Martha Washington lived a life full of love and sacrifice. She was born as a simple little girl Martha Dandridge to her plantation home in New Kent; she was married at 18 to become Martha Dandridge Custis. Still yet she was widowed at the age of twenty-six with two children and a land of over 17,000 acres to run on her own. Then she met a gentleman by the name of George Washington and Martha became the figure we know today as Martha Dandridge Custis Washington or Martha Washington.
Martha was born on June 2, 1731 on the plantation near Williamsburg in New Kent, Chestnut Grove, to her father0, John Dandridge, and mother, Frances Jones Dandridge. She was the eldest daughter of the family and the spirited one. She enjoyed horseback riding, working in her gardens, sewing, dancing, she came to enjoy cooking, and it was said she had a great love for playing the spinet. Her father insisted that his children be educated, so he called for a tutor. The Dandridge children had lessons in the mornings before breakfast, Martha always dreaded them, especially spelling.
She would much rather be out playing than sitting inside learning how some words were not spelled the same was as they sounded. Although these studies seemed like a waste of time then, later she would find that they would become quite useful. At the age of fifteen her mother was quite sure that she should learn to act like a lady and practice the etiquette of the day, she had began to help her mother with some of the chores around the house. It was also that same year that she was able to attend her first ball at Williamsburg.
Young Martha Dandridge was extremely excited until she arrived at Williamsburg to find things quite different than what she expected and entered the ball to be terribly disappointed. She didn’t know any of the other young ladies, who seemed to all know each other well, and she hadn’t been prepared by the fashion of the day. She had made her dress herself and though it was of fine material it wasn’t like that gowns imported from England that the other girls were wearing. She had not had her hair powdered like the rest of the girls, and she was completely miserable until she met Daniel Parke Custis.
He seemed like an honest simple man in his thirties. He probably had an attraction to Martha’s simple nature and beauty, Martha was about five feet tall with dark eyes and dark hair, so he asked her to dance. Suddenly simple Martha Dandridge had become the belle of the ball; she was dancing with one of the richest bachelor’s in Virginia. After a few years Martha and Daniel began to see more of each other and there was talk of an engagement, but first Daniel had to send off for his fathers permission to do so.
Although Daniel was a man twenty years older than Martha was he was still under the rule of his father who had become bitter by his marriage and was angry with Daniel for refusing to marry the girl that his father had wished him to. Daniel came back to Martha with a grim look and had decided to give up; he thought it no use to argue with his father. His father was determined that he would not marry anyone that he didn’t approve of, especially Martha for she wasn’t even known; it was just impossible for his son to marry a nobody. Hurt, Martha went home to her mother in tears.
She felt as if she wasn’t good enough for the old man. She loved Daniel and wanted more than anything to be with him and the only thing that was stopping them was his father. The man who was miserable in his marriage and apparently wanted Daniel to be just as miserable as he was. Martha was scheduled to return back to New Kent that evening, but not if her mother and her cousin had anything to do with it. They had decided that Martha should stay two more weeks with her cousin Nat and his wife Dorthea, a very popular well known girl of the city.
So for the next two weeks Martha and Dorthea went every morning to get their hair powdered and were gay with the other young ladies of the towns at parties, balls, and other social events that happen to come up. Martha was soon known through the city as the lovely young girl from New Kent. Before too long this news reached old John Custis and he had convinced himself that maybe he had misjudged this girl. The only way to set it right was to go down and meet her himself, and that he did.
One afternoon John Custis went to Williamsburg to see for himself what all the fuss was about and he found himself infront of the home of Nat and Dorthea to find a little young girl working in the garden. He stopped and chatted with her for a second and soon she found herself telling him about her gardens and her home back in New Kent. Martha had made such an impression on this bitter old man that when he returned back to his home he sent out word immediately to his son for his permission for the marriage of the two.
Martha and Daniel were over joyed at the news and so when Martha was eighteen she was married for the first time to the rich Daniel Custis. She was delightfully happy for the next for years, and she had even won the heart of her father-in-law, who was before the bitter old Custis gentleman. Daniel was in love with his new bride and he loved to see her happy, he pampered her with finery from England. He wanted to give her anything in the world that she wanted. Unfortunately the years were few; Daniel died after a brief illness when Martha was only twenty-six.
She was left widowed with two children, Jacky who was three and Patsy who was less than a year old, and without a will she was also left with the running of their plantation; which alone held over seventeen thousand acres. Martha was heartbroken and she swore then that her life was over, but slowly, she was back to her ways of working around the plantation and taking care of things to which she knew she had to do, with the help of friends and the love she had for her children. Without a master to run the plantation it soon suffered and was in great need for care that Martha was just not sure how to give.
The slaves seemed to act up for her and the plantation soon became unprofitable, her advisors confronted her and said that she need to hire a manager to help out, it just wasn’t work for a woman to do. Martha kept the thought in mind, but instead of a manager for the plantation she found something more. She fell in love with George Washington. At a cotillion Martha was attending she was introduced to a military man that had fought in the French and Indian war for the British. She found George quite handsome and he was very good with her children.
George had always had crush on his neighbor Sally Fairfax, but she married someone else so he too realized he had to find a bride for himself, and Martha seemed to be in with her warm personality and her good looks. She was nothing like Sally, for Sally was tall and slender and she was very intelligent but not the kind of woman to run a household very well. George seemed to have met the one other than Sally that he could be with for the rest of his life and on January 6, 1759 George Washington married Martha and they soon moved into the newly enlarged and remolded Mount Vernon, George’s plantation home.
For this George resigned from the army and won a seat to become a Burgess. There Martha and George lived until the start of the war. Patsy became ill soon and Jacky was sent away to school. Jacky did poorly at school, he would simply rather be doing other gayer things than studying, and Patsy health decreased as a few years went Jacky decided he was in love and wanted to marry a young girl that would later be known as Nelly, but George didn’t think he was ready for marriage so he put it off. Patsy’s health finally failed her completely and she passed away.
It was a hard hit on Martha and she would never quite be over the lost of her daughter, but after awhile she went on like always. She was cheered finally because George gave consent for Jacky to marry, turns out that it was just what he needed to be more responsible. While this all happened in the Washington household, war clouds began to gather over the colonies, and they called on George to lead the troops into the revolution. George of course who always did his duty took the role as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, and asked Jacky and Nelly to stay with Martha at Mount Vernon to make it easier for Martha.
Martha didn’t see George again until she joined him at Cambridge, Massachusetts in the winter of 1775 when Martha, Jacky, Nelly, and a few other friends traveled to join him for Christmas. They soon left after Christmas, but Martha stayed until June of 1776 when George sent her home because the fighting was to resume again. Martha did this all through the war and she because the spirit of the soldiers, when she was at camp she would care for the sick and nurse them back to health.
She was always busy supporting her George and doing all she could for the army including mending clothes and entertaining George’s officers and there wives who shared their quarters in the winters. Jacky soon gave into his stepfather’s complaints and enlisted in the army, but he was only there for a few days. He died on November 5, 1781 of “camp fever”. Nelly was left with six children, two of who would come to stay with Martha and George and two died shortly after their birth. The soldiers were lifted when news spread that France was on the way to help.
This was a turning point in the war but still it was looking bad for the colonies, for they had troops that went hungry and without good clothes until the French arrived The war ended on November 25, 1783, with the colonies victorious and George resigned once again and returned home to his dear Mount Vernon to live. That they did for some time until The Constitutional Convention called upon George, but this time they were calling on him to become the first President of the United States. George and Martha moved to New York with their grandchildren and Martha was once again overwhelmed, this time by formal dinners, parties, and receptions.
Martha disliked the public life and it was very hard for her to realize that she could please everyone. She was extremely unhappy with the public life. She was convinced that she was older and wanted to enjoy her time at home with her husband and not be bothered with politics and the rest of the country. They soon moved to Philadelphia, which Martha enjoyed a bit more because of friends that had lived there that she could attend parties and other things with, but still she was not happy with the public life.
On March 4, 1797 George Washington gave his farewell speech and they returned home. On George’s sixtieth birthday they celebrated with a wedding, his granddaughter Nelly was married to Lawrence Lewis and they lived at Mount Vernon until the death of Martha. One day George returned from his rounds around the plantation with a severe cold and never recovered. He died on December 14, 1799, and Martha was never the same again. Her spirits were lifted slightly with the birth of Nelly’s first child, Fances Parke Lewis, but she was never in her complete spirits again.
Upon George’s death his will set half of the slaves free and the other half of the slaves were too be free when Martha was dead. After a few years the slaves began to become aware of the promised freedom and Martha feared for her life. She became very paranoid and just about locked herself in her room. After George’s death she moved into a little room with a sloped roof directly above Nelly’s. She soon made a will and prepared for her death, but not before she managed to burn all but two of George’s letters that he had written her over the years.
She was finally certain that their private lives would go no further. We can only speculate that she couldn’t bare to burn the other two because they were the ones that touched her the most, one was when they had just become newlyweds and it was the first loving letter he had written her. Martha Washington died on May 22, 1802 while she was with her granddaughter. She was buried next to her husband in the tomb that he had planned for the family and for him and Martha to be buried at Mount Vernon. They finally got their time alone together.
