“I accompanied young Custis to Mount Vernon”

In sharing his story about hearing George Washington threaten to lead “Virginia riflemen” against the king’s troops in 1773, Benjamin Galloway included circumstantial details about the event.

The version he sent to the Hagerstown Torch Light in 1818 explained that he was invited to spend Christmas in 1772 at Mount Vernon as a friend of Washington’s stepson, John Parke Custis, from Annapolis. The reprinted story began:

A few days after I arrived at Mount Vernon, Lord Sterling and Captain [Edward] Foye, (the latter being the then secretary to Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia) being on their way from Williamsburg to New York, called on Col. Washington, with whom they sojourned for three or four days, the weather being very tempestuous and sleety.

In his letter to the Washington Republican in 1822, Galloway prefaced his anecdote with this scene-setting:

Whilst I was a student at law, in the city of Annapolis, and the late Mr. John Parke Custis, was a pupil under the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, of the same place, by permission of his father-in-law [i.e., stepfather], the then Colonel George Washington, I accompanied young Custis to Mount Vernon, and passed the last week of the year (I think) 1772, and the first week of 1773, at said place. Lord Sterling and Captain Foye, the latter of whom was at that time private secretary to Lord Dunmore, the then governor of the Ancient Dominion, (Virginia was so called at that day,) being on the way from Williamsburg to the city of New York, stopped at Mount Vernon, and continued there during three days, the weather being very tempestuous and snowy.

The second telling also stated that “the Rev. Walter Magowan,…who had resided some years before in the Mount Vernon family as a private tutor to young Custis,” was also present.

Those paragraphs offer multiple names to assess. I was particularly struck by the presence of William Alexander, Lord Stirling (1726–1783), who lived in New York. Why would Galloway have run into him?

So I tested that claim against George Washington’s diary. His entries for the start of 1773 say:

Jany. 1st. Dined at Belvoir and returnd in the Afternoon. Found Mr. Grafton Dulany, Mr. Ben. Gallaway, Mr. Sam Hanson & Mr. Magowan and Doctr. Rumney here.

2. Doctr. Rumney went away after Breakfast. Lord Sterling & Captn. Foy with Colo. [George William] Fairfax came to Dinner. The latter went away afterwards. The other Gentlemen stayd.

So far Galloway’s memory proves remarkably correct. Forty-five years before his anecdote first appeared in print, the young man did spend the turn of the year 1773 at Mount Vernon. And the other guests there included:

• Lord Stirling, who was traveling around Virginia selling lottery tickets.
• Capt. Edward Foy, secretary to Lord Dunmore and traveling companion for Stirling.
• the Rev. Walter Magowan, former tutor and now clergyman in Virginia.

Washington’s diary didn’t mention his stepson Custis, but of course that eighteen-year-old was then a resident, not a guest. According to the Washington Papers editors, Grafton Dulany was one of Custis’s schoolmates in Annapolis, so he had brought chums home for the holidays.

TOMORROW: Looking in the newspapers.

“He had never seen the master of Mount Vernon so displeased”

Last month I addressed the idea that George Washington attended fireworks in celebration of the second anniversary of the Gaspee attack in 1774.

I found that claim to be unsupported by any evidence in Washington’s writings or in the newspapers of Williamsburg, Virginia.

Taverns occasionally displayed fireworks, Washington occasionally attended, and in this case the date of a fireworks show simply coincided with the anniversary of an event in another colony many miles away.

Another source describes Washington showing a strong response to the Gaspee affair—or, more accurately, a strong response to a Crown official’s response to the Gaspee affair.

This story starts with the founding of the Washington Republican newspaper in August 1822 by the printer Thomas L. McKenny to support the political career of John C. Calhoun, then U.S. Secretary of War. McKenny invited his new readers to send material for him to print. Early the next month, someone from western Maryland supplied McKenny with this letter:

Mr. Printer: The authenticity of the following communication may be confidently relied on by the public, as there are now alive those who heard the person that now furnishes it, narrate the facts contained therein, immediately after his return from Mount Vernon to the city of Annapolis, precisely as he is now about to state them.
B. G.

Washington County, Sept. 5, 1822.

...just after the cloth was removed from the supper table, a man of colour named Billy, Col. Washington’s favourite servant, who had been sent by his master to Alexandria for letters and newspapers, entered the supper room and delivered to his master a large bundle containing letters and newspapers. Col. Washington, with a cast of his hand, placed the newspapers about mid way the supper table, around which there were then sitting a large company, Lord Sterling on the right, and Capt. [Edward] Foye on the left hand of Mrs. [Martha] Washington. When Col. Washington so placed the papers, he requested that if they contained any important information, it might be read aloud to the company.

It so happened that I laid my hand on an Eastern paper, which contained an article of intelligence to the following effect: “That a Yankee smuggler, being pursued by one of the King’s vessels of war, (and I think she was called the Gaspee,) hugged the shore so closely that the former (the wind then blowing extremely hard) missed stays, and ran plump ashore. The neighbouring brother Jonathans quickly collected in great numbers, the tide being at ebb, they soon boarded and burned her.”

I read said article aloud to the company, and was immediately requested by Captain Faye to pass the newspaper to him, who, when he had read the article, he had the audacity to declare that “The Yankees must be phlebotomized!” and that he, yes, that he, “would engage, at the head of five thousand British regulars, to march from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, and put down all opposition to the revenue acts,” that had been recently passed by the British Parliament for the purpose of raising a revenue in the British colonies.

Col. Washington, at the close of this insulting declaration, instantly fixing his eyes on Capt. Foye, observed: “I question not, Sir, that you could march from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, at the head of five thousand British regulars: but do you mean to say, Sir, that you could do so, as a friend, or as an enemy? If as the latter, and you will allow me a few weeks notice of your intention, I will engage to give you a handsome check with the Virginia riflemen alone.” When Col. Washington was uttering the words with the Virginia riflemen alone, he struck the table so violently with his clenched hand, that some wine glasses and a decanter near him with difficulty maintained their upright positions.

Captain Foye made no reply; but turned his face immediately towards Mrs. Washington, said a few words to her, looked very silly, and soon after requested to be showed to his chamber!

Col. Washington appeared to be very much displeased. Not a word was said by any of the company, in reference to said article of intelligence, while they remained in the room; but when the Rev. Walter Magowan, who was one of the company, and who had resided some years before in the Mount Vernon family as a private tutor to young [John Parke] Custis, had, with two other gentlemen and myself, arrived at our bed chamber, he remarked that, during the whole time he had lived in Col. Washington’s family, he had never seen the master of Mount Vernon so displeased as he appeared to have been that evening with Captain Foye.

I transcribed this from the 18 Sept 1822 Daily National Intelligencer, one of several newspapers that republished the Washington Republican item in late 1822 and early 1823. I couldn’t unearth the Republican itself. (As usual, I’ve broken the long block of text into paragraphs for easier reading on the web.) 

This letter has rarely been republished or cited since. In fact, I couldn’t find a single Washington biographer who quoted what this correspondent said he witnessed around the start of the year 1773.

TOMORROW: Another version of the same tale.

Rev. Jonathan Boucher: “I did know Mr. Washington well”

The Washington Papers Project just shared Kathryn Gehred’s profile of the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, a Virginia and Maryland minister who had the unenviable job of tutoring Jack Custis in the early 1770s.

“I never did in my Life know a Youth so exceedingly indolent, or so surprizingly voluptuous: one wd suppose Nature had intended Him for some Asiatic Prince,” Boucher wrote to the teenager’s stepfather, a Virginia planter named George Washington.

Boucher supported the royal government in the political arguments of the early 1770s, at one point carrying pistols to his pulpit to defend himself.

He reported seeing Washington for the last time on a ferry as the Virginian headed to the Second Continental Congress in 1775, where he would accept the position of commander-in-chief of a rebel army.

Years later, in his memoirs, Boucher described Washington this way:

I did know Mr. Washington well; and tho’ occasions may call forth traits of character that never would have been discovered in the more sequestered scenes of life, I cannot conceive how he could, otherwise than through the interested representations of party, have ever been spoken of as a great man.

He is shy, silent, stern, slow and cautious, but has no quickness of parts, extraordinary penetration, nor an elevated style of thinking. In his moral character he is regular, temperate, strictly just and honest (excepting that as a Virginian, he has lately found out that there is no moral turpitude in not paying what he confesses he owes to a British creditor) and, as I always thought, religious: having heretofore been pretty constant, and even exemplary, in his attendance on public worship in the Church of England. But he seems to have nothing generous or affectionate in his nature.

In 1876 Boucher’s grandson published this and other extracts of his memoir in the London magazine Notes and Queries. Americans, in the midst of the Colonial Revival, disliked that description of the first President. But half a century later, an American press published Boucher’s memoir in full.

Valentine’s Notes for Martha Washington

In the Washington Papers is a document dated 25 Oct 1759, about a year and a half after George had met Martha and nine and a half months after they married.

It’s headed “An Account of the Sail of the Estate of Colo. Custis Decst in WmsBurg.”

“Colo. Custis” was Daniel Parke Custis, Martha’s first husband, who had died in 1757. With the help of her plantation manager, lawyer, and now her new husband, Martha was settling his estate.

This particular document was written out by manager Joseph Valentine. It lists more than £58 worth of property in eighty-six lots, starting with “Pewter Dishes and 6 Plates” and ending with “210 pounds oald Iron.” Beside each lot Valentine noted who had bought it, either on credit or for cash.

This part of Custis’s estate included 129 “Picturs,” not to mention “A parcel of old Broken picturs.” Unfortunately, Valentine provided no detail about what most of those pictures showed. He simply labeled them small or large or old. The exception was “1 picture of an horse,” purchased by Thomas Craig.

Craig also bought the “Large Looking Glass,” the most expensive item in the sale at £4.10.

John Greenhow bought “15 Picturs & a Bull Dogg,” plus fifteen more pictures, “5 Woodin Immageis,” “1 Tin Basket & other Lumber,” “1 Brass Gun & Close Stool Chear,” “15 Pains Large Glass,” “1 Case & Bottles & mose Trap,” “2 Bell mettle skillets 4 wheat stones 2 sullinges [?],” and “1 Large Press” (probably for clothing) at £2.12.

Valentine himself took “8 Low Leather Chears” and “3 maps.”

Why was Martha Washington having this yard sale? Because she had moved into George’s mansion at Mount Vernon and didn’t need all that stuff from her husband’s house. By liquidating his property, she could divide its value as the law required between herself and her children.

George Washington took over the task of settling John Parke Custis’s estate in 1759 and finally completed the task in 1761. The surviving documents comprise a discrete section of the Washington Papers.

John Valentine (who wrote his own name “Vallentine”) continued to work for the Washingtons until his death in 1771.

“William Costin’s reputed father was white”

As I wrote yesterday, Martha Washington’s son John Parke Custis is believed to have had a child by an enslaved woman named Ann Dandridge around 1780 as well as children with his wife, Eleanor.

Jack Custis died in 1781 of a disease he contracted during the siege of Yorktown. His wife remarried. She continued raising their two eldest children while the two younger grew up at Mount Vernon with their grandmother Martha and her second husband, George.

Ann Dandridge was herself the daughter of an enslaved woman and John Dandridge, Martha’s father—which means she was also an aunt of Jack Custis. In An Imperfect God, Henry Wiencek reported that Ann Dandridge eventually married a man named Holmes, and the husband of Jack Custis’s oldest daughter, Eliza Custis Law, freed her in 1802.

What happened to the child of Jack Custis and Ann Dandridge? The answer became public in, of all places, The Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Condition and Improvement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia: Submitted to the Senate June, 1868, and to the House, with Additions, June 13, 1870. The federal government published that lengthy report in 1871. It contained a thorough discussion of schools in the District, including some for African-Americans started by a family named Costin.

Although this information wasn’t connected to the condition of the schools, the report stated:

This Costin family came from Mount Vernon immediately after the death of Martha Washington, in 1802. The father, William Costin, who died suddenly in his bed, May 31, 1842, was twenty-four years messenger for the Bank of Washington, in this city. His death was noticed at length in the columns of the National Intelligencer in more than one communication at the time. The obituary notice, written under the suggestions of the bank officers, who had previously passed a resolution expressing their respect for his memory, and appropriating fifty dollars towards the funeral expenses, says: “It is due to the deceased to say that his colored skin covered a benevolent heart,” . . .

John Quincy Adams also, a few days afterwards, in a discussion on the wrongs of slavery, alluded to the deceased in these words: “The late William Costin, though he was not white, was as much respected as any man in the District, and the large concourse of citizens that attended his remains to the grave, as well white as black, was an evidence of tho manner in which he was estimated by the citizens of Washington.” His portrait, taken by the direction of the bank authorities, still hangs in the directors’ room, and it may also be seen in the houses of more than one of the old and prominent residents of the city.

William Costin’s mother, Ann Dandridge, was the daughter of a half-breed, (Indian and and colored,) her grandfather being a Cherokee chief, and her reputed father was the father of Martha Dandridge, afterwards Mrs. Custis, who, in 1759, was married to General Washington. These daughters, Ann and Martha, grew up together, on the ancestral plantations. William Costin’s reputed father was white, and belonged to a prominent family in Virginia, but the mother, after his birth, married one of the Mount Vernon slaves by the name of Costin, and the son took the name of William Costin. His mother being of Indian descent, made him, under the laws of Virginia, a free born man. In 1800 he married Philadelphia Judge, (his cousin,) one of Martha Washington’s slaves, at Mount Vernon, where both were born in 1780. The wife was given by Martha Washington at her decease to her granddaughter, Eliza Parke Custis, who was the wife of Thomas Law, of Washington. Soon after William Costin and his wife came to this city the wife’s freedom was secured on kind and easy terms, and the children were all born free. This is the account which William Costin and his wife and his mother, Ann Dandridge, always gave of their ancestry, and they were persons of great precision in all matters of family history, as well as of the most marked scrupulousness in their statements.

That report didn’t come out and name William Costin’s father, but it linked him and his mother and his wife to Mount Vernon. That left no doubt about which “prominent family in Virginia” his father hailed from. Anyone who knew the Washington-Custis family tree could figure out the rest. Elizabeth Van Lew of Richmond certainly put the pieces together in her private papers, Wiencek found.

Though this account says Costin’s surname came from his mother marrying “one of the Mount Vernon slaves,” I can’t help but wonder if Costin was simply a safe variation on Custis. I can’t find any other mention of an enslaved man named Costin at Mount Vernon.

William Costin’s wife, Philadelphia or Delphy Judge, was a sister of Oney Judge, who escaped to New Hampshire in 1796. If Delphy Judge and William Costin were indeed first cousins, as this profile suggests, the Judge sisters’ mother, “Mulatto Betty,” must have been a sister or half-sister of Ann Dandridge.

The 1871 profile said that for William Costin “being of Indian descent, made him, under the laws of Virginia, a free born man.” In fact, the laws of Virginia assigned him the same status as his mother, who was enslaved. Wiencek suggests that the Custis-Washington family treated William as free simply because they preferred it that way. He and his family remained at Mount Vernon until Martha’s death, then went to the capital, the women and children becoming formally free in the next few years.

It’s notable that this federal government report discussing gentlemen in Martha Washington’s family having children with enslaved women appeared at almost the same time that a U.S. Census taker noted Madison Hemings’s statement about being a son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. That was between the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction in 1877. In that narrow window, it appears, some black Americans felt more free to talk about their white ancestors and some white Americans openly acknowledged the realities of intertwined families.

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?)

Christmas Shopping with George Washington?

This month HistoryTube shared a heart-warming glimpse of George Washington, the just-retired young colonel of the Virginia forces, as a new stepfather:

In 1759 George and Martha Washington spent their first Christmas together at Mount Vernon. They had been married less than a year. A list of presents George Washington intended to purchase for stepson John (Jacky), age 5, and stepdaughter Martha (Patsy), age 3, shows a heartfelt appreciation for the joys of childhood. His list reads:

A bird on Bellows
A Cuckoo
A turnabout Parrott
A Grocers Shop
An Aviary
A Prussian Dragoon
A Man Smoaking
A Tunbridge Tea Sett
3 Neat Tunbridge Toys
A Neat Book fash Teas Chest
A box best Household Stuff
A straw Patch box w. a Glass
A neat dressed Wax Baby

The items on the list would have likely been handmade and imported from Europe. Many mechanical and hand-carved toys of this period were produced in the cities and towns of northern Germany, such as Hamburg and Hannover. Although we can’t be sure what each one looked like, several were fairly common. The bird on bellows, cuckoo, turnabout parrot and “smoaking” man were probably mechanical toys made of metal. The bird and parrot would have contained whistles and may have had flapping wings. The grocer’s shop also likely was made in northern Germany, where elaborate miniature toy room settings were crafted and sold. The Prussian dragoon was probably a metal toy soldier, and the wax baby doll would have been made of poured, tinted and painted wax, a common method for doll construction in the 1700s.

The three Tunbridge toys were probably made in Tunbridge, Kent, England. They may have been puzzle boxes, yo-yos or small decorative chests, made in the Tunbridge fashion, of many small pieces of wood glued together to create a mosaic effect. The tea set and tea chest may have been toys or could have been for a dowry for Patsy. The patch box contained small cloth patches to apply to the face as beauty marks. Were these for Patsy to play with, or meant as a present for Martha?

I’m always touched by watching Washington try so hard to do the right thing. Here he was achieving his social and economic aims by marrying wealthy widow Martha Custis, and he’s suddenly thrust into the role of patriarch responsible for providing for two young children as well.

Since I usually like to add a little something when I quote from other blogs, I went looking for more context for that list of toys. And I found that phrases like “Prussian Dragoon” and “turnabout Parrott” don’t appear in Founders Online, which includes the latest edition of Washington’s colonial papers.

Instead, my searches found this list appeared in a lot of recent books, in the 1973 Reader’s Digest Book of Christmas, and in a 1969 editor’s note at the start of an issue of the American Bar Association Journal. None of the publications I saw indicated a source. So I started to worry.

TOMORROW: It’s a Christmas miracle. (Sort of.)

Mrs. Warner Lewis and the Chain of Errors

Martha Washington arrived at the mansion that is now Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site on 11 Dec 1775. (The portrait at right shows her fifteen years later, as painted by Edward Savage.) With her was Elizabeth Gates, wife of Gen. Horatio Gates, who I think was also staying in that house. Both women had traveled from Virginia, though they had met and started sharing a carriage only in Philadelphia.

Also on that northern leg of the journey, according to Helen Bryan’s Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty (2002), was “Mrs. Warner Lewis, a relative of George’s.” Yet there’s no indication of why Mrs. Warner Lewis would have come along, nor anyone who recorded meeting her in Cambridge.

Bryan evidently relied on Anne Hollingsworth Wharton’s Martha Washington (1897), which states:

From the “Pennsylvania Gazette,” of November 29, it appears that Mrs. Washington and her party, which had been joined by Mrs. Gates, wife of General Gates, and Mrs. Warner Lewis, left Philadelphia on the twenty-seventh…

That book was in turn probably informed by a footnote in the 1889 edition of Washington’s writings, edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford, which quotes the 29 Nov 1775 Pennsylvania Gazette this way:

On Monday last, the Lady of His Excellency General Washington, the Lady of General Gates, J. Curtis, Esq; and Lady of Warner Lewis, Esq; set out for Cambridge.

But in fact that newspaper item reads:

On Monday last, the Lady of His Excellency General WASHINGTON, the Lady of General GATES, J. CURTIS, Esq; and Lady, and WARNER LEWIS, Esq; set out for Cambridge.

So the “Lady” in question was actually the wife of Curtis, and Warner Lewis was a man. Which offers the lesson of always relying on the earliest sources.

Except that the 1775 newspaper contained mistakes as well. “Curtis” was really John Parke Custis, son of Martha Washington and her first husband. He and his wife Nelly accompanied his mother to Cambridge and back home in the spring.

And while there was a prominent Virginia planter named Warner Lewis related to the commander-in-chief, he didn’t travel with Martha Washington in 1775. Nor did his son of the same name. The newspaper printer misidentified Washington’s teen-aged nephew George Lewis.

TOMORROW: Why George Lewis came to Cambridge.