia weddings did not take place in churches because the churches were too far out in the countryside, and there was no suitable place nearby for the wedding festivities—the dinner and dancing. Brides wore their brightest, most colorful silk gowns, and all the guests wore colorful clothing as well, even the men. The Church of England required weddings to take place in the morning, but the Virginians held theirs in the afternoons because they had to allow time for all the guests to travel however many miles to get to the wedding. There was no such thing as a honeymoon in colonial America. Hotels did not yet exist, and the places where travelers would typically stay during long travels were gross and dirty taverns. You often had to share a bed with a stranger, and also bedbugs and fleas. No thanks! Wedding celebrations usually continued for several days, with all the guests staying at the home of the bride. Women slept four or five to a bed. Trundle beds and pallets were pulled out. And the men just slept wherever there was a spot—on a chair, on a rug, or even on a haystack in the barn. The colonial Virginians liked to party, and they didn’t mind having to crowd into a house or a bed if that meant the party could keep going. When the wedding festivities finally ended, Patsy and Daniel left Chestnut Grove and went to live at the Custis plantation house, which was named White House, of all things. Little Patsy Dandridge was now Mrs. Custis. Next week, we’ll cover her happy marriage with Daniel, which (spoiler alert) was sadly cut short by his untimely death. Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me. The music is by Matthew Dull. If you enjoyed it, please recommend it to a friend! /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37367540

Introduction to Martha Washington 07/04/2025

Episode 1.1 Introduction 07/03/2025

Episode 1.1 Introduction Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion. Episode 1.1, Introduction On April 30, 1789, George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America, and Martha Washington became the first First Lady. But here are two fun facts right out of the gate: Martha wasn’t even at George’s inauguration, and we didn’t start calling the President’s wife the First Lady until 1849. Martha was born into a world where the King of England was the sovereign ruler of the colony of Virginia, where she lived. She could never have dreamed that one day she would be the spouse of the President of the United States of America. First of all, no other country had a President. And second of all, The United States of America didn’t exist! She expected to grow up, marry, have children, and live her entire life in the same colony where she was born. The reality turned out so wildly different from anything she could have ever imagined. We’re going to start at the beginning in episode 1.2, where I tell you all about Martha’s childhood in Virginia. But I thought it would be useful to create an introductory episode with some background information. Although today we use America and the United States interchangeably, the United States did not exist at the beginning of our story. America did though. The colonies that England established throughout the 1600s on the land mass across the Atlantic Ocean were called the American colonies. So I will refer to America as such for the first part of the season. Once the American colonists declare independence, win the war, and establish a new nation, I’ll start referring to it as the United States. I also use England/English and Britain/British somewhat interchangeably. England is a country, obviously, and it’s on the island of Great Britain. Wales and Scotland are separate countries that are also on the island of Great Britain. In 1707, England, Scotland, and Wales were united as the Kingdom of Great Britain. But the seat of government was London, and the king and parliament governing Great Britain were often referred to as the English king and the English parliament. We Americans tend to refer to the English as the British, which is probably not super precise on our part, but there you go. One more note on terminology has to do with what to call the Americans who decided to revolt against their king and parliament back in England. They called themselves patriots. The English called them rebels and traitors. What’s the difference between a rebellion and a revolution? You could argue that it depends on the outcome. If the rebellion is put down and the status quo resumes, then it was a rebellion. But if the rebellion is successful, either in effecting some significant change or in throwing off control by another country, then it’s a revolution. Obviously the outcome of the uprising that we today call the American Revolution wasn’t known while they were in the middle of it. They all knew they were committing treason, and they all knew that they could be hanged as traitors if the British defeated them or if they were captured during hostilities. George Washington and his fellow soldiers knew they had to win or die. Miraculously, they won. But keep all this in mind as we get into the episodes covering the war years. Life in 18th century colonial America was vastly different from what we experience in 21st century America. Let’s start with the most obvious difference, and the elephant in the room: slavery. I’ve rewritten and revised this portion of my script numerous times. It’s hard to talk about Martha and George Washington’s relationship to slavery without sounding like I’m trying to justify the fact that they were slaveholders. That’s not at all what I’m trying to do. I’m only trying to put it in context and describe their relationship with slavery. Even in the 18th century, there were plenty of people who knew that slavery was wrong, so the fact is that Martha and George were just plain racist in their belief that Black people were inferior. Nothing I’m about to say should be construed as trying to condone that, or overlook it. I just want you to understand that this was only one facet of their lives and who they were as people. Martha lived her entire life in slave-holding America, and she depended on slave labor throughout her life. To her, this was a natural state of affairs. To us, it’s appalling. But it was a fact of life in colonial America, and not just in the south. There were also Northerners who owned slaves. During Martha’s lifetime, there was a small abolition movement, and they achieved some small wins, but most slave owners were unwilling or financially unable to release their slaves from bondage. The Southern colonies had developed their entire economies on the backs of slave labor, and it was never going to be easy to separate them. A lot has been written about the irony of the Founding Fathers fighting for liberty from their oppressors while also being slave holders. There’s no doubt it was the height of hypocrisy. Some Founding Fathers, like George Washington, had qualms about slavery and wanted to find a way to end it. He did eventually free all his slaves, but only under the terms of his will when he died. Martha never seems to have had second thoughts about slavery. She wasn’t cruel to her slaves, but she definitely thought of them as inferior beings. She became rather close to some of the house slaves who were with her for many years, especially her personal maids. But she also often accused them of being inherently lazy and felt they needed to be constantly micromanaged or nothing would get done. It’s uncomfortable to refer to humans as property belonging to someone and using the possessive pronouns “his, her, and their,” but there’s no getting around the fact that African people were kidnapped, shipped to America in inhumane conditions, and sold as property. Slaveholders considered these African people to be property in the same way they considered their homes and the contents of their homes to be property. It’s also uncomfortable to seemingly defend Martha by saying she wasn’t cruel to her slaves. It feels like playing into the fallacy of the “benevolent slaveholder,” which is a contradiction in terms. I don’t want anything I say here to be construed as justifying slavery. Subjectively speaking, Martha was not cruel. She made sure the slaves were properly clothed and fed, and she provided medical care and medicines when they were sick. Their quarters were kept in good repair, and they were allowed to earn money in various ways. George and Martha also had a policy of not selling slaves if it meant splitting up families. This gets complicated because, again, slaves were considered property, but it will come up a few times in future episodes, so I want to explain it now. Martha inherited a large number of slaves from her first husband. They belonged to his estate, but she had the right to the benefit of their labor during her lifetime. They were referred to as “dower slaves.” After her death, they would revert to the estate and the estate’s heirs. That means George couldn’t sell any of Martha’s dower slaves without reimbursing the estate for their value. Because slaves that were part of George’s estate intermarried and had children with slaves that were part of Martha’s dower estate, they almost never sold any of their slaves, because it often wasn’t possible to sell them as a family unit, and they didn’t want to separate the families. I can assure you that not all slaveholders were this conscientious about keeping families together. But at the same time, objectively speaking, the very fact that they “owned” slaves is cruel. Slaves had no control over their own lives. No freedom of choice at all. They were not allowed to learn how to read or write. Life as a slave was inherently a cruel state of existence, even if the slaves were taken care of and provided for. Now certainly, there were slaveholders and plantation overseers who were just inhumanely cruel—beating and starving their slaves. So what I mean when I say that Martha wasn’t cruel to her slaves is that they were not subjected to this extreme inhumanity, and they were generally treated as valuable assets. But they were seen as assets nonetheless. This podcast isn’t about slavery, but slavery runs through everything in the 18th and first half of the 19th century, so it has to be acknowledged. It’s going to be in the background of all of the seasons of this podcast until we get past the Civil War. This podcast also isn’t about George Washington, and it’s not about the Revolutionary War, but you’re going to learn a whole lot about both because they were such large parts of Martha’s life. She was an integral part of the war, to an extent that no one ever learns in school. Another thing to note about life in the 18th century is that there was a lot of death. You might be appalled at the number of tragic deaths Martha endured throughout her lifetime. Disease and illness were the major culprits, but also accidents and, you know, war. It will make you appreciate all the vaccines and pharmaceuticals we have available to us in the 21st century. It’s something of a miracle that Martha lived to be nearly 71, which was considered elderly in the 18th century. Communication was much slower in the 18th century. They obviously didn’t have email or telephones, but they didn’t even have telegrams yet. All communication was done either in-person or through written correspondence that had to be hand-delivered or sent through the post. Couriers often carried important messages and then waited for a reply to go back to the original sender. Transportation was entirely by foot or by horse—either riding on a horse or riding in a coach or wagon pulled by horses. By the end of this season, I think you’ll have a real appreciation for the force of nature that was Martha Washington. I know I do. I read four biographies of Martha to prepare this season’s episodes. Biographies are what we call “secondary sources” because they are not original documents from the time period being studied. The opposite of secondary sources is primary sources. Primary sources are things like correspondence between the relevant parties, diaries, logbooks, newspaper articles, official records of meetings, etc. Many people of this time period, including George Washington, kept daily diaries of their activities and who they met or dined with. George even kept detailed records of each day’s weather and what was happening with various plantings, like a true farmer. Unfortunately, Martha Washington did not keep a diary. The biographies I read did have quite a bit of overlap because the authors were mostly using the same primary sources for their research. In an unfortunate twist, after George died, Martha burned all the letters they had written to each other. Only two escaped because they were wedged into a desk and Martha missed them. It’s fascinating to speculate on what more we could know about this famous couple if she hadn’t burned their letters. But Martha was a reluctant public figure, and she probably felt that this was the only way she could exert any control over her legacy. George and Martha were apart for long stretches during their marriage, especially during the Revolutionary War and some parts of the presidency. They wrote to each other constantly when they were apart, so those letters would have been a treasure trove of information. Oh well! [shrug emoji] I, personally, am glad I didn’t have to do the primary source research for this podcast. People were less than creative with names back then, and the same names were used over and over again within families. Because there were so many people who had the same names, nicknames were common, but a lot of the same nicknames were used too. Trying to keep track of which Martha or John was which sounds like an absolute nightmare. Not to mention that record-keeping in the pre-digital age was less than ideal. Many records have been lost to fires and floods. Others have weathered with age, making them difficult or impossible to decipher. Plus, trying to read 18th century handwriting is enough to drive a person to drink. Then add in the fact that there was little standardization of spelling back then, and reading letters from this time period is a little like trying to solve a word puzzle. So yeah, I’m glad the biographers have done the really hard work for me. In places where I quote directly from one of the biographies I read, I will identify the book and author. They are also listed on the companion website at americasfirstladiespodcast.com. You can also find transcripts for each episode there, in case you want to refer back to something. Lastly, just a note about time periods and dates. I’ve already mentioned the 18th century a couple of times. This is obvious to some, but maybe not obvious to everyone. The 18th century is the 1700s. Martha was born in 1731 and she died in 1802, so nearly everything I’m going to talk about takes place in the 1700s. I’ll mostly give exact years for events, but there are some generalizations that are made with regard to the 18th century, so I want you to have the proper context. I’ll leave you with a quote from one of the biographies I read to prepare this season, Martha Washington: An American Life by Patricia Brady: “Not elected and free of official oversight, presidents' wives wield tremendous political and social influence. With their unique access to the nation’s leader, they are subject to constant scrutiny by allies and enemies, the press, and the general public. These women are expected to assume national responsibilities, willing or not, and their private lives are routinely examined, discussed, and criticized. There is no guidebook to help a new First Lady; she must look back at her predecessors to decide how to shape her role and to survive in the limelight. Martha Washington’s imprint on the position has been decisive. As the first in a long line, she invented the role while confronting with grace its inevitable quandaries, successes, and heartaches. Admired and respected in her lifetime, Martha Washington set the standard for all First Ladies.” Next week, we’ll officially kick off Martha Washington’s life with Episode 1.2, Little Patsy Dandridge. Thanks for listening. This episode was produced by me, and the music is by Matthew Dull. /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37276815

Podcast Trailer 07/03/2025

Podcast Trailer How much do you really know about America’s First Ladies? These women are in the public eye, but they have no Constitutionally defined official role. Wouldn’t you like to get to know them a little better? Coming July 4 to a podcast player near you, America’s First Ladies, a podcast examining the lives of, wait for it, America’s First Ladies. I’m Risa Weaver-Enion, the host of America’s First Ladies. I’m not a famous author or journalist, just someone with an undergraduate degree in history and a love of stories. And I want to share these stories with you. Do you know how many First Ladies there have been in American history? Amazingly enough, there’s no clear answer to that question. Some men had spouses who died before they became President, yet the National First Ladies’ Library still considers them “official” First Ladies. Some presidents had daughters, nieces, or daughters-in-law fill the role of First Lady, but only one of those is recognized as an “official” First Lady by the National First Ladies’ Library. When you tally them all up, there have been 52 women who served as First Lady, plus four more spouses who died before their husbands became President. I’m sure you can name a handful of them—hopefully the ones who have served during your lifetime, plus a few famous ones like Martha Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Jackie Kennedy. But what about Letitia Tyler, Priscilla Tyler, and Julia Tyler? All three of them served as First Lady for President John Tyler! You’ll have to wait a few seasons to find out what that’s all about. This podcast is going to take a deep look at every woman who has served as First Lady, whether the First Ladies’ Library considers them “official” or not. Each First Lady will get an entire season dedicated to her. Admittedly, some seasons will be longer than others. It’s going to depend on how many biographies there are of a particular First Lady, and how much information I can find about them. We’ll go chronologically, of course, beginning with Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. Did you even know that George Washington was Martha’s second husband? Each episode will be around 30 minutes. I want this to be an easy listen, not something that feels like going to school. There are no pop quizzes, and no final exams. This is your chance to get to know these women better, including their lives before (and after) their time as First Lady. There’s a companion website at americasfirstladiespodcast.com where you can find transcripts of each episode, plus photos, diagrams, and further reading. You can find America’s First Ladies on your podcast player of choice. Just hit the “Follow” button so new episodes download automatically when they’re released. I’m excited to dive into the lives of America’s First Ladies with you! /episode/index/show/cfd75fd3-dd8b-4166-9771-72dcedccd84f/id/37276785

America's First Ladies Trailer 06/20/2025

America's First Ladies

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