“I die hard; but I am not afraid to go.”
AT NEARLY TWENTY, Nelly was in high spirits when she wrote on February 3, 1799, to her friend Miss Bordley. “Cupid, a small mischievous Urchin,” she declared, had taken her by surprise, just when she had resolved to pass through life a “prim starched Spinster.” She wrote of colorless Lawrence Lewis as “universally esteemed.” Her happiness was clouded only when she thought of leaving her “Beloved Grandparents…and this dear spot—which has been my constant Home, since my first remembrance.” Those grandparents may have thought lovely Nelly thrown away on a man whose only asset was a farm he had inherited in distant Frederick County. Lewis’s decision not to serve in the dragoons after all may not have endeared him to his uncle. But family feeling was strong in them both. Washington wrote to his nephew on January 23: “I presume, if your health is restored, there will be no impediment to your Union.” Two days before writing, the general had served as Nelly’s guardian in Alexandria, so that she could obtain a license for the nuptials.
Lawrence’s health held. At Nelly’s wish, they were wed on the general’s birthday. Washington marked in his diary: “The Revd. Mr Davis & Mr Geo. Calvert”—one of Nelly’s uncles—“came to dinner & Miss Custis was married abt. Candle light [at dusk] to Mr Lawe Lewis.” A “routine of ceremonious dinners, parties, visits; some agreeable, others tiresome,” which Nelly described to Miss Bordley, followed the wedding. Joshua Brookes, a young English visitor who dined at Mount Vernon during this time of festivity, found the Washingtons their usual hospitable selves. Martha, who sat with him half an hour, was as imperturbable as ever. Brookes noted that she wore a “Mazarin blue satin gown with three belts over her handkerchief across the body,” and her gray hair was combed straight under a loose cap. She asked for news, “said she was no politician but liked to read the newspapers.” Her “affability, free manner and mild, placid countenance,” wrote Brookes, brought to mind his mother.
When Nelly in the guise of Mrs. Lawrence Lewis next wrote to Miss Bordley, in November of this year, she and her husband were back at Mount Vernon. They intended to spend the winter there, and she was expecting a child. They had embarked, in May, on a series of visits to different seats belonging to relations of Lawrence’s. They had also visited the White House, in New Kent County—now the property of her brother—which Nelly had never seen. Lawrence, however, had suffered from ill health for much of the year. At Marmion, his brother George Lewis’s property near Fredericksburg, he had been confined, Nelly told Miss Bordley, “for four weeks to a dark room with an inflammation in one of his eyes.” There had been no time to make their house in Frederick ready for the winter, as Lewis had never been well enough to visit that county. Nelly, a songbird even in winter, wrote that she had been busily engaged in “providing little trappings” for the baby to come, as had her grandmother. “Think, My Dear Eliza, what a pleasure I shall have in seeing her fondle my child.” Martha, she told Miss Bordley on November 4, had been severely unwell for several weeks before the Lewises’ arrival at Mount Vernon, but was now better. “Grandpapa is quite well.”
George had recently given Lawrence congenial news, writing in September, “From the moment Mrs Washington & myself adopted the two youngest children of the late Mr Custis, it became my intention (if they survived me, and conducted themselves to my satisfaction) to consider them in my will, when I was about to make a distribution of my property. This determination has undergone no diminution, but is strengthened by the connexion which one of them has formed with my family.” He understood, “from expressions occasionally dropped from (Nelly Custis, now) your wife,” that the Lewises wished to settle in the neighborhood. His intention was to bequeath the young couple a part of his estate. Should they wish to do so, the Lewises might build a dwelling on the land now and continue to live at the Mount Vernon mansion till it was ready. It was an offer that Nelly and Lawrence gratefully accepted.
The Washingtons, when in good health, were enjoying a tranquil autumn. In the Federal City, two brick houses were rising on lots north of the Capitol that Washington had bought the previous September, and he made frequent visits to inspect their progress. Difficulties with farm manager Anderson inclined him to realize a plan he had harbored for some years, to sell off a large part of the Mount Vernon plantations and manage the mansion house farm himself. But as yet he had made no move to do this.
Discontent among the slave workforce, both among the field “people” and among those within the house, continued. Christopher Sheels, who had been Washington’s body servant during the presidency, was discovered in a plot to abscond with a new wife, a “mulatto girl,” property of a neighbor. Martha had no good opinion in general of slaves. To her niece Fanny she had written in May 1795, following the death of a child, her niece’s property, “I hope you will not find him too much loss. The blacks are so bad in their nature that they have not the least gratitude for the kindness that may be showed to them.” Yet Martha was, by her standards, kind to the Mount Vernon slaves. While in Philadelphia she had regularly paid for Hercules and other enslaved members of the household to see “the play” and made them presents. She called in doctors when they were sick. She never thought, however, of attending to their spiritual welfare. Though her maids were in the room when she read the Bible and devotional literature first thing in the morning and last thing at night, she never had them join her in prayer.
Though Martha had employed others at Mount Vernon as her maids, she still hankered after Oney, the domestic slave who had run away in the summer of 1797. That August Washington wrote to Burwell Bassett, Jr., now the owner of Eltham following his father’s death three years earlier, asking him to make efforts to recover the errant maid, who was believed to be still in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: “it would be a pleasing circumstance to your Aunt.” He added, in a letter only partially legible, that if the young woman put him to “no unnecessary trouble and expence” and conducted herself well, she would “be treated according to her merit[s].” To promise more would be an impolitic “& dangerous” precedent. Oney Judge Staines, now a married woman and a mother, was warned that Bassett was looking for her, and she temporarily left town, avoiding arrest.1 Martha at last admitted defeat. No further attempts were made to recover Oney.
That summer Nelly’s marriage and the death of his one remaining full brother, Charles, prompted Washington to make a new will. It provided for the establishment of a number of educational institutions, namely, a free school in Alexandria, a university in the District of Columbia, and a national university in a central part of the United States. In this latter place, he envisaged, students from all parts of the country, forgoing both halls of learning in Europe and state colleges, would freely associate with one another.
He left the use and profit of his “whole estate” for life, barring bequests to her grandchildren, to his “beloved wife.” Thereafter Mount Vernon and the rest of his estate would pass to his nephew Bushrod Washington. There was one provision that was the product of much thought. Upon the decease of his wife, Washington stated, his slaves were to be manumitted. It was not in his power to free the dower slaves who would pass, on Martha’s death, back to the Parke Custis estate and become property of her grandchildren. “To emancipate them during [her] life,” wrote Washington of the slaves he owned, “would, tho’ earnestly wish[ed by] me, be attended with such insu[pera]ble difficulties on account of thei[r inter-m]ixture by Marriages with the [dow]er Negroes.” He had no wish to “excite the most pa[in]ful sensations, if not disagreeabl[e c]onsequences,” that would follow if the Mount Vernon slaves went free, while their near relations among the dower slaves remained at the estate. The separation of the Washington and dower slaves following Martha’s death was the lesser evil.
Henrietta Liston, who visited with her husband, Robert, in the late autumn of 1798, noted of the general: “His figure, always noble, appeared less, & an approaching deafness, had in some degree affected his spirits.” This winter the managers of the Alexandria assemblies who hoped that the Washingtons would attend their revels received this reply from George: “alas! our dancing days are no more; we wish, however, all those whose relish for so agreeable, & innocent an amusement, all the pleasure the Season will afford them.” The daily routine at Mount Vernon offered both Washingtons occupation and interest, and gatherings of the younger generation provided additional zest.
On November 27, 1799, Nelly Parke Custis Lewis gave birth at the mansion to her first child—a daughter, given the name Frances Parke Lewis and known as Parke. Both Dr. Craik and a midwife were in attendance. Nothing untoward occurred. On December 9, Lawrence Lewis and Washington Custis, father and uncle of the newborn, set off on a journey to inspect the latter’s New Kent County estate. The morning, Washington recorded in his diary, was “clear and pleasant.” Visitors including “Lord Fairfax, his Son Thos. and daughter and his lady”—Bryan Fairfax had lately inherited the title from his cousin Robert—came to dinner two nights later. That evening, the general noted, there was “A large circle round the Moon.…About 1 o’clock it began to snow—soon after, to Hail, and then turned to a settled cold Rain.”
Disregarding the weather conditions, Washington made his usual round of the estate. When he came in, Lear, who was present, observed, “the snow was hanging upon his hair.” As he was late for dinner, the general did not change his dress. The following day, Friday the thirteenth, he made this entry in his diary: “Morning Snowing & abt. 3 Inches deep. Wind at No[rth]. E[as]t. & Mer[cury]. at 30. Continuing Snowing till 1 O’clock and abt. 4 it became perfectly clear. Wind in the same place but not hard.”
He had developed a sore throat. Nevertheless, he went out onto the snowbound front lawn to mark some trees he had in mind to cut. In the parlor that evening, after dinner, and in the company of Martha and Lear, he read the newspapers, which had just arrived. About nine o’clock, the secretary recorded later, Martha “went up into Mrs Lewis’ room.” Nelly was still keeping to her room and nursing. Washington and Lear remained, reading the papers. “He was very cheerful,” Lear recorded, “and when he met with anything interesting or entertaini[n]g, he read it aloud as well as his hoarseness would permit him.”
Washington rejected Lear’s recommendation to take something for his cold. In the night—sometime after two in the morning—he woke Martha and reported that he was very unwell. He had suffered an “ague,” or paroxysm of chills. Martha saw that her husband could scarcely speak and breathed with difficulty. He refused, nevertheless, to allow her to get up and send a servant for help. He did not want his wife to catch cold, Martha later told Lear. The couple lay there together until daybreak, when Caroline, the maid, customarily came in to make up the fire. In subsequent days Martha was to act with great immediacy and firmness. Possibly, in these early hours of December 14, husband and wife contemplated together the possibility of his death and decided on certain protocols to follow, should it occur. Later in the day, he was to say to Lear: “I believed from the first that the disorder would prove fatal.” He told Dr. Craik, “I believed from my first attack, that I should not survive it.”
Caroline, at first light, alerted Lear, who sent for Dr. Craik. After Martha dressed, she remained with her husband in the bedchamber. Numerous remedies were attempted in the early hours, while they waited for professional assistance. Washington almost suffocated when attempting to swallow a drink intended to ease his throat. An overseer came in, “soon after sunrise,” to try bleeding him. Martha, “not knowing whether bleeding was proper or not in the general’s situation, begged that much might not be taken from him, lest it should be injurious.” The general insisted the procedure continue. “Mrs Washington,” recorded Lear, “being still very uneasy lest too much blood should be taken, it was stop’d after taking about half a pint.”
No relief was to be had. Even when his throat was bathed externally, Washington said, “ ’Tis very sore.” Martha told Lear to send for Dr. Brown of Port Tobacco, “whom Dr Craik had recommended to be called, if any case should ever occur that was seriously alarming.” Even so the general insisted on being dressed. He was helped to a chair by the fire, where he was sitting when Craik arrived at about eight o’clock in the morning.
After a couple of hours Washington could sit no longer and returned to lie down on the bed. Christopher, Washington’s body servant, stood at its head. Martha took up a seat at the foot. She watched while Craik applied a blister to her husband’s throat and tried to make him gargle. Again Washington nearly suffocated. Moll, Caroline, and Charlotte, and housekeeper Mrs. Forbes, came and went, tending to the fire, bringing hot water and other supplies. More doctors arrived midafternoon—Dr. Dick from Alexandria and Dr. Brown. They counseled more bleeding: “the blood came very slow, was thick, and did not produce any symptoms of fainting.”
Washington, calling Martha to his bedside about half-past four, had her go down into his study below and bring him the two wills in his desk there. On his instructions, she then burned the “useless” one and preserved the other in her closet. It was an orderly passing, despite the agonizing pain. He told Lear: “arrange & record all my late military letters and papers—arrange my accounts and settle my books.” Soon after six the general dismissed Dick and Brown from the room: “I pray you to take no more trouble about me, let me go off quietly; I cannot last long.” To Craik, who remained, he had already said, “I die hard; but I am not afraid to go.” He motioned Christopher, who had been standing all day, to be seated.
Craik stole some moments in the course of the long evening that succeeded to leave his patient and sit by the fire, “absorbed in grief.” Martha remained seated “near the foot of the bed.” Some time after ten, Lear called Craik to the bedside. Together doctor and secretary witnessed the general’s demise. Martha asked, “with a firm & collected Voice, ‘Is he gone?’ ” Lear responded with a gesture. “ ’Tis well,” said she, in the same voice. “All is now over, I shall soon follow him! I have no more trials to pass through.”
Dry-eyed she had been all day, and apparently dry-eyed and focused Martha, widowed, remained. She told Christopher to take “the General’s keys and things” out of his deceased master’s coat pockets and give them to Lear for safekeeping. Near midnight, the general’s heavy corpse was taken down through the house and laid out on the dining room table in the New Room. Early the following morning, on Martha’s instructions, Lear sent to Alexandria for a mahogany coffin. It was to accommodate a body six feet three and a half inches long, one foot nine inches “Across the Shoulders,” and two feet “Across the Elbows.”
It had been determined not to delay burial until Wash Custis, Lawrence Lewis, and other family members far off should arrive. Instead, the funeral was held on Wednesday, the fourth day after Washington’s death. The vault in the grounds, where Patsy Parke Custis had been laid a quarter of a century earlier and which would receive the new coffin, was unbricked. Martha gave orders, however, that a wooden door should take the place of bricks, when it came to close the vault once more. It would not be long before she joined her husband, she averred, displaying a “pious fortitude” that unnerved Lear and others. She had retreated to a small bedchamber on the attic story and apparently did not again enter the room that she and her husband had shared for forty years and where he had died. “The world now appears to be no longer desirable to her,” Lear wrote to his mother on December 16, “and yet she yields not to that grief which would be softened by tears.” Throughout, Thomas Law wrote to his brother in England, she “displayed a solemn composure that was more distressing than floods of tears.”
1 Following her husband’s early death, Oney Judge Staines struggled to rear their three children, fell on hard times, and ended her days a ward of the New Hampshire county where she lived. She never repented her flight from the presidential home. By it, she was to tell inquirers in the 1840s, she had gained freedom, learned to read, and become a Christian. Technically, as she knew well, she remained a slave till her death in 1848.