The Widow Washington by Martha Saxton

Author:Martha Saxton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

14.

BETWEEN THE WARS: KIN, CONSUMPTION, CONFLICT

The Rule and Measure of every good man … That [God] would supply him, not with curiosities or delicacies, but with necessaries; and will give [him] bread to eat and rayment to put on.

—MATTHEW HALE, CONTEMPLATIONS MORAL AND DIVINE

MARY’S HORIZONS, NEVER VERY WIDE, narrowed to Ferry Farm and her family during the 1760s. After the flurried preparations for George’s wedding, she had time to reflect on her children’s worldly positions. All her sons were now wealthy farmers, married to women richer than they, and George’s marriage had made him a grandee. Her son-in-law, Fielding, prospered in business. He named his trading schooner Betty both from affection and because of her important role in his business. Mary’s nearby children visited her and one another often. Young Charles and his wife, Mildred, built a house in Fredericksburg and had their first child in 1758, George Augustine. Charles would soon become a vestryman at St. George’s Church and join the town’s community leaders. Mildred bore Frances in 1763. Two other children would follow.

Mary closely followed the health of her family. Betty and Fielding had had six children by 1760, although several had not survived childhood. In April 1759, Betty gave birth to Mary Lewis, to whom Mary Washington was godmother. The little girl died the following Christmas Eve. Their son Augustine had died at four years, Warner at eighteen months.1 Samuel’s first wife had died, but he married again to Mildred Thornton, the cousin of Charles’s wife (with the same name, to add more confusion to a family dedicated to getting the most out of a small selection of names). Mary’s daughter-in-law Martha had come down with measles in January 1760 but was feeling well by June.2 Mary’s stepson Austin sent a momentarily optimistic report on his uncertain health.3

In July 1760, Mary wrote to her brother Joseph in response to a letter from him complaining that she did not write often enough. She pleaded that she wrote infrequently not for “wante of a very great Regard for you and the Family”; instead, because she did not ship tobacco, “the Captins nevr Call one me soe that I never know when they come or when the[y] goe.” Mary kept a protective eye on his property, close to hers on the Rappahannock, and warned him that “Captain Newton has taken a large peace of ground from which I dear [dare] say if you had been hear yourself it had not been Don[e].” She caught him up on local friends and kin and concluded, “Give my love to sister Ball and … I am Dear Brother your Loving Sister Mary Washington.”4

Her brother never received Mary’s contrite letter. She learned of his death when Ball’s son-in-law returned her letter to her. In Joseph Ball, Mary lost a hectoring, opinionated brother/father figure, a fixture of her life for more than fifty years. His education and the authority he habitually assumed had carried weight with her, and his occasional transatlantic news and questions about her long unseen relatives linked her to a past few else knew or cared much about.

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