The widow Washington : the life of Mary Washington

Author

Martha Saxton

Call Number

• 921 W3195S (CEN)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.

Physical Description

xix, 360 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Summary

"Biography of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother. Places her life as an orphan, a young wife in rural Virginia, a slaveholder, a widow, and mother to the first president in the context of the changing economic circumstances and cultural values of colonial Virginia and a young nation"--

Contents

• Mary Ball Washington : like mother, like son
• A child in the Chesapeake
• A generation of orphans
• Bruising the small spirit
• Mary, her kin, and her books
• Mary Ball, Augustine Washington, and Matthew Hale
• Wife and mother
• People and property at the Ferry Farm
• As sparks fly upward
• The widow Washington
• Single mother
• Mary's stewardship : scraping by
• Midcentury : a wedding, a murder, a family death
• Mary and George's Seven Years War
• Between the wars : kin, consumption, conflict
• The Revolution : a family affair
• The endless Revolution : wartime virtue, wartime woe
• Mary's war ends
• "You must one day fade"
• Epilogue: An uneasy afterlife.