A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Washington, Martha
WASHINGTON, MARTHA,
Wife of General George Washington, was born in the county of New Kent, Virginia, in May, 1782. Her maiden name was Martha Dandridge; at the age of seventeen, she married Colonel Daniel Parke Custis, of the White House, county of New Kent, by whom he had four children: a girl, who died in infancy; a son named Daniel, whose early death is supposed to have hastened his father's; Martha, who arrived at womanhood, and died in 1770; and John, who perished in the service of his country, at the siege of Yorktown, aged twenty-seven.
Mrs. Custis was left a young and very wealthy widow, and managed the extensive landed and pecuniary concerns of the estates with surprising ability. In 1759, she was married to George Washington, then a colonel in the colonial service, and soon after, they removed permanently to Mount Vernon, on the Potomac. Upon the election of her husband to the command-in-chief of the armies of his country. Mrs. or Lady Washington, as she was generally called, accompanied the general to the lines before Boston, and witnessed its siege and evacuation; and was always constant in her attendance on her husband, when it was possible. After General Washington's election to the presidency of the United States, in 1787, Mrs. Washington performed the duties belonging to the wife of a man in that high station, with great dignity and ease; and on the retirement of Washington, she still continued her unbounded hospitality. The decease of her venerated husband, who died December 14th., 1799, was the shock from which she never recovered, though she bore the heavy sorrow with the most exemplary resignation. She was kneeling at the foot of his bed when he expired, and when she found he was gone, she said, in a calm voice, "Tis well; all is now over; I shall soon follow him; I have no more trials to pass through." Her children were all deceased—her earthly treasures were withdrawn; but she held firm her trust in the Divine Mercy which had ordered her lot. For more than half a century, she had been accustomed to passing an hour every morning alone in her chamber, engaged in reading the Bible and in prayer. She survived her husband a little over two years, dying at Mount Vernon, aged seventy.
In person Mrs. Washington was well formed, though somewhat below the middle size. A portrait, taken previous to her marriage, shows that she must have been very handsome in her youth; and she retained a comeliness of countenance, as well as a dignified grace of manner, during life. In her home she was the presiding genius that kept action and order in perfect harmony; a wife in whom the heart of her husband could safely trust.