Mary Ball Washington

by Craig Shirley

  He was alone, with three children and no wife to mother them.

  Congruent to all this, during these same years, young Mary Ball in the Northern Neck had lost her father, mother, and stepfather, and had grown up under the wing of her half sister Elizabeth and her husband.

  THE ADULT AUGUSTINE WAS SAID TO BE OF HANDSOME STATURE, SIX FEET tall and muscular, with “the most manly proportions,” as reported by George Washington Parke Custis. Augustine was a gentle giant who could “raise up and place in a wagon a mass of iron that two ordinary men could barely lift from the ground.” This feat alone allowed him to become a sort of Hercules of Virginia; no man wished to duel or combat him lest they lose.28 It all sounded very mythical, a man with godlike super strength.

  Ella Bassett Washington said that Augustine was “a noble-looking man, of distinguished bearing, tall and athletic, with fair, florid complexion, brown hair, and fine gray eyes.”29 He had a handsome physical appearance, which perhaps made Mary more attracted to him than to other bachelors. Families of their stock in Virginia knew one another, especially those who had been in the New World for years before. Her first meeting with Augustine could have been when he was still married to Jane. They may have also met at the home of George Eskridge, Mary’s guardian, tying everything to a single place.30

  (That is why it is curious to see some legends that the two met in England, while she was visiting her half brother Joseph, Mary marrying Augustine in Cookham, a small village along the River Thames in southeast England. The story goes, almost as if written by a great romantic author, that Augustine injured himself when his carriage crashed, and Mary, whose gate at which he crashed, took him and nursed him back to health.31 But even Mary Virginia Terhune (writing as Marion Harland), who was sometimes keen to emphasize the poetic and the romantic tales over known facts, was skeptical of it.32 There is no proof for it; in fact, there is proof against it. Joseph was in Virginia at that time, so no relative of Mary’s would have stayed in the Old World. The time frame was much too tight for Augustine to visit England after Jane’s death and meet Mary, marry her, have George, and return to Virginia—and make no mark on anyone’s lives.)

  Mary Ball was older for an unmarried woman, in her early twenties at this point. Could she have been content with an unmarried lifestyle? Could it have been because of a fiery (or, to some, deficient) personality that turned men off? Certainly not every woman would have to be married, but as the only daughter—much less only child—of her mother and father, it would have seemed an odd choice for a Ball. She missed “by the narrowest margin being classified as an old maid.” But luck determined the Washington-Ball bloodline would live on.33

  Some biographies take Mary Ball’s relatively old age in marriage as proof of her strength of character: “Could it have been,” opined writer Willard Randall, “that there was something so strong and independent about her that every suitor seemed to back away?”34 Given Mary’s famous stubbornness in later life, and her singular courage in running a plantation on her own, it’s possible that many suitors found her too fearsome for their taste, at least at first.

  She would have been defying considerable social pressure to marry; being of old age and unmarried was almost insulting. The thought of an old unmarried woman was enough to almost cause slander. A 1772 article from the Virginia Gazette talked about an unmarried woman of fifty-five:

  Mrs. Mary Morgan has lived to the Age of fifty five unmarried, but she merits no Blame on Account of her Virginity, for she certainly would have entered into the Marriage State if any Man had thought proper to make his Addresses to her. Nature has bestowed on her no Beauty, and not much Sweetness of Temper; the Sight of every pretty Woman, therefore, is very offensive to her, the Sight of a married One hardly supportable. . . . Inwardly tortured by her own ill Nature, she is incapable of any Satisfaction but what arises from teasing others. . . .35

  Though the difference in age was generational between Mary Ball and Mary Morgan, the sentiment is clear: an unmarried woman, especially an old unmarried woman, was unsatisfying, mean, decrepit, and unwanted. Mary Ball, if she remained unmarried, would have been swept aside by history.

  NO ONE KNOWS WHEN AUGUSTINE FIRST MET MARY, OR WHEN HE ASKED FOR her hand in marriage, or when he first fell in love with her.

  Mary and Augustine were married on March 6, 1731.36 Mary was about twenty-three years old; Augustine, thirty-seven.

  Where they were married was omitted in the family Bible. Theories exist, placing the marriage all around the area, from Mary’s girlhood church, Yeocomico,37 to her home at Sandy Point, with Cople Parish’s Reverend Walter Jones officiating.38 Both were valid options and there is an equal possibility that both occurred, though a typical wedding in Virginia in the mid-1700s was at home, in the late morning. Wherever it did take place, it was an event for the ages. Three times, in the three preceding weeks, the “banns” of marriage—an announcement for the upcoming celebration and ceremony—were published in pamphlets and papers.

  MARY BALL WASHINGTON WAS NOW THE WIFE OF HER HUSBAND AUGUSTINE, and Augustine Washington was the husband of his wife.

  Marriage was not simply a means to an end, to secure a fortune or dowry or inheritance, though that was certainly the case for many. It was also seen as a legitimate bond of love. There is no reason that this would be different between Mary and Augustine, though the latter had ample practical reason to bring another to the house, in order to manage the plantation. Mary and Augustine may well have been a solid married couple, happy with each other. “Spouses frequently expressed feelings of close, tender regard for each other, suggesting that the romantic grandiloquence characteristic of courtship contained more than a small portion of genuine love.”39 When a husband or wife went away for family or business, it left a hole in the heart and household of the plantation.40 In the decade following, Augustine frequently visited England for business, leaving Mary alone with her children.

  This did not mean that Mary and Augustine were equal members of the household. Augustine was the head. There was a clear role for the sexes—and for sex itself. “The fragmentary evidence available on marital sexual behavior,” said Daniel Smith, “suggests that while husbands and wives enjoyed and needed sexual advances, only men were expected to make the advances.”41 Mary ended up having six children with Augustine, and unknown to history is how many miscarriages she may have had.

  THEY DID HAVE CONJUGAL RELATIONS, AND QUICKLY. IT DID NOT TAKE LONG for Mary to become pregnant. A mere eleven months after her wedding, she gave birth to her first child. These eleven months are spent in historical obscurity, filled with legends more fit for bedtime stories than history. She lived at Popes Creek, with her belongings coming with her in the marriage. This was her fifth home, after her birth home Epping Forest, her home with her stepfather George Gale at Cherry Point, her home with George Eskridge at Sandy Point, and her home with her half sister Elizabeth at Bonum’s Creek.

  It was during these eleven months that Mary was hosting a friend at her house. There was a dark, thunderous storm outside that evening, and supper was well under way when a bolt of lightning struck the house. It traveled downward, struck Mary’s guest, and killed her instantly. The bolt was so direct that it fused the guest’s flesh and utensils together. Mary Terhune recalled the story: “The nervous shock left ineffaceable traces upon the strong mind. . . . She grew pale and sick at the approach of a thunder-storm, and at the first roll and gleam of the deadly elements sought her own room or sat with closed eyes and folded hands, absorbed in silent prayer while it lasted.”42 George Washington Parke Custis, from whence this tale came, said this was her singular fear: lightning.43 But with this fear came more problems.

  Traumatic events of any sort could haunt people the rest of their lives; fatal storms that killed dinner companions more so. The cause of lightning was unknown in the 1730s, with some scientists dabbling in theories of its origins. (Benjamin Franklin’s famed kite experiment did not occur until 1752, much later.) To the sca
red Mary, who would not have been interested in or been exposed to the theoretical reasons of electricity and lightning, a sudden strike of literal death from the sky would have shaken her to the core. Whether from the wrath of God for some misdeed or simple bad luck that God allowed, something happened that in all likelihood would have left a mark.

  This event could have been the singular moment when Mary would have gone from being a normal prospective mother to an overbearing and overprotective prospective mother. There is no primary evidence that it happened (Douglas Freeman calls the incident spurious, though admits “some actual unpleasant occurrences may underlie the sensational yarn”44), but it certainly fits the growth of her character. The thunderstorm, or whatever may or may not have happened that night, shaped the pregnant Mary from her childhood innocence to something more, something that would similarly shape the life of her son. Something during her pregnancy—it could have been the thunder, it could have been another brush with death—changed her.

  This death of a friend may have very well shaped how she viewed the world: a world where her mother and father and several siblings were dead, a world where death will come with but a moment’s notice. What she may have seen as protective, others, even today, may see as helicopter-parenting and mean. It’s a tale as old as time, the struggle to find the perfect balance of parental worry and youthful independence.

  One account tells us this fear of thunder and lightning remained with her for life. In one instance decades later, her daughter Betty, during a particularly bad storm, caught Mary with her head down at the bed, hands clasped in prayer. When Mary saw her daughter, she reportedly said, “I have been striving for years against this weakness, for you know, Betty, my trust is in God; but sometimes my fears are stronger than my faith.”45

  She would indeed have many, many fears in the years to come. For herself and her husband and her children and her very country.

  ON A COLD WINTER DAY IN VIRGINIA, AT THE PLANTATION ON POPES CREEK, was born their first son. He was named George, in honor of the guardian who so helped his mother during her youth. No physical description of him exists, but he must have been a healthy, plump baby to survive at such a period with such strength into his adulthood. He was born, according to the Washington Bible, on February 11, 1731 or 1732 (it reads “1731/2”). The former year is correct. It noted that he was born “about 10 in the morning.” Nearly a century later, his step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, wished to memorialize this spot. In 1815, traveling in his private schooner Lady of the Lake to Westmoreland, he landed near Popes Creek, with a “slab of freestone,” bearing the engraved:

  HERE

  THE 11TH OF FEBRUARY, 1732,

  GEORGE WASHINGTON

  WAS BORN

  With him was a relative of Washington, Samuel Lewis, along with the schooner’s crew and others, who were “desirous of making the [ceremony] of depositing the stone as imposing as circumstances would permit.” He later wrote in a letter to the Arlington Gazette editor, “enveloped it in the ‘star-spangled banner’ of our country.” They placed the stone near an ancient and decrepit chimney of George Washington’s former childhood home and departed with a cannon salute.46

  The slab was worthy of any relic of a saint, wrapped in the righteous cloth of the American flag, and a ceremony was held as reverently as any liturgy and benediction praising God. But this was not for the birth of the savior of mankind millennia ago in Bethlehem, Israel, near the mighty Jordan River; this was for the birth of the savior of a nation in Popes Creek, Virginia, near the mighty Potomac River, a mere eighty-three years earlier.

  Unfortunately, this American relic was “in fragments” by about 1857 and was reported missing about 1870, and has not been seen since.47 Furthermore, and unfortunately, it contains a glaring error: the year of Washington’s birth.

  The discrepancy can easily be explained. Most of Western Europe and its colonies were under the Gregorian calendar, created by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 to accurately reflect the original date of the Resurrection of Christ and its corresponding spring equinox. The calendar used before, called the Julian calendar after Julius Caesar, contained an error in which, centuries later, the date of the equinox changed considerably. The papal bull that Gregory issued did not extend beyond Catholic countries, and thus did not reach England, lest the Crown, in their view, accept the supremacy of the pope. Today, all but four countries in the world use the Gregorian calendar, while most Eastern Orthodox churches continue to use the Julian calendar in their liturgy.

  By 1752, over 170 years after its initial inception, England and its territories and colonies had to change from the Old Style. Two years earlier, the British Parliament passed the Calendar (New Style) Act, designating January 1 the new year, a change from March 25, and adding an additional eleven days to the calendar. Wednesday, September 2, 1752, was followed by Thursday, September 14, 1752. Additionally, in order to account for the change of New Year’s Day, all dates between January 1 and March 25 had to add one year. George Washington Parke Custis accounted for the latter by adding a year to the plaque, not the former by adding an additional eleven days. Thus he engraved a sort of combination of Old Style–New Style date of birth, being wrong in both.

  Time and date and year changes were confusing enough, but calculating these did not even matter to George Washington. To him and to his contemporaries, his birthday was and continued to be February 11 . . . most times. The Comte de Rochambeau Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, a French ally during the Revolutionary War, wrote to Commander Washington on February 12, 1781, saying, “We have put off celebrating that holiday till to-day [instead of yesterday], by reason of the Lord’s day and we will celebrate it with the sole regret that your Excellency be not a Witness of the effusion and gladness of our hearts.”48 Henry Knox noted his birthday on February 11, 1790, and on February 12, 1798, George “went with the family to a Ball in Alexa[ndria, Virginia]” in celebration.49 On the other hand, a poem written by Elizabeth Willing Powel in 1792 commemorates the president’s birth on February 22.

  But that was all decades ahead. The date of February 11, 1731 was George Washington’s unchallenged date of birth for the time being.

  AT THE TIME, A BIRTH WAS JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE LIFE, ESPECIALLY FOR Augustine, George’s father. “People altered so little in those slowly shifting times that in all probability at noon of that amazing morning Augustine Washington was every whit as calm” as could be, maybe could “even have saddled his horse and ridden off, as the others did.”50 Indeed, this is not an exaggeration—it was a way of life, as seen in Joshua Hempstead of Connecticut’s diary, in which he casually writes on July 30, 1716, “I was all day Getting Waylogs & Launching Timber [and] my wife delivered of a Daughter about Sunset.” The next day, he went back to work, making a maiden voyage of his sloop ship.51 Another man, Richard Lloyd from Maryland, did not know of his daughter’s birth until a house servant told him.52

  Yes, George was his first son of this marriage, but Augustine already had several other children from his first marriage, some blooming into young adulthood, who were just as legitimate and just as “Washington” as George himself. He had priorities to raise them and raise the crops and livestock and business of his plantation. That is not to say there was an indifference to the birth of George. Life was simply, for the father, a day-to-day tackle of business and rearing of the maturing children.

  If the birth of a child was mundane to Joshua Hempstead or even Augustine Washington, the mother’s feelings were perhaps the exact opposite. Childbirth is scary and painful enough with modern medicine, and in the eighteenth century, at home with only a comforting midwife and maybe some female friends or relatives, the fear escalated. It was rare that a doctor was present, and even rarer if the husband was. One late eighteenth-century birth in Maryland was described as “confusion & distraction,” and one woman saw her sister-in-law’s delivery as a “Scene of Sickness” where there was “so much complaining, and [she was] so low spirited i
n her lying-inn.”53

  “THE ATHENS OF VIRGINIA”—THAT WAS THE TITLE BISHOP WILLIAM MEADE gave to the place of George Washington’s birth.54

  The house burned to the ground on Christmas Day, 1779. It was probably two stories tall, with four rooms on each, with a steep roof and large chimney of brick or stone, the same that Custis visited.55 Most if not all of it was made of brick, according to excavations. According to Benson Lossing in 1871, “The only approach to ornament was a Dutch-tiled chimney-piece in the best room, covered with rude pictures of Scriptural scenes.” Included in his work is a drawing of a circular Dutch tile, perhaps as an example and not as a specific one owned by the family, of a leviathan-like creature swallowing Jonah.56 Another source, writing in 1895, states that the house was “very comfortable” and “not a great nor a grand house,” with a chimney on each end, no carpets or oil, and few books.57 Sara Pryor states this is partly an embellishment of historians to imagine and “think that their great men were cradled in poverty.” How unpresuming they must have been to be raised in a small house, to become indispensable to a nation from such humble origins! While the house at Popes Creek was not extravagant, it was not small, but a “larger . . . modest dwelling.” Pryor continued, “The universal plan of the Virginia house of 1740 included four rooms, divided by a central ‘passage’ (never called a ‘hall’) running from front to rear and used as the summer sitting room of the family. From this a short staircase ascended to dormer-windowed rooms above.” As more children came and the family grew, so too did the house, with extra rooms built near the chimney “without regard to architectural effort.”58 The inventory of the house in the 1760s included ten bedframes, thirteen tables, nearly sixty chairs, and eight mirrors and chests—not exactly a pauper’s house, it was.59