Focus 580; Martha Washington: An American Life

In this part of focus 580 we will be talking about the life of America's first first lady and our guest for the program is historian Patricia Brady who is author of the newly published biography which is titled Martha Washington An American Life. It's published by Viking and it's just recently come out. As we talk here this morning with Patricia Brady we certainly would welcome whatever questions that people listening would have here in Champaign-Urbana. The number is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us so we should be listening around Illinois and Indiana and it would be a long distance call or as in fact if you're listening on the Internet some people do as long as you're in the United States you can use the toll free line that is eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 just a bit more about our guest Patricia Brady She has a Ph.D. in history from two lane University. She served as director of publications at the historic New Orleans collection for 20 years and has written extensively about Martha Washington and her family. She was vice president for programming of

the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival for many years and she makes her home in New Orleans and she's talking with us this morning by telephone. Mr. Brady Hello. I am so happy to be here. Well Pat All right. Well thank you for giving us some of your time we certainly appreciate it. You know when this book came in I think all of us felt that this was something we'd like to do on one of our programs because in recent years there had been a number of books a number of very good books published about the founding fathers and certainly we on the program we've talked about. Mr. Washington and Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and hell Xander Hamilton and when this book came in I think we all said Now we should really should do at least one program about one of the women of this generation and I was really struck by something that you write about in in the book right just in the the the pro log where you write something to the

effect that Martha Washington is famous both as the first first lady and at the same time she is almost. Amply unknown. And you wonder how exactly that can be. Everyone knows who Martha Washington was and yet other other than the fact that she was married to George Washington. But probably most people couldn't tell you anything else about her. Well that's absolutely right. All they can say is oh she was that elderly lady with the mob cap. Who's seen all the old portraits. But she was really a very interesting woman and she was essential to George Washington's life. That's what so many of the new biographies good as they are pretty much ignored the private lives of the of the founding fathers and act as if they did it all by themselves. But marriage was important to all of them. Partly I gather the reason that we that she is such an unknown figure has something to do maybe it has a lot to do with

her own desire for privacy and in fact one of the things that I'm and I'm sure that this says be deviled historians ever since people who are interested in not only her life but also in George Washington's life is that when George Washington died Martha destroyed almost all of their letters and while we for example have all these wonderful letters between John and Abigail Adams that kind of material for the Washington doesn't exist because Mrs. Washington burned it. Yes she did. Well she was up in the day when women really did not want to have publicity. You know certainly that a lady's name appears in the paper only when she's born dies and gets married to have people pawing through her private letters with something she just couldn't tolerate. She felt as if she had given up enough of her. Husband to the public and to the good of the nation and given up enough of their private life they were when they were apart which was they didn't like to be apart but when they were

they rode each other weekly and they were together for 41 years. So that's 41 years of correspondence and she disposed of all of it what she wrote to him and what he wrote to her. There are only five letters that survived. And we can get into some much more detail here about about them in their life but I guess you touch on some a general point that I can have you expand on and that is that while Martha Washington was certainly very supportive of her husband's desire to serve the country first as a general and then later as president she she supported that if she reports supported him when he said I'm going off to war she supported him when he became president but she wasn't really happy about it in either case. That it was that she wanted him at home. She wanted them to be together and apparently loved him very much and she she just she wanted to be with him.

Well it's well and he wanted to be with her too. I mean I don't think most people know that during the eight years of the rest of the American Revolution My thought was with him at the battle the at the scene of the war for five of those years. She came up every year to be with him and he couldn't wait each year till he could get her up there and it was a month's travel by coach over icy roads with the British Army and Navy about in Tory's and all kinds of dangers. But they wanted to be together and that's what it took. But to get back to your question about. Her unwillingness in a sense to give him up certainly with the revolution she accepted that and believed that he was the only one who could lead the armies successfully and I think that's why I think she was right it was completely true. But she felt he had done his share with eight years of warfare. She thought someone else could do the presidency and she really really did not want him to accept and really argued against it. And she wrote to a nephew and said I have looked

forward to our growing old together in solitude and tranquility of course solitude they always had about 20 or 30 people around the house but nonetheless in their private lives. And when he accepted she was very disappointed but she did what she had to do she became first lady. But when he accepted the second term she was really upset because she felt as if they had sacrificed enough and it certainly required a lot of her because she in a manner uprooted the family she certainly uprooted herself and had to move to to New York which at that time that was before the Capitol was in Washington so it involved going from Virginia to New York taking some part of the hall's household taking all the stuff that they would need taking a couple of grandchildren in tow. And did so and the idea of just doing that making those preparations traveling with all of the difficulties of traveling at that time that would not have been a small thing.

It was not a small thing at all and it also meant it was very difficult to go home because it took them two or three weeks to make that journey. Nowadays of course you jump on the shuttle and it's nothing. But in those days it was a big undertaking. And it wasn't just that they went in one coach it was a caravan they had a couple coaches. They had a couple of wagons with baggage. They had a man on horses riding along with them. I mean it was like a big caravan and they had to take everything they needed along because they certainly couldn't stand home for whatever they had left behind. So yes and then it would be if she got home once or twice a year it was a lot mostly. Mostly they were stuck either in New York or then in Philadelphia where the capital was. It's not just that Washington wasn't the capital. Washington didn't exist. No there was no city in Washington then that was just some swamps in Maryland.

Our guest in this hour focused 580 Patricia Brady she's an historian and she's the author of a newly published biography of Martha Washington which is titled Martha Washington An American Life and it's published by Viking. And certainly questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free. 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Let's talk a little bit about her early life her family. She was her name was Dandridge Martha Dandridge was a family that had been at least on her mother's side I think had been living in Virginia for a long time. And while these were people that had property there they were certainly not on the upper tiers of Virginia society either in terms of the prominence of the family or in terms of family wealth. That's why I mean people I think don't quite understand that among the gentry which is where her family was part of the gentry the upper class the elite if you will that there were certainly gradations and her family was not at the top of the tree. So when

another planter Daniel Custis whose family was one of the richest in the colony and also one of the most socially prominent. When Daniel Custis fell in love with her his father for bad the marriage he said oh no the damages just don't come up to us. They don't have enough money and they don't have enough birthdays. And the only way that that marriage came about that was that little Patsy Dandridge as my foot was called then 17 years old went and talked to the old man and convinced him by what she had to say that he should allow the marriage to go forward. No she was not a shrinking violet. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and she was a woman who had all the charm in the world she was not ever ugly or are strident but she was determined. And that's one of the things that stood her well through the kind of life that she had. Apparently Daniel Custis his father was so unhappy about the possibility of his match that he threatened to

disinherit his son over it. He did and he also took the family silver and gave it away to some tavern keepers where he a place where he liked to drop in and have a bowl of punch in the evening and he gave away family silver he said he wasn't going to have that Dandridge girl enjoy his family silver. The image probably that most people have I mean if they do have an image in their minds of Martha Washington is her as an older woman. And in fact there's there are you show reproduce some of the paintings here in the book and one of them is a portrait that was done by Gilbert Stuart showing Martha Washington and she looks you know looks like your gramma and that time she was somebody's grandma. But there there are several. Everyone has Grammys but there is there is a portrait that was actually commissioned. I think you had something to do with this that the cover of the book right that is Martha Washington as we think that she might have appeared

when she was 25 so indefinitely in her youth. And if this isn't indeed a good likeness she was a very striking woman. She was beautiful and I know that she was because people talked about it. You know other people who wrote letters would say things about how beautiful she was what a beautiful smile What lovely white teeth what sparkling eyes and white teeth of course were not usual at all in those days. And so I wanted to rescue her from old ladyhood. I thought it was so so sad that most of the pictures that are known as when she's elderly and stout and grey haired and think how depressed we would all feel if the only picture anyone had was made when we were 60 or 70 years old. So we took a miniature that at Mount Vernon and went to the LSU forensics lab where the bone lady is and usually what they do is put a face to corpses and skeletons or do age progression for

kidnapped children. And I said could you do an age regression and go back and show us what this lady was like at 25. And they were excited to do something so different. They did it and then we commissioned and a local artist who makes a specialty of this kind of thing in fact he did the Aber the UN bearded Abraham Lincoln on the cover of Time recently. And he took the the age regression and did this wonderful portrait and I feel as if that's my gift to her. To say she was not born 60 years old she was beautiful and young and in love and had her heart broken and was happy and was social and all the things that all of us are I just wanted the real woman you know. Well she certainly the woman in this picture if that's if that's indeed close to what Martha looked like is certainly very strikingly beautiful. We've turned it into a parlor game here where we're trying to decide who it is we think she looks like my wife think she looks like Helen Hunt and Annie.

And I think she looks kind of well I think she was kind of like Bebe Neuwirth myself. You know I like oh you like Helen better OK. Indeed she is she the woman in this picture is very beautiful and you could understand her her catching me. Many men and that she certainly would have had her opportunity particularly once at once she was a widow of significant property would have had the opportunity to have her choice of. I'm sure a very wide range of men if she wanted to marry a second time. Well that's because. You know most of Washington's biographers are men and they look at things from the men's point of view and they they pretty much take it for granted that she was darn lucky to marry George Washington. But of course he wasn't really George Washington in those days. He didn't have that much money. His family also was not at the top of the elite. He wasn't a great catch and she was

nice she was beautiful and young and she had the biggest fortune in Virginia and she had control of it. And so the question is who else could she have married. Well a librarian friend found a letter for me written by another suitor. Who was very rich himself and had was very socially prominent and was courting her at exactly the same time that George Washington was. And the letter he wrote just breeze love and sex appeal and everything you would want he said that he's been so happy since he's been courting Mrs. C. that she's so beautiful and so kind. And he says that he hopes to find happiness in her arms and that he hopes to rouse a flame in her breast. I mean he was smitten. He was head over heels. But once she set eyes on George Washington even though he didn't have all the money in the world that's who she wanted. I mean she had enough money for two and he was a

great big he was six foot three and she was five feet nothing. And he was one of the the greatest athletes in the state of Virginia and he was in a in a state known for its horseback riding. He was a fabulous rider and she wanted him. She invited him to come back the next week after their first meeting and they got engaged and got married pretty quickly. So that really goes to it makes one wonder a little bit about what each of them saw in each other and in this marriage and clearly for George he was marrying some significant wealth not. And certainly she was very beautiful and had many many things to recommend her but it's it's sort of hard to think of this as being say something that wasn't primarily about that for him where in her case it seems that she she clearly fell in love with this man she wanted him and that it was really about for her it was about George and for him you've got to wonder

well was this really about Martha or was this about Martha's fortune. It was about both. I mean people sometimes I say oh that's so shocking that he was attracted by her money. Well in those days it was considered that anyone who didn't marry at least partly for money was a fool that marrying for money was part of what you did part of what you thought about in terms of marriage just like today you might think about someone's education over there. You know the kind of career they're going to follow. Well in those days it was just in in terms of acreage you know plantation farm plan the plantation the extent of it. And they all thought of it when you look at the Virginia give that which was the newspaper printed in Williamsburg they talk about marriages and they say things like. Miss Betty we so and so. Mr Lightfoot and Mrs. Betty Randolph

got married. She's a very agreeable young lady with five thousand pounds a year and dowry. Well you know today you would say I met somebody worth in the newspaper. But then they did because that was the kind of information people wanted to know was that it was a quote good match. She was married to her her first husband Daniel Custis for only seven years correct. Was that a happy marriage were they in love. It was a very happy marriage. Now whether she was in love. We don't know because we have no letters from that time from her. But certainly he was very happy he had had a miserable life. He had gotten all the riches and well-connected as he was. He was 37 years old and he had never been allowed to get married because his Mino that he didn't wanting to. And that was in a society where people got married young and they married early and they married often. So it was very

unusual that he hadn't been allowed to marry. So for him to go from being constantly criticized and abused by this old tyrant to living in a household with a beautiful young woman who everybody like must've been happen. I think I think there's no doubt that he was very happy and I assume she was too she had wonderful little children and things went very well until he suddenly died. It also was said that they had four children but she outlived all of them. They had a son Daniel who died a little after turning to Francis died just before she turned four. Martha had epilepsy and died when she was 17 and then there their son John died during the Revolutionary War he was twenty seven or just 27. And that's where the grandkids come in he he did marry and he and his wife had four children of Iraq. So it was I would imagine. That having lost these children

was probably for her a great source of sadness in her life. It was it was very sad for her that she outlived all four of her children she also outlived all seven of her younger siblings. She was the eldest of her family and she outlived all her brothers and sisters so there were she had a lot of heartbreak to deal with and we see part of how strong she was. After Daniel died her first have been that she wrote to London ordering things for the plantation she ordered fish net and she ordered a hose and she ordered nails and hammers and all the things they needed. And then she ordered a tombstone from her for her husband because they didn't have any marble in Virginia and she ordered mourning rings and she includes included locks of hair to be put in them one for her husband and one for her daughter. She lost her 4 year old daughter two months before she lost her husband. So

life was life was brief in those days. Death was a big part of life. And most women could expect to lose children. We know one day they would be running around the house in their pretty little red shoes. That was the color they wore. And the next day they'd be dead from hysteria or malaria typhoid whatever was going around it. Life was brief and life was fragile. And they realized that George and Martha never had children. They did not. Was this a source of sadness or regret in their marriage. Of course they both really wanted children and it would have made a lot of difference in both their lives but in some ways I think their not having children was for the good of the country because one of the great fears of people was of returning to a system of kings and queens. Had George had children they specially son

they might have worried that he would want to be king so that his sons could inherit. But because he didn't have any children of his own he could really be father of the country. I think in a way that that let people be very much of the he did in in a sense become father too. To the children to her children who survived and who were still around at the time that they married and also in in a sense too to the grandchildren or some of the grandchildren of Martha's son Daniel after he died was was Georgia a good father to these Still these children that he in a sense inherited through Martha. George was a wonderful father. I would have liked him as a father grandfather. He took a great deal of interest in the kids. He was partial to the girls spoil them a little bit. He was a little harder on the boys and the

boys were didn't quite live up to his standards but he was also a delightful grandfather. And the kids loved him. They really really did. When you read their letters it just it goes through any writer he wrote them some wonderful letters he wrote to the girls letters of advice on love and how you have to be careful not to be carried away by your passions because love is a pretty dish but it's better to think of other things as well. That's that's the kind of person he was that he liked to joke with the ME LOVE to watch him dance he would come in when they were having dancing lessons. He was a very genial person in his private life and he loved his private life. Our guest in this hour focused 580 is Patricia Brady She's the author of a recently published biography of Martha Washington and it's titled Martha Washington An American Life it's published by Viking and came out in late June you might stop in at

the bookstore and take a look at it if only to see the portrait of Martha on the cover. And then you might be intrigued and you might actually want to read it so it's out there in the bookstores now. Questions certainly are welcome here on the program. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. Just for a moment I'd like to talk a little bit about George and Sally Fairfax. You talk about the fact that that Martha was actively courted by these two men there was this this very wealthy man who certainly was very smitten with her. And then there was George and Martha that was very smitten with George. But there was this odd thing going on here that George apparently was in love or at least infatuated with the wife of a close friend of this woman named Sally Fairfax. That was sort of going on at the same time that he was becoming interested. Been thinking about Martha somewhere that he might marry. What what

what exactly was this relationship about between between George and Sally Fairfax. Well that was one of the things that I really didn't want to be true. You know you read in people some people say he was in love with Sally Fairfax others say of course he wasn't. And I didn't want it to be true it wasn't very romantic. But when you read it flatters there is no doubt that he was very infatuated with this woman. She lived on the next plantation her husband was one of his close friends. She had no children and she was a couple of years older than George and very glamorous and he was crazy about her you couldn't it just loses through his letters. And it is easy. I think if the infatuation is the right term that she was older and more sophisticated and so he was very taken with her. But you know they were there weren't about to get a divorce they weren't going to go off on the frontier and and run away together and lope.

And so it's really a hopeless situation from his point of view and he needed to set up on his own plantation and begin his life and for everybody in those days it meant getting married. He didn't you didn't just didn't not get married everybody got married and had children. And so he started to work around. But once he started courting my Sally got jealous and he was off fighting in the French and Indian War. We don't know what her letters said but his letters back said but you told me not to write. You know I I have to go on with my life. And clearly she was just sort of playing that cat and mouse game where she liked having a younger man in love with her. But he had the good sense to get away from that. And certainly once he married Martha his relationship with Sally changed completely. I think it's again says something about my self-confidence that she had to have known about Sally because if love is the they say there are two things that you can hide love in a

cold. That that he he was that there was something that he was smitten with Sally. But she went straight ahead and married him and became good friends with the Fairfax's say they did a lot of things together and she just ignored that situation completely and I don't think it took any time before he was writing letters to his friends about the incredible happiness of being married in the wonders of being with such a wonderful partner. So I think she knew that she could turn his mind around and she did it. Yeah I know it now. Nobody questions that the devotion of them to Martha and George to each you know I mean there's no way to do it. When you read all of the reports of other people and I actually read all of his letters about her. There is there's just no question about the kind of partnership they had. Well we have a couple of. Sure when we talk to him first in the champagne

line number one. Hello good morning. Very interesting. Is it true that robbery with a descendant of Martha. No not Robert E. Lee he married to descend on her great granddaughter who with Mary Custis married Robert E. Lee. That's the connection that's why Arlington house in the Arlington military cemetery is called because to leave a mansion it was built by her grandson George Custis. And then Robert E. Lee lived there with his wife. OK thank you very much. Go about it. Well I'll start with someone here next in Danville. Why number four. Well good morning. I have two questions one. How old was Morris so when the portrait by John Wallace was painted. And two what have what became of the home that she had in

Williamsburg and the plantation that she had outside after she married Joyce to which you continue to own those and manage them. OK let me say first of all I was born in Danville. Oddly enough really. Then fill in the light local girl. Yeah my mother was from Marion County Illinois. Oh my goodness. Well her father was and mother were born in Marion County you know not really. And my my people with a hat were Hank says. But enough of this old home we have. Ok about the houses. Well when she married George Washington they kept the house in Williamsburg for a little while. There had been a long House of Burgesses at that time was he not. He was in the House of Burgesses and they had a house there if you've been to Williamsburg if it's on a straight line with the governor's palace and it's not that far from Bruton parish church and that it was of a smallish house but on a very big

property a beautiful garden and they they lived in it for a little while. But after they moved up north to Mount Vernon they rented it for a little while and then eventually they sold it because they didn't really have a use for it anymore and the property for a while they again managed her parts of the property. But eventually all of the property went to her son. And so they just received a rant from some of the properties. And your other question I'm sorry a forgotten age when he was painted by John Wallace the Walston portrait which was painted when she was 25. OK 25 but it's a terrible picture by a terrible painter of color I think horrible and look at the little tiff you have the book you have a nice widow speak I will say that. Well and you don't see that wit of speaking any of her other picture his hair I think he just added it in. But even this was a society painter of the time. You painted about

300 portraits of the American elite each uglier than the next and all looking like each other but not looking like the real people and that's why I didn't put that portrait on the cover that for it it almost looks like a china doll that was not all that well painted either. This is from the book on the history of Mount Vernon. Oh OK all right thank you very well. That picture the the wall lost in the picture is here in the book he apparently also painted two of the Custis children and also painted Daniel Custis and they all sort of look the same. Certainly the children we look at the faces on the children and it looks they look like this person who is alleged to be Martha here in this portrait but when they do sort of all even they all sort of look alike they even kind of look like Daniel. So they do sort of all look like the same person. Well all of you look at the picture shows the kids when they were a year and a half

and three I believe and they look like little old people one little midget old people there. You know they have a double chin and they have these strange kind of slanty eyes and they're just if you look at all of Wallace portraits that he painted in America at the time everybody looks like that. And he was just a really untalented thing. I want to make sure that we talk a little bit about the the Washington's and life during the war have you talked a bit earlier about the fact that what a lot of people don't realize is that during a lot of the time of the War of the two of them were together and that there was in the various camps and the places where they were living there was a kind of camp society in Aceh. Chance because the fact that she was there said to the other officers that it was alright for their wives to be there too.

What was what was life like. Sort of social life like during that time when the men were not off fighting the war. People a lot of people don't realize that during the winter time both armies went into what was called winter camp because they really couldn't keep the armies in the field because they couldn't supply them. Now it wasn't like today where they had the right shoes and things when they supplied their army they went out and either bought or stole things from the local farmers and they got you know wheat and cattle and whatnot and things were hard during the winter so they they really had to go into winter camp just because of the finances of the thing. And but then it became kind of like an informal timeout. And that's when Lady Washington as she was called would come up and then all the other officers wives would come and they would meet every day at headquarters and the ladies would go and they would drink tea and then they would have supper

together they would sing after supper that was one of the things that that they did at Washington's headquarters everyone would take turns giving a song. I mean they didn't have a piano or anything it was all just off to Pella very simple pleasures. One of the things sewing was so important to women in those days they made everything they made underwear and they made sheets and towels and just all of the common things of life. But when they went visiting ladies would take their fancy work they would take in broidery or they would take tapestry were cross stitch whatever and they would save their their hamming and their knitting and their common stuff their darning for home. But Mrs. Washington was different the first time ladies came to the headquarters and brought along their embroidery. They were put to shame because my father was sitting there with her knitting needles knitting wool socks for the soldiers. You know the infantry marched on its feet. It went every place by

on those feet and they wore their socks out fast. And when it was cold and wet and damp bad socks could lead to infections and even gangrene amputation they needed they needed good socks and that's what she did she made socks and she made shirts which were part of their uniform and the other ladies would come the first time with fancy work the next time they come back with their knitting needles and get down to work. But I have you know they have quite a good time really. And the other thing people don't know is how many women were actually part of the army the wives of the soldiers. They were called camp followers and they actually were given Russian. There were children with the army as well because some of the men were just too poor. They left their wives at home they would have starved. So they all came and those women became nurses and laundresses. They went out on the field after battle and helped the wounded and stripped the British and they just they were an

essential part of the army. And you talk a little bit earlier about the fact that she that Martha certainly recognized the country's need and his need to serve in the military and that then when he became president she she was less perhaps less happy and less understanding although she certainly supported him and in being president and she was particularly unhappy with he when he agreed to serve. We set out to serve a second term because she really wanted her idea was that she wanted him home the way she wanted them to be home together. But having said that she certainly did support him in both of those roles. And took on took on the role of first lady and in many ways George Washington being the first president invented the job of president United States. Can you say the same thing about her. She invented the job of first lady. They didn't use the phrase first lady then the president's wife but she invented that job. And

she was very conscious of the precedence that they were setting. And certainly the first year was very uncomfortable because he decided that it would show favoritism if they visited their friends or had private parties. And so everything was just very official and they had just official guests and people they didn't know very well. And of course most of the government officials were all men and many of them didn't have their wives with them. So she might sit down to a dinner party that was 20 men and her and it didn't make for a lively evening as far as she was concerned. Later on in Philadelphia he relented a little bit. And they did have something of a private socialize. But she was she was very conscious like every first lady has been since of the difficulty of maintaining some some sense of privacy some sense.

Doing what she wanted to do as opposed to what the government the bad government duties demanded of her and also the protection of her children from spying on allies of her. By this time her grandchildren him she had adopted and then the second the second term of course was such a nightmare because partisan politics that started we think all of this ugly gossip and innuendo in the papers and leaks and so forth is something new that's not new at all the newspapers were just Gandel us back in those days. And they said all sorts of terrible things about George Washington. And she really felt that there was no need for him to put up with that that he could just retire and then they wouldn't have to. But he felt that he needed to hold the country together and so when he decided then she supported him and what he wanted.

He apparently was very concerned with his image and how he would how he was seen and how he would be seen after he was gone. Was that something that also concerned her. No she was she was not. And I don't think she ever thought of herself as being famous after her death. I think probably that's one of the reasons that she didn't mind destroying the letters that she didn't see herself as having that kind of public role. George Washington always did think about how history would see him from the time he was a young man. He was very concerned for his reputation but sometimes he could go overboard. You know he seemed like the perfect marble man and people were afraid really to to get too close to him or try to joke with him. And she's she helped to humanize him because she was such a social person and such a popular woman that.

When he would be standing you know standing all Paul up there at 6:03 and she would be talking to him chatting away and he would ignore her. She would grab his coat tail and yank on them and say pay attention to me I'm talking to you. And so she helped to see up to show people that there was a private side to George Washington as well that he he wasn't born a statue. She apparently did indeed refer to him as the old man the old and her her or her or her old man. My old man where my old man's He would say that was mostly during the war. But now there was a lot of camaraderie and a lot of joking a lot of fun. And again the evenings of singing. It was a very dangerous time. But it was a very warm time and the friendships that they made at those camps with the various officers and the officers wives lasted for their whole lives. If they had been through very hard times together and they didn't forget how much they had

shared and how much they had both suffered in triumph together. You know one of the things that I think no one of the questions that preoccupies us when we think about the founders and particularly those people from the south. And we think about the ideals of the revolution we think about the reality of the time we think about slavery and the fact that so many of the these men who were talking about the rights of men and in great important freedoms had slaves and certainly sheep her the Dandridge as did and the Custis as did at the Washington's did do. Is there any sort of indication about how it is she personally thought about the issue of slavery or perhaps how her attitudes over time on that issue might have changed. Well first of all let me say about George Washington that Washington's ideas changed over time that of all the Founding Fathers including those who talked most about the rights of man like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

He was the only one to free his life. That the others did not. Jefferson left a mallet in the debt and his slaves had to be sold after his death and families were split up and people were sent off willy nilly. So some people talked a certain kind of standards and yet their actions didn't stand up to it. Washington however always had his actions and his standards on the same line. And it was a big financial undertaking to free his slaves in terms of capital. But he did it. He freed his slaves. Now what we know about as far as Martha Washington she never spoke about slavery in any of her letters. So we don't know that. But we do know that the ones that she personally known she left to her grandson. So that would seem to indicate that she did not follow him that far that she was part of the planter elite and that that she still supported slavery.

Well I'm would imagine that for people like that who had been at the center of such important history making events the Revolutionary War where Mr. Washington being the first president that coming home afterwards certainly would be a relief. And yet on the other hand you might imagine that. It is as difficult as stressful as that was. You might find yourself missing it. What was their life after the presidency. Like. It its quite interesting that George Washington and Mount Vernon were the symbols for not just the nation but the world of the American Revolution. So they were not lonely or out of things in the least after he retired. They were delighted to go home because he could do all the things he liked to do like farming and

building working on his house and just in general being a land owner and she could spoil her grandchildren and have a million visitors and all the things she liked. But they had constant visitors who came to me the greatest man of the age as he was frequently called and to see his home. The Capitol and was just under construction as was what they called the president's mansion the White House. And those things were of really very little interest to visitors. What they wanted to see was Mount Vernon and Washington and so they had a stream of visitors he was still at the center of things and everybody wrote to him that what was going on in Philadelphia in politics. And even after he died the visitors didn't stop at all the week that she died. There were visitors there in the house who had just come to him to meet her and to see the house of the greatest

of the greatest hero of the revolution. So they stayed at the center really stayed at the center with them I should say. And it really wasn't she. She didn't live very much long longer. After he died he lived just a couple of years more. Far as she was concerned her life was over. That was he was her life and he when he died she said it's over. I'll fall behind. And she did. We have just a couple of minutes left in this part of focus 580 again one should introduce our guest. Probably shouldn't have waited quite so long we're talking with Patricia Brady she's an historian and is the author of a recently published biography of Martha Washington which is titled Martha Washington An American Life and it's published by Viking and certainly there's much more in this. We've we've done a brief sketching here on the program but there's much more in the book and if you're interested you head out to the bookstore and take a look at it. What over all.

We we talked about way back in the beginning of the program talked about the fact that here Martha Washington is someone that in some sense everyone knows at least they know. Well Martha Washington was the first first lady and she was the wife of George Washington but that there that there was so much about her that people really don't know where it is. As you got to know her more and you constructed this story where there are particular things about her aspects of her character things that she had done that really stand out to you as being really. Emblematic a great illustration of the kind of person that she was. I think I see the bravery I see the the willingness to show up and do what she needed to do that when her first husband died when she ordered all of the everyday things for the plantation and then ordered his tombstone and mourning ring that

she was strong enough to run the plantation while mourning both her husband and her daughter. I see the strength when she goes off to war every year because her husband needs her and wants her smallpox was a terrible disease in those days and people often died of it and smallpox vaccinations could be very very dangerous as well. But when a big smallpox epidemic broke out among the troops and she was going to be sent home she said that she would be vaccinated and George Washington wrote home to his brother saying I doubt her resolution. Well what was he thinking of. He would do anything to be with him the very day that they got to Philadelphia. She had her vaccination because she would do what it took to be at her husband's side. And that's what I see the strength and the support that she gave him that they were the kind of partnership that changed American history. And this is a modern woman is a woman of this time. I wonder how you

think about her as a woman who certainly was was her own person and who certainly was very strong and very capable and at the same time so dedicated herself to the to the her husband's life. How it is that you how you think about that for a Virginia woman. There was there was no choice. At first I thought I might be bored by that that that essentially she was a domestic woman but that was a career that was open to her. And by golly he made a huge success of it. Now her husband was her career. And that that's simply those. That was her only choice in those days. But at the same time she was not the meek little woman who followed the orders from her husband Washington never pulled the great patriarch with her. He always let her make her own decisions and acquiesced in her decisions. I would say most of

their decisions were 50/50 in terms of who would make which decisions. And he always when other men in the family felt that they could overrule her boss her around he made it very clear that Mrs. Washington would decide. So I think I think in a way they had a modern marriage but simply framed in the sense of a domestic life style. Well we will have to leave it at that as we are here at the end of the time again for people who are listening the book if you like to read more about this would if we were talking about the book is titled Martha Washington An American Life. It is a book published by Viking by our guest Patricia Brady and I want to say thanks very much for talking with us today we certainly appreciate it. Well thank you Dave it is so much fun I really enjoyed it. There you go. Programming here on wy allele as made possible in part by Strawberry Fields on West Springfield Avenue in downtown Urbana Strawberry Fields provides a wide assortment of natural foods vitamins bulk herbs fresh breads and produce the Strawberry Fields

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