The
Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington
By Martha Saxton
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
360 pages, $28.00
Much
ink has been spilled on the life and times of George Washington, but little
attention has been devoted to his mother Mary Ball Washington. When Mary Washington appears in studies of
her famous son, she is labeled as a “shrew,” “illiterate,” a “helicopter
parent,” and “Medea in a mob cap.” It
was with trepidation that I picked up Dr. Martha Saxton’s new biography, The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary
Washington. Would the same hackneyed
stereotypes be repeated for three hundred pages? I quickly realized that my fears were
unfounded. Dr. Saxton presents an
insightful and engaging biography that firmly places Mary Washington’s life
within the context of Colonial Virginia.
Under Dr. Saxton’s skillful handling, Mary Washington has finally
received the scholarly attention that she deserves as the driving force behind
George Washington’s life. An argument
can be made that without Mary Washington’s role in her oldest son’s life, the
American Revolution could have turned out much differently.
Born
in 1708, Mary Ball was born in a colonial Virginia very different from the
genteel version of colonial life often presented at such sites as Colonial
Williamsburg and Mount Vernon among others.
Mary’s mother, also named Mary, was born in England and immigrated to
Virginia as an indentured servant.
Through skillful marriages, Mary Ball was able to enter Virginia’s emerging
gentry class—an achievement that would become impossible by the time of the
American Revolution. Mary Washington’s
childhood was difficult, marred by the early deaths of close family
members. Orphaned by the age of twelve,
Mary Washington was cared for by her half-sister Elizabeth Bonum and the two
developed a close bond. In 1731, Mary
married Augustine Washington, a wealthy planter who had lost his first wife the
year before. The marriage firmly placed
Mary Washington within the comfort of the status of the gentry, but the
marriage also brought three stepchildren to help rear. The family grew in 1732 when Mary Washington
gave birth to her first child, George.
Betty, Samuel, John Augustine, Charles, and Mildred would follow. Tragedy struck in 1743, when Augustine Washington
died after a brief illness, leaving Mary Washington a widow to raise five
children at the age of thirty-five.
Following
Augustine’s death, Mary Washington lost the financial comfort that her husband
provided as his vast landholdings and plantations were divided amongst his
sons. To combat her financial
insecurity, Mary could have remarried, an option that many colonial widows
followed. Mary Washington decided to not
follow that path and remained a widow, overseeing the management of her children’s
inheritances. While she was unable to
send her children to elite schools, she provided her children—particularly
George, with the practical education of running a vast plantation. Mary Washington also instilled in her
children industry, stoicism, piety, thrift, and independence. In recent years, Mary has been unfairly
condemned for not allowing fourteen-year-old George to join the British
Navy. Mary’s decision was firmly rooted
in providing the best future for her son, a course of action that would not have
been permitted as an ensign in the Navy.
Instead, Mary encouraged George in his surveying career which allowed
him to make powerful contacts within Virginia society.
These
insights into Mary’s world are fully covered in Dr. Saxton’s work. Utilizing a diverse arrange of primary
sources: letters, diaries, planation inventories, land grants, wills and period
newspapers, Dr. Saxton firmly places the reader with the complex world of
Colonial and Revolutionary War Virginia.
The colonial Virginia that Dr. Saxton uncovers is a stark and at times
cruel place. This is not the
romanticized world of Colonial Williamsburg.
Mary Washington was a slave owner from the age of three until her death
at 80. Becoming the owner of enslaved
workers at such a tender age quickly hardened Mary to the plight of the men,
women, and children that she owned.
Unlike her son, Mary never expressed any qualms about slave ownership
and would separate enslaved workers from their spouses and children. To cope with the early loss of many of her
family members, Mary also developed a hard exterior that made her less
empathetic to the plights of others.
Like
any family, the Washington’s occasionally had family squabbles. The most famous family dispute occurred
during the Revolution when George openly questioned Mary’s claim of financial
security. The Revolution brought
inflation and high taxes to the home front.
Compounding Mary Washington’s difficulties, in 1780 Mary was forced to
flee into Virginia’s western interior with her family to escape possible
capture from British military forces.
While in the west, her son, Samuel, and son-in-law, Fielding Lewis, died
from illness. During this time, someone
petitioned the Virginia Assembly for a pension for Mary Washington. When George received word of the planned
pension he erupted in anger. Sensitive
to his public image, George feared that if word of his mother receiving a
pension became public he would look like an uncaring son in the court of public
opinion. George Washington argued that
his mother’s claim to poverty was exaggerated.
A claim modern historians have accepted unquestioningly, despite plenty
of evidence to the contrary.
Regardless
of the occasional family dispute, Dr. Saxton reveals a more loving and
respectful relationship between mother and son than historians have previously
presented. Mary and George deeply cared
for each other, evidenced in the surviving correspondence between the two. Before leaving for the presidency in 1789,
George Washington paid one final visit to his mother at her home in
Fredericksburg, Virginia. Mary
Washington was in the final stages of breast cancer, and according to family
tradition the two had a loving and tender final goodbye. In her final months, Mary expressed concern
for the health of her son until her death on August 25, 1789.
Dr.
Saxton’s biography is a timely addition to the study of the Washington family
and their place in the Colonial and Revolutionary War period. The work challenges previously held beliefs
about Mary Washington and her son and will likely raise a few eyebrows and
instigate scholarly debate. I hope that
this work receives a wide readership.
Michelle L. Hamilton
Author, Mary
Ball Washington: The Mother of George Washington
Manager, Mary Washington House
Fredericksburg, VA
The book is available for purchase on Amazon
