Mary Ball Washington

by Craig Shirley

  The doctors had wanted hemlock to ease the pain, Betty noted, but there was none available.17

  What reply Washington gave in response to the letter, if he gave one, is lost.

  THE FINAL MONTH OF MARY’S LIFE WAS ONE OF INCREASING DETERIORATION. She saw her end coming, and there was no cure that any doctor could offer. She was suffering, in terrible pain.

  As a woman of faith, she would have looked to God in these final weeks. She would have meditated with tried and true passages from the Bible or from Sir Matthew Hale’s own work. Though death was the end of her earthly life, it opened up another doorway for her eternal soul.

  Good Christians of the New World believed Christ was the pathway to eternal life. Of all tenets of Christianity, this was the most plain. Mary, who had been faithful to her religion her whole life, would have known this. “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live,” Christ said to Martha, sister of Lazarus. As Mary, who lay on her deathbed, understood, as Lazarus himself was resurrected, she too would be at the end of days, with all the righteous, in the new kingdom of heaven.

  About fifteen days before her death, around August 10, 1789, her health took a step toward her final hours. Writing to President George Washington, Burgess Ball, a distant relative of Mary’s and the husband of her grandchild Frances Washington, relayed her deterioration: “For abt 15 days she has been deprived of her speech.”18

  Reverend Thomas Thornton of Saint George’s Episcopal Church would have received word of her impending end. Though there is no formal last rite or sacrament in the Protestant or Anglican Church as there is in the Catholic Church, the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer had several sections for the communion and preparation for death. Either Reverend Thornton or another minister according to her faith would have recited the blessings and her communion, as was the tradition.19

  WITH HER FAITH IN GOD SECURE, AROUND AUGUST 20, MARY BALL WASHINGTON fell into a coma. The speech impediment and coma (as Burgess Ball noted to George Washington, “she has remain’d in a Sleep”) may have been signs of a stroke, only decreasing her time on earth. Within five days, at around three o’clock in the afternoon on August 25, she took her last breath and finally passed away, over the age of eighty. Her exact age is still not known. Her suffering of these final years had finally ended, and her loved ones believed she entered into eternal life with the God that she worshiped all her life.

  From an unknown date around 1708 to August 25, 1789, Mary Washington, née Ball, lived a long and active life. An orphan, a wife, a mother, a widow, an owner of plantations, manager of servants and slaves, she was at times overbearing to her children, at times protector of them. She had been a widow for over forty years, refusing to remarry and looking toward her children’s future.

  “She has lived a good Age &, I hope, is gone to a happier place than we live at present in,” wrote Burgess Ball. As one of her final acts, Mary had asked Burgess to write her son of her impending end. It was a moment of unusual care in her later life, to let her son know of her health. “Mrs Lewis being in much trouble, and all her Sons absent, she requested I wd write to you on the Subject.”

  Enclosed with the letter was a copy of the last will and testament for Mary Ball Washington.20

  HER SHORT WILL WAS THE FINAL AFFIRMATION TO HOW SHE SAW HER REMAINING surviving children. As George was the eldest, and perhaps her favorite, still, after all these decades, she gave him much of her remaining estate.

  “I give to my son General George Washington,” it said, “all my land in Accokeek Run, n the County of Stafford, and also my negro boy George, to him and his heirs forever. Also my best bed, bedstead, and Virginia cloth curtains (the same that stands in my best bedroom), my quilted blue and white quilt and my best dressing glass.”

  While this did not seem to be a great deal, she had very little in property at the end, only confined to her Fredericksburg house. To Charles in western Virginia, she simply gave her slave Tom. To Betty, she gave her carriage and horse. To her daughter-in-law Hannah, she gave a purple cloak; to Corbin Washington, her grandson and son of John Augustine, she gave her “negro wench, old Bet,” a riding chair, and two horses. Other slaves were given to other grandchildren, no more than one per, and various glassware and beds and china were also bestowed. Mary equally divided her “wearing apparel” among her granddaughters as they saw fit, though she allowed Betty, if she should “fancy any one two or three articles,” to claim some as her own.

  Finally, at the end, she nominated her son, calling him again, “General George Washington,” to be the executor of her will.21 Of course, at the time the will was written, George was in northern Virginia. Mary’s bequest to give her remaining land and best items to him, was much.

  MARY’S AGE WAS UNKNOWN. FROM THE EARLIEST INFORMATION AVAILABLE, it was presumed to be somewhere between eighty and eighty-five. George Washington Parke Custis said she was eighty-five, a grand age.22 James Thomas Flexner wrote eighty-one years old at her passing,23 which may have been accurate if she were born in 1708 before late August. The Gazette of the United States, on September 9, listed her as eighty-two, adding a short epitaph to her obituary:

  O may kind heaven, propitious to our fate;

  Extend THAT HERO’S to her lengthen’d date;

  Through the long period, healthy, active, sage;

  Nor know the sad infirmities of age.24

  The Virginia Herald, two days after her death, published her obituary, a lengthy praise of her equally lengthy life, and gave her age as eighty-two years old. (So did Washington Irving.25) The paper called her “the venerable mother of the illustrious President of the United States, after a long and painful indisposition, which she bore with uncommon patience.” It continued,

  Tho’ the pious tear of duty, affection and esteem, is due to the memory of so revered a character, yet our grief must be greatly alleviated from the consideration that she is relieved from all the pitiable infirmities attendant on an extreme old age—it is usual when virtuous and conspicuous persons quit this abode, to publish an elaborate panegyric on their character—suffice it to say, she conducted herself through this transitory life with virtue, prudence and Christianity, worthy the mother of the greatest hero that ever adorned the annuals of history.26

  For a woman kept at length by her son, her obituary certainly appreciated her presence on earth.

  ON SEPTEMBER 1, PRESIDENT WASHINGTON WAS IN NEW YORK CITY ENJOYING dinner with two friends, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a military genius who helped form the Continental Army, and General Arthur St. Clair. During the evening’s activities, a courier arrived with the letter from Burgess. Washington’s nephew and secretary, Betty’s twenty-year-old son Robert Lewis, recorded in his diary that it was an “event so long expecd [it] could not create so much uneasiness as [a] person less advanced in life.”27 In an undated letter to his mother, Robert wrote that “my uncle immediately retired to his room, and remained there for some time alone.”28

  GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND EVERYDAY responsibilities of that honor did not cease. Three days after receiving the news, he appointed Andrew Ellicott to survey western New York State for a sum of $1,125. The business of government went forward, and it could not stop.29

  SOON AFTER RECEIVING THE NEWS, HE BOUGHT, FOR 5 POUNDS, 13 SHILLINGS, and 10 pence, mourning cockades, sword knots, and black armbands. He ordered all men in the presidential household in New York City to wear the cockades on their arm or hat, and for women to wear black necklaces. Further, formal receptions were canceled for the following three weeks.30

  Before the order, however, to suspend receptions, there was a very somber one on Tuesday, September 8, which, as reported in the Gazette of the United States, was attended by several congressmen “and other respectable persons.” It was held “in American mourning. The silent mark of respect, flowing spontaneously from the hearts of freemen sympathizing with him in this domestic misfortune,
manifests sentiments and emotions which no language can express in a manner so unequivocal and delicate.”31 It was as public an expression of mourning as George Washington had for his mother, Mary Ball Washington, whose body was many hundreds of miles south. It also contradicted other historians’ slants. One historian waved away any mourning from George beyond the expected, believing he was instead indifferent to it all. “Washington spoke no eulogies, told no fond anecdotes of the hard, sometimes shrewish mother who had served as the lifelong whetstone of his anger,” he wrote flatly.32

  On September 13, a week after the reception, the now motherless president finally sent a letter to Betty. It was a lengthy and heartfelt letter between brother and sister. “My dear Sister,” he began,

  Colonel Ball’s letter gave me the first account of my Mother’s death. . . . Awful, and affecting as the death of a Parent is, there is consolation in knowing that Heaven has spared ours to an age, beyond which few attain, and favored her with the full enjoyment of her mental faculties, and as much bodily strength as usually falls to the lot of four score. Under these considerations and a hope that she is translated to a happier place, it is the duty of her relatives to yield due submission to the decrees of the Creator—When I was last at Fredericksburg, I took a final leave of my Mother, never expecting to see her more.

  With that sad letter written, Washington went on to more earthly matters, that of her will. What his mother left him was, frankly, embarrassing to him; he was confused to why she chose him, the most well-off of her children, to receive the best of her property. George plainly stated his role as executor was “impossible.” If an appraisal could be finalized without him, then the will could be finished and the heirs receive what was given. The slaves that were not named had to work until the harvest’s end, and any debt that Mary had, of which she said she owed little or none, could be paid off with crops, horses, or other means.

  “She has had a great deal of money from me at times, as can be made appear by my books,” he added in frustration. “In short to the best of my recollection I have never in my life received a copper from the estate—and have paid many hundred pounds (first and last) to her in cash.” He continued, a little calmed down now, to get it off his chest, “However I want no retribution—I conceived it to be a duty whenever she asked for money, and I had it.” Further, the Fredericksburg house would preferably be sold and not rented, giving final closure to a tired son of that stress.

  Finally, George asked Betty, with the help of Charles Carter (husband of Betty’s daughter, another Betty, and the son of the legendary Robert “King” Carter) and Colonel Burgess Ball, to help speed the process as sufficiently as possible. And even though Mary was gone, her troubles would follow him for the remainder of the year.33

  GEORGE WASHINGTON HAD NOT YET LEARNED OF MARY’S DEATH BY THE time she was buried. Held on or about August 28, the funeral for Mary Washington was relatively extravagant for a woman of her age, while certainly equal to a woman of her worth. Fredericksburg’s business was suspended for that day. Joseph Berry, the town crier, rang the bell of Saint George’s Episcopal Church twice, then again once for each year she had lived. He had done the same the day she died, and was paid over 1 pound, 15 shillings for “carrying messages and Tolling the Bell.”34 Her coffin, made by neighbor and furniture maker James Allen, cost 8 pounds, 6 shillings, and 4 pence—not particularly cheap, suggesting something more ornate than an average coffin.35

  Her casket, at the close of the ceremony, was buried, as she requested, near her favorite spot: Meditation Rock, where she prayed many hours during the Revolution.

  THE ACTUAL GRAVESITE OF MARY BALL WASHINGTON IS LOST TO HISTORY. She was buried somewhere near Kenmore plantation, near her Meditation Rock and near her later constructed monument, unknown specifically where. The site where her body lay was lost soon after her death, to the surprise of many of Washington’s historians. “The grave of Washington’s mother is marked by no visible object, not even a mound of earth, nor is the precise spot of its locality known,” wrote a shocked Jared Sparks in 1827, a mere forty years after her death. “The burial ground is on the western border of the town, and was formerly on the estate belonging to the Lewis family. . . . For a long time a single cider-tree was the only guide to the place; near this tree tradition has fixed the grave of Washington’s mother, but there is no stone to point out the place, nor any inequalities in the surface of the ground.”36

  Michelle Hamilton of the Mary Washington House in Fredericksburg has “a couple hunches” of where she might be, but without ample archaeological digging, no one can find it. “I would love to see that happen,” said Hamilton, excitedly. “I have dreams of the American version of Richard III,” where excavators uncovered the medieval English king’s remains under a parking lot.37 Through this discovery, they learned about his DNA, his illnesses, and his facial structure. The same could be done for Mary: how far along her breast cancer was, what her face looked like. Even her height, unknown, could be determined. Did she have weak bones by the end of her life? All this, and so much more, could be figured out, closing so much mystery around her, humanizing her beyond the words on pages in books.

  THE VIRGINIA HERALD AND FREDERICKSBURG ADVERTISER, ON OCTOBER 15, 1789, announced that there, “on Thursday, the 29th instant, will be sold at the plantation, about 4 miles below this town, late the property of Mrs. Mary Washington, deceased, ALL the stocks of Horses, cattle, sheep and hogs, plantation utensils of every kind, carts, hay and fodder. That trouble of collections &c. may be avoided, they will be sold to the highest bidder, for ready money. All persons having claims against the deceased are requested to bring them in properly attested to.”38 The ad was placed by Betty and showed an amassed amount of property that may have surprised the average native of Fredericksburg. In fact, her will had left out a number of items, including a basket, two dinner tables, four old rugs, and much more. There was so much that a memorandum was made to list and catalog it all, and for how much it was sold, if recorded. There was one mattress sold to Burgess Ball, two walnut chairs, one carpet sold to Dr. Elisha Hall at 45 shillings; to Lawrence Lewis, Betty’s son, went a wheel for 3 shillings, a tea chest for about 9, a spice box for 18.39

  Months had gone by, and months followed. Mary’s body had been buried, in the ground of the town she lived for nearly all her life. But her ghost remained active for the family.

  Two weeks before the advertisement ran, Betty reviewed the finances that Mary had left behind. She was disheartened. “The Docters [sic] bills is more than I expectted [sic],” she wrote to President Washington. She had owed both Dr. Hall and Dr. Charles Mortimer (“Mortemores,” she called him) 45 and 22 pounds, respectively. “The Debts I think will be upwards of one Hundred Pound.” Burgess Ball, Betty, George, and Charles Carter decided at that point to run the advertisement in the Virginia Herald in hopes of paying off the debt. Any expectations that the crops would cover this final headache were crushed when a nasty frost hit the region and destroyed half the tobacco and much of the corn while still in the ground. There was, however, some good news: Mary’s two lots in Fredericksburg were valued at 450 pounds, a testament to the value of the property so close to town.40

  President Washington, recovering from an abscess unrelated to the influenza epidemic that had hit the northern states, read the letters from Betty and from Ball and Carter, and realized he was still needed as executor. As much assistance as the two men were offering his sister, there were still legal hurdles that needed his attention.

  Two months passed, and George celebrated his first Christmas as president, visiting St. Paul’s Chapel in New York City. In the months following Mary’s death, the bureaucratic framework of the federal government increased.

  AT TIMES, THE WORRY OF HIS MOTHER’S ESTATE MAY HAVE BEEN THE FURTHEST thing from his mind. George Washington had a country to run, and this work as president took priority over the task of being a will’s executor. Due to the duties of the country, he did not reply for ne
arly a month to an overdue update from Burgess Ball the day after Christmas. “The Negroes are at length divided,” he wrote. “We concluded to divide the Negroes into four parts by wch it [means] you have a Fellow call’d Dundee,” along with a slave named George. The slave George had been Mary’s legally, but had been living at Mount Vernon since the 1770s as rented property. He had married and fathered three children in the decades following, and Master George agreed to keep the slave George and his family. Burgess admitted, happily, that “none of the Families are parted,” except for the spouses or children not legally part of Mary’s estate.

  On the Fredericksburg home, Ball noted that the initial valuation of 450 pounds in two years’ time was too high by anyone else’s count, and that no one would bite unless it was lower. Charles Carter, however, was interested, and compromised (to which George agreed) at 350 pounds in three years. “I do not know any Person who will give so much,” Ball said.41

  By March 1790, with months going by and other duties preventing this increasingly long chapter from ending, George Washington and Charles Carter agreed to the amount for the lots, and a deed was processed in the spring of 1790.

  THE DEED MAY HAVE BEEN OUT OF HIS HANDS, BUT AGAIN, HIS MOTHER’S ghost still haunted him. For as luck would have it, within the three years, Charles Carter had not completed payment. “The credit you gave me on the purchase of yr property in this place, expired last spring,” Carter wrote apologetically in October 1793. “It is a subject of great regret to me that any delay should have taken place in the fullfilment of my contract, tho’ I assure you that circumstances quite unforeseen by me, have occasion’d it.” He continued, saying that he was to sell the property to a Richard Dobson of Cumberland County.42