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#1 new release in American Revolution biographies! Hardcover – Published June 11, 2019   Free shipping!

An insightful biography of Mary Ball Washington, the mother of our nation's father!

“Brilliant and gripping . . . Drawing on local histories and archaeology as well as letters, diaries and a broad knowledge of related historiography, The Widow Washington is a clear-eyed biography of the mother of our first president and a fascinating window into the generation before the American Revolution’s founding fathers and mothers. Ms. Saxton’s vivid storytelling transforms the considerable genealogical work behind this history into poignant drama.” ―Kathleen DuVal, The Wall Street Journal

“Saxton offers a sensitive, sharply drawn portrait of a resourceful woman whose early losses made her anxious and fearful for life . . . A sympathetic look at George Washington’s mother [and] a fresh perspective on Colonial America.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“An accessible and vivid exploration of the life of George Washington’s mother . . . [Saxton] brings to life the social context of the time . . . [Despite] the absence of much primary source material . . . [Saxton] comes as close as anyone is likely to in accurately recounting [Mary] Washington’s life. This complex, warts-and-all portrait brings a fresh angle to colonial American history.” ―Publishers Weekly

 
About the Author:
"Martha Saxton is the author of Being Good: Women’s Moral Values in Early America and biographies of Louisa May Alcott and Jayne Mansfield, among other works. She received a Ph.D. from Columbia University before joining the faculty at Amherst College, where she taught history and women’s studies for twenty years."

The Book:

"The Widow Washington is the first study of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington’s mother, based on archival sources. Her son’s biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her oldest child. But the records tell a very different story. Mary Ball, the daughter of a wealthy planter and a formerly indentured servant, was orphaned young and grew up working hard, practicing frugality and piety. Stepping into Virginia’s upper class, she married an older man, the planter Augustine Washington, with whom she had five children before his death eleven years later. As a widow deprived of most of her late husband’s properties, Mary struggled to raise her children, but managed to secure them places among Virginia’s elite. In her later years, she and her wealthy son George had a contentious relationship, often disagreeing over money, with George dismissing as imaginary her fears of poverty and helplessness.

Yet Mary Ball Washington had a greater impact on George than mothers of that time and place usually had on their sons. George did not have the wealth or freedom to enjoy the indulged adolescence typical of young men among the planter class. Mary’s demanding mothering imbued him with many of the moral and religious principles by which he lived. The two were strikingly similar, though the commanding demeanor, persistence, athleticism, penny-pinching, and irascibility that they shared have served the memory of the country’s father immeasurably better than that of his mother. Martha Saxton’s The Widow Washington is a necessary and deeply insightful corrective, telling the story of Mary’s long, arduous life on its own terms, and not treating her as her son’s satellite."

Reviews:

"Martha Saxton does an excellent job of delivering a reassessment of the one dimensional perception of Mary Ball Washington. I loved how she delved into the history of Mary's family and fleshed out the story with historical documents. I've always been fascinated by the extended presidential families and this biography was long over due. Saxton does solid writing and I believe gives readers a more balanced view about the mother of George Washington."

"Much ink has been spilled on the life and times of George Washington, but little attention has been devoted to his mother Mary Ball Washington. When Mary Washington appears in studies of her famous son, she is labeled as a “shrew,” “illiterate,” a “helicopter parent,” and “Medea in a mob cap.” It was with trepidation that I picked up Dr. Martha Saxton’s new biography, The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington. Would the same hackneyed stereotypes be repeated for three hundred pages?

I quickly realized that my fears were unfounded. Dr. Saxton presents an insightful and engaging biography that firmly places Mary Washington’s life within the context of Colonial Virginia. Under Dr. Saxton’s skillful handling, Mary Washington has finally received the scholarly attention that she deserves as the driving force behind George Washington’s life. An argument can be made that without Mary Washington’s role in her oldest son’s life, the American Revolution could have turned out much differently.

Born in 1708, Mary Ball was born in a colonial Virginia very different from the genteel version of colonial life often presented at such sites as Colonial Williamsburg and Mount Vernon among others. Mary’s mother, also named Mary, was born in England and immigrated to Virginia as an indentured servant. Through skillful marriages, Mary Ball was able to enter Virginia’s emerging gentry class—an achievement that would become impossible by the time of the American Revolution. Mary Washington’s childhood was difficult, marred by the early deaths of close family members. Orphaned by the age of twelve, Mary Washington was cared for by her half-sister Elizabeth Bonum and the two developed a close bond. In 1731, Mary married Augustine Washington, a wealthy planter who had lost his first wife the year before. The marriage firmly placed Mary Washington within the comfort of the status of the gentry, but the marriage also brought three stepchildren to help rear. The family grew in 1732 when Mary Washington gave birth to her first child, George. Betty, Samuel, John Augustine, Charles, and Mildred would follow. Tragedy struck in 1743, when Augustine Washington died after a brief illness, leaving Mary Washington a widow to raise five children at the age of thirty-five.
Following Augustine’s death, Mary Washington lost the financial comfort that her husband provided as his vast landholdings and plantations were divided amongst his sons. To combat her financial insecurity, Mary could have remarried, an option that many colonial widows followed. Mary Washington decided to not follow that path and remained a widow, overseeing the management of her children’s inheritances. While she was unable to send her children to elite schools, she provided her children—particularly George, with the practical education of running a vast plantation. Mary Washington also instilled in her children industry, stoicism, piety, thrift, and independence. In recent years, Mary has been unfairly condemned for not allowing fourteen-year-old George to join the British Navy. Mary’s decision was firmly rooted in providing the best future for her son, a course of action that would not have been permitted as an ensign in the Navy. Instead, Mary encouraged George in his surveying career which allowed him to make powerful contacts within Virginia society.
These insights into Mary’s world are fully covered in Dr. Saxton’s work. Utilizing a diverse arrange of primary sources: letters, diaries, planation inventories, land grants, wills and period newspapers, Dr. Saxton firmly places the reader with the complex world of Colonial and Revolutionary War Virginia. The colonial Virginia that Dr. Saxton uncovers is a stark and at times cruel place. This is not the romanticized world of Colonial Williamsburg. Mary Washington was a slave owner from the age of three until her death at 80. Becoming the owner of enslaved workers at such a tender age quickly hardened Mary to the plight of the men, women, and children that she owned. Unlike her son, Mary never expressed any qualms about slave ownership and would separate enslaved workers from their spouses and children. To cope with the early loss of many of her family members, Mary also developed a hard exterior that made her less empathetic to the plights of others.
Like any family, the Washington’s occasionally had family squabbles. The most famous family dispute occurred during the Revolution when George openly questioned Mary’s claim of financial security. The Revolution brought inflation and high taxes to the home front. Compounding Mary Washington’s difficulties, in 1780 Mary was forced to flee into Virginia’s western interior with her family to escape possible capture from British military forces. While in the west, her son, Samuel, and son-in-law, Fielding Lewis, died from illness. During this time, someone petitioned the Virginia Assembly for a pension for Mary Washington. When George received word of the planned pension he erupted in anger. Sensitive to his public image, George feared that if word of his mother receiving a pension became public he would look like an uncaring son in the court of public opinion. George Washington argued that his mother’s claim to poverty was exaggerated. A claim modern historians have accepted unquestioningly, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Regardless of the occasional family dispute, Dr. Saxton reveals a more loving and respectful relationship between mother and son than historians have previously presented. Mary and George deeply cared for each other, evidenced in the surviving correspondence between the two. Before leaving for the presidency in 1789, George Washington paid one final visit to his mother at her home in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Mary Washington was in the final stages of breast cancer, and according to family tradition the two had a loving and tender final goodbye. In her final months, Mary expressed concern for the health of her son until her death on August 25, 1789.
Dr. Saxton’s biography is a timely addition to the study of the Washington family and their place in the Colonial and Revolutionary War period. The work challenges previously held beliefs about Mary Washington and her son and will likely raise a few eyebrows and instigate scholarly debate."