Toys for the Custis Children

As I described yesterday, a number of recent publications have included a list of toys that George Washington supposedly ordered for his new stepchildren, Jacky and Patsy, on his first Christmas with them in 1759. But no such list appears in The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, which can be searched at Founders Online.

However, I found that John C. Fitzpatrick used some of the phrases on that list in his 1933 biography, George Washington Himself. Fitzpatrick was then overseeing the edition of Washington’s papers put out by the federal government in the early twentieth century.

That encouraged me to revisit the Library of Congress’s American Memory digital database of Washington’s papers, which includes transcriptions of the notes that Fitzpatrick included in that edition. Those notes quote some documents not included in the current edition of the papers (which is in other ways more complete).

And indeed, Fitzpatrick noted a March 1760 invoice to Washington from Robert Cary & Co. that included:

from Unwin & Wrigglesworth—
A Tunbridge Tea Sett ... ¼
3 Neat Tunbridge Toys ... 1/
A Neat Book lash Tea Chest ... 4/6
A Bird on Bellows ... 5d.
A Cuckoo ... 10d.
A turnabout Parrot ... 1/3
A Grocers Shop ... 5/

and from Mount & Page—
6 Small Books for Children ... 3/.
A Box best Household Stuff ... 4/6
A Straw patch box wt. a Glass ... 2/
A Neat dressd Wax Baby ... 3/6
An Aviary ... 1/3
A Prussian Dragoon ... 1/3
A Man Smoakg. ... 1/

For his biography Fitzpatrick plucked out items from that list which were most likely children’s toys. The Mount Vernon Midden blog shows images from those invoices. The 1760 Universal Pocket Companion for Londoners listed Unwin & Wrigglesworth as “hardwaremen” doing business on Cheapside; they probably sold more than toys.

Olive Bailey included a similar list in Christmas with the Washingtons (1948). She also transcribed a list of toys that Unwin & Wrigglesworth had shipped earlier, billing Daniel Parke Custis, Martha’s first husband, who died in 1757:

A child’s fiddle
A coach and six in a box
A stable with six horses
A corner cupboard
A neat walnut bureau
A filigree watch
A neat enameled watch box
A toy whip
A child’s huzzif

So we’re on solid ground to say that Washington bought that list of items I quoted yesterday, and that most of those things were toys. But we can’t say that Washington ordered those toys specifically. The Mount Vernon Midden blog quotes him as vaguely ordering “‘10 [shillings] worth of Toys’ for Jacky and ‘A Fash[ionably] Dres[sed] Baby…& other Toys’” for Patsy in September 1759. The London merchants picked out what they thought those children would like.

We also can’t say those goods had anything to do with Washington’s first Christmas as a stepfather. They were apparently ordered in September 1759 but not shipped until March 1760. In fact, Washington’s papers say almost nothing about Christmas celebrations at Mount Vernon. (In 1769 he won some money on cards that evening while visiting Fielding Lewis.)

Instead, it appears that twentieth-century authors chose to view these goods through the lens of our own traditions. Most Americans give children lots of toys on Christmas, and our culture encourages us to give even more. Therefore, these toys appeared in Christmas with the Washingtons and Reader’s Digest Book of Christmas even though they had no link to the Washington-Custis family’s holiday. Jacky and Patsy were probably glad to get them whenever they arrived.

(The image above shows the remains of two small clay figurines found in an archeological dig at Mount Vernon. Were those some of Jacky and Patsy Custis’s toys? Or the toys of Jacky’s children?)

Tying Up the Twisted History of the Braddock Sash

As I said yesterday, Katherine Glass Greene’s 1926 local history Winchester, Virginia, and Its Beginnings, 1743-1814 contains a confused history of Gen. Edward Braddock’s sash. Greene credited that part of her book to Mary Spottiswoode Buchanan (1840-1925). Genealogy sites reveal that Bettie Taylor Dandridge, Zachary Taylor’s daughter and owner of the sash from 1850 to 1910, had married Buchanan’s uncle.

Buchanan’s history of the sash explains for the first time fully how it traveled from Gen. Braddock to Gen. George Washington to Gen. Edmund Gaines to Gen. Taylor. However, it doesn’t explain how Buchanan came by that knowledge. Had she consulted Wills De Hass’s 1851 history? Had she picked up some lore from her aunt—and if so, how had her aunt learned anything about the sash before it reached her father? Had Dandridge or Buchanan learned more about the sash through conversations with old families in Virginia? There’s no way to tell.

Buchanan’s narrative starts with the dying Braddock (illustrated above) giving his sash to Washington, a young volunteer aide, and saying that it had belonged to his father before him. To my knowledge, that detail hadn’t appeared in any previous printed source. And there doesn’t seem to be any evidence to confirm it.

Weaver Carol James reports that the date “1709” is woven into the sash and suggests that Braddock’s father graduated from military school in that year. In fact, the elder Braddock was already in the Coldstream Guards as a lieutenant colonel (with the brevet rank of major general, just to confuse things). Instead, 1709 was one year before the younger Braddock joined the Coldstream Guards himself as a fifteen-year-old ensign. Thus, the sash might have been a sort of graduation gift for young Edward as he was about to embark on his own military career.

Buchanan then wrote that Washington gave the sash to his nephew Fielding Lewis (1751-1803), whose daughter married a “Colonel Butler of Louisiana,” and Butler asked Gaines to send it out to Gen. Taylor after his early victories in the Mexican-American War. But that doesn’t match the genealogical details of Fielding Lewis’s family.

However, I found another family line that matches some of Buchanan’s details, suggesting she received information that was garbled but originally well founded. I suspect the sash went to Washington’s step-granddaughter Eleanor Parke Custis (1779-1852), who married his nephew Lawrence Lewis (1737-1839), brother of Fielding. They had a daughter named Frances Parke Lewis (1799-1895). She married Edward G. W. Butler (1800-1888). His middle initials stood for “George Washington,” of course. After his father’s death he had become a ward of Andrew Jackson, just in case this story didn’t have enough generals and Presidents already.

According to the finding aid for his family’s papers (P.D.F. file), Edward G. W. Butler served as an aide de camp to Gen. Gaines, settled in Louisiana, and retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. He thus matches all the clues to the man who sent the Braddock sash off to Gen. Zachary Taylor’s army:

• his wife was a direct descendant of Martha Washington, thus a plausible owner of a garment from Mount Vernon.
• his wife’s father was one of Gen. Washington’s Lewis nephews.
• he was “Colonel Butler of Louisiana,” as Buchanan said.
• he was “a gentleman at New Orleans,” as De Hass understood.
• he had a close connection to Gen. Gaines.

So I suspect the Butlers, pleased with the early American success against Mexico, decided to pass on a precious family relic to a new hero of the American army.

One mystery that the different sources raise is whether the Butlers wanted their relic to go to Taylor himself or to a soldier whom that general deemed particularly worthy. Some of the stories hint at the latter. But Taylor thought the gift was meant for him, and it might have been too awwwkward to tell him otherwise.

In any event, the sash is back at Mount Vernon now, having spent decades in the custody of Taylor’s daughter. And though some of the stories told about it seem poorly supported and others garbled, I think the evidence suggests it’s an authentic artifact owned by Edward Braddock from 1709 to 1755 and by George Washington from 1755 probably to his death.

George Lewis: “diligent in whatever duty is required”?

Yesterday’s Boston 1775 posting introduced George Lewis (1757-1821), a son of George Washington’s sister Betty. On 14 Nov 1775 his father, Fielding Lewis, wrote to the general:

You will receive this Letter by my Son George who accompanys your Lady, the Winter is so far advanced that I am fearfull she will have a very disagreeable Journey but I expect she will meet with every assistance. . . .

George is very desireous of remaining with you as long as you stay with the Army, this I have no objection against provided he can have some little part that will bear his expences, I am in hopes your will find him diligent in whatever duty is required of him…

That letter closed with the news that George’s brother Charles, younger by three years, had died eight days before “of an Inflamitary Fever after a short illness.”

So Gen. Washington, in the middle of the siege of Boston, was asked to find some paying work for his eighteen-year-old nephew. Young George was apparently skilled as a horseman, which might have been useful along the road from Virginia to Cambridge, but he could not have been experienced in business or travel. As I noted yesterday, he made so little impression in Philadelphia that the newspapers misidentified him.

George Lewis almost certainly lived in the John Vassall house after he arrived at Cambridge in December 1775. Over the next three months, he may have helped with administrative tasks at that headquarters. The latest editors of Gen. Washington’s papers suggest that Lewis wrote a 19 Feb 1776 letter to Christopher French, a captured British officer who sent the commander a ceaseless stream of complaints about his detention; apparently the unsigned copy on file is not in the handwriting of any known aides.

In March 1776, Lewis was commissioned as a lieutenant in the commander-in-chief’s guard. This unit was created to guard the headquarters papers and equipment. He served in that capacity until December, and then became a captain in the 2nd Continental Dragoons, seeing action in 1777.

Capt. Lewis spent a lot of 1778 away from his regiment. The general wrote him a chiding letter on 13 Feb 1779, so he resigned his commission and went home to Virginia to stay. George Lewis had evidently lost the desire to serve with his uncle “as long as you stay with the Army.”

(The thumbnail photo above shows Lewis’s gravestone, courtesy of waymarking.com which gives his full name as George Washington Lewis.)