Our first Ladies 1

 I have started a little study on our first ladies and will share them with you as I go:) Please note that I am copying and pasting so that is why all the different fonts:)

                        Martha Parke (Custis) Washington 1756-1773

Wedding picture

Mrs. Washington's descendants recorded that she wore a gown of yellow silk damask with a petticoat of cream silk highlighted with interwoven silver threads. The sample they have in the museum looks nothing like this gown. Note: the two young children in the picture are hers from a previous marriage. 

Martha Washington was born Martha Dandridge on June 2, 1731, in New Kent County, Virginia, on the Chestnut Grove plantation. She was raised and educated with an emphasis on skills seen as integral to running a household, though also taught reading, writing and mathematics.

Marriage and Estate

At 18 years old, Martha wed Daniel Parke Custis, a rich plantation owner, in 1749. The couple would have four children, though only two, Jack and Patsy, lived past childhood. Custis himself died in the summer of 1757, and Martha inherited his 15,000-acre estate. 

Meeting George Washington

She later met Colonel George Washington at a Williamsburg, Virginia cotillion, and the two wed in 1759. Martha and her two children moved to Washington's Mount Vernon, Virginia plantation, where the family became known for their social events and upscale lifestyle, though they suffered financial setbacks as well.

By 1775, Washington had become the leader of U.S. forces in the Revolutionary War, and Martha later took up residence with him at his encampments for extended periods of time.

She experienced tremendous loss with the deaths of her two surviving children: Patsy died from epilepsy during her teens and Jack succumbed to "camp fever" while enlisted as a soldier. She also dealt with the complication of slaves from those of her father's to those of her husbands which George inherited when he married her. In his July 1790 will, written a year after he became President of the United States in April 1789 and nine years before his death in December 1799, George Washington left directions for the emancipation, after Martha Washington's death, of all the slaves that he owned.  Of the 318 slaves at Mount Vernon in 1799, fewer than half, 123 individuals, belonged to George Washington. His will stipulated that his slaves were not to be freed until Martha's death because of his desire to preserve the families of those who had intermarried with Martha's dower slaves. In accordance with state law, Washington stipulated in his will that elderly slaves or those who were too sick to work were to be supported throughout their lives by his estate. Children without parents, or those whose families were too poor or indifferent to see to their education, were to be bound out to masters and mistresses who would teach them reading, writing, and a useful trade, until they were ultimately freed at the age of 25.

Two and a half years after the death of her husband, Martha died on May 22, 1802 at the age of 70.

Following her death, Martha was interred in George Washington's tomb vault at Mount Vernon. In 1831, the surviving executors of Washington's estate removed the bodies of George and Martha Washington and those of other members of the family from the old vault to a similar structure within the present enclosure at Mount Vernon.