The widow Washington : the life of Mary Washington / Martha Saxton.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019Copyright date: ©2019Edition: First editionDescription: xix, 360 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780809097012
- 080909701X
- Washington, Mary Ball, 1708-1789
- Washington, George, 1732-1799 -- Family
- Mothers of presidents -- United States -- Biography
- Widows -- United States -- Biography
- Slaveholders -- Virginia -- Biography
- Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
- United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
- United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | Biography | Washingt M. S273 | Available | 33111009689189 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
An insightful biography of Mary Ball Washington, the mother of our nation's father
The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother, based on archival sources. Her son's biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her oldest child. But the records tell a very different story. Mary Ball, the daughter of a wealthy planter and a formerly indentured servant, was orphaned young and grew up working hard, practicing frugality and piety. Stepping into Virginia's upper class, she married an older man, the planter Augustine Washington, with whom she had five children before his death eleven years later. As a widow deprived of most of her late husband's properties, Mary struggled to raise her children, but managed to secure them places among Virginia's elite. In her later years, she and her wealthy son George had a contentious relationship, often disagreeing over money, with George dismissing as imaginary her fears of poverty and helplessness.
Yet Mary Ball Washington had a greater impact on George than mothers of that time and place usually had on their sons. George did not have the wealth or freedom to enjoy the indulged adolescence typical of young men among the planter class. Mary's demanding mothering imbued him with many of the moral and religious principles by which he lived. The two were strikingly similar, though the commanding demeanor, persistence, athleticism, penny-pinching, and irascibility that they shared have served the memory of the country's father immeasurably better than that of his mother. Martha Saxton's The Widow Washington is a necessary and deeply insightful corrective, telling the story of Mary's long, arduous life on its own terms, and not treating her as her son's satellite.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [297]-340) and index.
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.
"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"-- Provided by publisher.