Mrs. Custis was a widow with two children.  She was twenty-six, and the same age as Washington within three months.  Her husband had died seven months before.  In Washington’s cash-account for May, Seventeen Hundred Fifty-eight, is an item, “one Engagement Ring L2.16.0.”

The happy couple were married eight months later, and we find Mrs. Washington explaining to a friend that her reason for the somewhat hasty union was that her estate was getting in a bad way and a man was needed to look after it.  Our actions are usually right, but the reasons we give seldom are; but in this case no doubt “a man was needed,” for the widow had much property, and we can not but congratulate Martha Custis on her choice of “a man.”  She owned fifteen thousand acres of land, many lots in the city of Williamsburg, two hundred negroes, and some money on bond; all the property being worth over one hundred thousand dollars—­a very large amount for those days.  Directly after the wedding, the couple moved to Mount Vernon, taking a good many of the slaves with them.  Shortly after, arrangements were under way to rebuild the house, and the plans that finally developed into the present mansion were begun.

Washington’s letters and diary contain very few references to his wife, and none of the many visitors to Mount Vernon took pains to testify either to her wit or to her intellect.  We know that the housekeeping at Mount Vernon proved too much for her ability, and that a woman was hired to oversee the household.  And in this reference a complaint is found from the General that “housekeeper has done gone and left things in confusion.”  He had his troubles.

Martha’s education was not equal to writing a presentable letter, for we find that her husband wrote the first draft of all important missives that it was necessary for her to send, and she copied them even to his mistakes in spelling.  Very patient was he about this, and even when he was President and harried constantly we find him stopping to acknowledge for her “an invitation to take some Tea,” and at the bottom of the sheet adding a pious bit of finesse, thus:  “The President requests me to send his compliments and only regrets that the pressure of affairs compels him to forego the Pleasure of seeing you.”

After Washington’s death, his wife destroyed the letters he had written her—­many hundred in number—­an offense the world is not yet quite willing to forget, even though it has forgiven.

* * * * *

Although we have been told that when Washington was six years old he could not tell a lie, yet he afterwards partially overcame the disability.  On one occasion he writes to a friend that the mosquitoes of New Jersey “can bite through the thickest boot,” and though a contemporary clergyman, greatly flurried, explains that he meant “stocking,” we insist that the statement shall stand as the Father of his Country expressed it.  Washington also records without a blush, “I announced that I would leave at 8 and then immediately gave private Orders to go at 5, so to avoid the Throng.”  Another time when he discharged an overseer for incompetency he lessened the pain of parting by writing for the fellow “a Character.”