George Washington is a dynamic and fascinating hero. “[His] example is complete,” John Adams declared upon his death, “and it will teach virtue and wisdom to…future generations.” Washington was 11 years old when his father Augustine died. So from whom did he learn virtue and wisdom?

“George Washington attributed his success to his mother,” Gail Braxton Director of Fredericksburg’s Mary Ball Washington House explained.

Born in Lancaster County, Virginia, in 1708 Mary Ball Washington was orphaned at age 13. She was raised by her parents Joseph Ball and Mary Johnson, a half sister, and a guardian.  

 A woman of acceptable wealth, at age three, Mary Ball inherited 400 acres of land, three slaves, and 15 head of cattle. In 1730 she married widower Augustine Washington and together they settled Ferry Farm. George Washington purchased his mother’s in-town home in 1772.

 “Mary Ball Washington was shaped by early loss,” Martha Saxton Amherst College Professor of History and Gender Studies said.  “George, her eldest son, had her perseverance and strength. Mary Ball became a forceful and determined woman who, when widowed [in 1743], did her best to raise five children on her own. She deserves much credit and has had very little in the last century.” Saxon is author of the forthcoming book The Widow Washington.
    
 “Many historians prefer to think that George’s half brothers raised him, or at least taught him the things that were valuable,” Saxton noted. “Historians like James Flexner and Douglass Southall Freeman tend to see Mary as the obstacle George had to surmount before becoming a great man,” Saxton concluded.

    “Flexner ground her under,” Braxton agreed. “Both were unpleasant to Mary.”

    “Their relationship had always been stormy,” Flexner wrote in 1974. “Mary Ball Washington’s attitudes towards her son’s activities in the French and Indian War and in the Revolution had been the same. He was meddling in matters that should not concern him to the neglect of his duty to her.”   

“A mother has not lived better fitted to give the tone and character of real greatness to her child,” George Washington Parke Custis, George Washington’s adopted son wrote in Recollections of Washington.

“Bred in those domestic and independent habits, which graced the Virginia matrons in the olden days, this lady, by the death of her husband, became involved in the care of a young family, at a period when those responsibilities seem more especially to claim the aid and control of the stronger sex,” Custis said.

“One weakness alone belonged to this lofty-minded and intrepid woman,” Custis continued, “and that was a fear of lightning.”

“Late in the year 1781, on the return of the combined armies from Yorktown, the mother of Washington was permitted again to see and embrace her illustrious son, the first time in almost seven years,” Custis explained. “The deliverer of his country, the hero of the age, repaired to pay his humble duty to her whom he venerated as the author of his being – the founder of his fortunes and fame. She inquired as to his health, but of his glory not one word.”
    
“To the last moments of the life of the venerable parent [George Washington] yielded to her will,” Custis claimed. “He felt for her person and character the most holy reverence and attachment.”

    “Immediately after the organization of the [1789] government, the chief magistrate repaired to Fredericksburg preparatory to his departure for New York,” Custis recalled. “His head rested upon the shoulder of his parent, whose aged arm feebly, yet fondly encircled his neck. That brow on which fame had wreathed the purest laurel virtue ever gave to created man, relaxed from its lofty bearing. He wept. A thousand recollections crowded upon his mind, as memory retracing scenes long passed, carried him back to…the days of juvenility, where he beheld that mother, whose care, education and discipline, caused him to reach the topmost height of laudable ambition.”

“In her Spartan school she had taught him to be good,” Custis concluded, “that [George Washington] became great, was a consequence, not the cause.”

“Mary Washington’s Fredericksburg House is graceful and simple, a place that her son created for her comfort,” Saxton mused. “I imagine her most happy working in her garden, a pastime that both she and her son loved.”

The House is located at 1200 Charles Street, the corner of Charles and Lewis Streets, and is the property of APVA Preservation Virginia.  Several personal possessions are among the furnishings.  Large boxwoods, which she planted, line the rear walkway. Both a vegetable garden and English-style flower garden adorn the grounds. For tour information, telephone (540) 373-1569.

Mary Ball Washington died August 26, 1789 from breast cancer. She was buried on daughter Betty’s nearby Kenmore Estate. A commemorative cornerstone was laid in 1833. Destroyed during the Civil War it was replaced in 1894.  The Masonic Lodge of Alexandria, George Washington’s Lodge, organized the program.   

 “On the mother shines the reflected glory of the son,” The Washington Post wrote in 1895. “To Mary, the mother of Washington, a monument was erected. Almost everyone is familiar with the history of Mary Washington who brought up her numerous children in her stern paths of virtue, but whose temper was not of the most amiable kind, and who, had she lived a century later, would have been a ‘new woman’ of the most highly developed type.”

If virtue is defined as moral excellence – goodness – then Mary Ball Washington was a good woman indeed. The Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop and Rising Sun Tavern are also among APVA Virginia’s colonial Fredericksburg properties.

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