If so, ive forgotten the name it must be reminded of it again. For me, the fact that he forgot his alias is particularly appealing apart from the way that makes me feel about my cell phone and they account bank account. He was usually polite and often selfdeprecating. He had the kind of rise and selfknowledge that still seems charming to me. The reason i start out this way is because after reading my manuscript, a washington washins but i guess that i just Like Washington better than you do, but i dont disLike Washington in fact i admire him more and more every single day but i dont think we necessarily have to see him as infallible on the subject of his mother. People are not infallible on the subject of the mother or father. And i dont see this as a zero sum game. I dont understand why you cant see both of them in relationship to each other and still admire them both and know that there was friction trained them. So, that is sort of where i want to start. Back to his mother, i find somewhat to my consternation the person i most agree with in Broad Strokes is Andrew Jackson who gave a speech about her while dedicating a memorial that never got out. Jackson got it right when he said george learned his sense of proportion, commanding presence, persistence as well as a measure of humility from his mother. So, okay. Georges mother. Stories that are a little spice ansizingbecause the founders mr left no diary about five letters and a few objects of no great value compared to her sons 54 volumes of published letters, theres not much evidence about his mother. It has either been a problem for a great move. Shes been portrayed as players and saintly and far more persistently as a shrew fossil fish, illiterate, worst of all possibly a pipe smoker. A mother before her sons career and who george couldnt possibly care for although he would try and that was his dutiful side tried. Not surprisingly, theyve treated very as a satellite reflecting his wife not generating her own. But although they do occasionally criticized the choice is about other things that they had been uncritical of his negative observations of his mother and many have seen this positives. Another somewhat related problem is they have relied on a combination of their common sense stereotypes to fill in the silence. While most reject the notion of common sense as a yardstick for economic or political behavior, and instead work to reconstruct the Historical Context for every decision and every action the subject take, gender relations and Family History in areas where main writers archly men go with their gut feeling about the relationships between men and women should be and not what the hell and not looking at the Historical Context in which they occur which changes. Dramatically. If they have come partly as they correspond pretty closely to the contemporaneous ideas of what constitutes a good mother so in the early years she was on a pedestal as a selfsacrificing, pious sort of excellent mother that lasted until a little bit after the civil war. At that point, towards the end of the 19th century, the whole idea of biography began to change, and this is important, too. The biographie biographies up ut point had been largely stories of the unfolding character and good deeds of a good man almost exclusively. In the late 19th century, but began to change with deepening psychological analysis of people in the emerging therapeutic narrative that we have now which really explores and doesnt imagine that the character is innately born and unchanging. Its because mothers are so immensely important in a therapeutic narrative, that had a profound affect on the way mary came to be seen. Her reputation plummeted in the late 19 and early 20th century. She became not selfsacrificing, but the unloving obstacle that he had to overcome. About ten years ago, i thought we might be arriving at a good enough mother moment and the biographers would stop doing that, but ron chertoffs 2010 biography continues to intensify the demonic tradition. Often its a great telling the story it seems to be a covert struggle not just over the professional fulfillment, but also his sexuality. Ihe failed to dominate and separate from this woman, he might have become her emasculated overseer and capable of fathering anything including the country. It make makes for a good tale of quite a flawed one. It also makes him completely self made and basically extinguishes the role as mother. Mary has also been a vehicle for political work. For example, in the postcivil war period, t, two women that we interested for their own reasons in rehabilitating the south in the eyes of the north wrote books about mary as a caring slave mistress, practically an abolitionist. And i can assure you she was not. Similarly in the same period they praised her for being healthy, robust and having that anglosaxon machine in the northern migration of the recently freed black citizens in the ruling class. I thought at this point i would describe a couple of the flashpoint that are quite reasonably well documented between george and his mother that underlined the negative characterizations of her and then i will provide some context for these developments to offer another way of thinking about the relationship. Mary acquires importance to the biographers when her husband died and she is left to raise five children. George was 11yearsold and was the oldest and there was betty, samuel, john and charles about 5yearsold. She had recently also posted her husband to her son by his first marriage back from england where they were educated. They both married at the time of his death. Early historians saw her sitting up and managing her household under very difficult circumstances and doing the very best she could for her young which is a reasonable position and one that ive come to. Later historians see her as managing resources poorly, having little or nothing to commend herself as a mother particularly to george and this is where the portrayal starts to cough up and then george acquireacquired all of the Good Behavior of the house of his halfbrother lawrence who occupied mount vernon. Only biographers for the next sort of flashpoint of the military career. They were worried about the safety and george actually always felt this way, too. Later biographers started to criticize her for being overly protective and trying to keep him at home and not encouraging him to follow his dangerous place. You can see where you could interpret the same set of feelings and activities in different ways. The other issue is money. This is probably the one that runs most true to the story. Early historians made very little of the idea that mary requested small sums of money from george after he married the Richest Woman in virginia, martha. They simply believed that which is what she said, that she needed the cash and they overlooked the complaints about it because it made him look bad. Later historians argued she was greedy money grubbing asking george for money when she did. Since she was worried about paying her taxes she was going to lose the last piece of property that she owned. This of course embarrassed george tremendously. She had been blamed for initiating the discussion and deliberately shaming her son. The letters are the main source, just about the only source for all of this. So now, i would like to go back again and just sketch in some important parts of life s that e can reconsider some of these conflicting tales. Drilling in 1743 left her as i said taking care of five children. Her two stepsons went off immediately and the property that they had been left. The most important pieces in the well. So they immediately went off and quickly married wealthy women. The house mary and her children were in, the land was the most exhausted from tobacco raising she lost the proceeds that augustin had founded. , her income dropped very dramatically and she had these children to raise. George recalled these anchor member very poignantly not being able to go to the gathering because there was no cor corn is forced to eat so he couldnt take the horse. Augustin was strewn g. To marry in his will. He had even given the typical will of the time. He left her basically with what she came with, which legally couldnt dispose of, two pieces of property from her father as well as the right to live at the farm of the house she and the children were in until george came of age of 21. Da vinci wa was to build a house for herself on land by the potomac. And directed her to build a house there. He left her six workers. This wasnt any particular gift. If she needed more workers should have to take them out of the slaves he designated to his children so they were with interests at odds to thos with f her children. He also stipulated that if she were to remarry, her accounts would be closely monitored if she could lose the children if there was any kind of an irregularity in the account. This was very common in second marriages and you never really knew who might turn out to be a scoundrel about money. So this was quite a disincenti disincentive. It encouraged production because it was considered illegitimate for women to own property and in that regard isnt particularly unusual. When an owning property were just seen as a sort of temporary and bad solution to something that shouldnt happen. They were ill with her and having offered george or just inaccurate. But it was better than the vast majority the hand writing is a little better and the letters persist that mary was perfectly literate and was the daughter of a wealthy center who was at the social and economic level. But washingtons were very proud of their ancestry. It marries fathers family was of equal status. The difference was that her father married a woman who came over as an indentured servant, a woman who in this period was able to fill in the above rules were amended and normally so. So something women didnt normally do. She would witness but i suspect she could read because those two schools were taught separately. Certainly her daughter was a good reader. Shes been to protect the property of her husband left her. The rest of his family he had grown children and tried to keep her from taking anything away from the estate. She grew up they talk about the commanding presence she had to develop a commanding presence in order to force people who were her property to behave like slaves and since she was a girl and then a woman, she had to learn this authority and carried credibly. This is much tougher for a woman than for a man to do. A mother married again, was a widow again and then her mother died. Sshe was completely orphan at 12yearsold and lived with her older halfsister. She became developed very early. She had a collection of, three or four which over her lifetime, devotional books, and she learned them. They became parents to her in a way that gave her a very Firm Philosophy and religious belief that she passed on th that for a marvelously similar. She didnt become a novel reader like martha and many of the girls who were a bit younger than she. They say that reading creates empathy. At least for the characters because viewers wouldve drawn into them anyway that you are ae modifying somebody that is telling you the truth which are the kind of books that mary re read. She had banners, very little smalltalk. Strong, tall, healthy. All of these were true of george. While she was neither crude nor ill literate, her frugality really demonstrated that as did her relentless work. She never sat down if she could possibly keep going. George would have gone to england for school but for his fathers death an instead she patched together tutors and schools and the younger boys and provided them enough polish despite the absence of any cash to help them mingle in the society she could only afford to lend him the money to pay for his dancing lesson. So come in his first account of he writes about paying his mother back for dancing lesson which taught him not just dancing the correct posture is a well bred man. George like the devotional books, he got famous book on stability rules to learn how to be a gentleman at a young age. Mary bought betty a book that allowed her to do a sort of cuttingedge type of needlework that put her things and a gentry class. She kept her sons wigs and they found some ceramic wigs curlers that are still there after 200 years. Archaeologists found the remains of a card table, so they obviously played cards and game. And all of her children buried up. Im not commending the practice, but i do think she did the very best she could and deserves credit for working to get her kids under very difficult strengths to get her kids the social opportunity to travel and marry in the elite circles. Biographers accused her of being overprotective, but she doesnt seem to have been that way. She let him go for several month on a trip where he encountered all kinds of dangers and savag savages. Soon afterwards, georgia companys brother to the caribbean in search of a cure for his brothers tv. Instead, he got smallpox, george, not his brother come and this of course was not cured. When george decided to join the campaign against the french and indians, mary traveled 50 miles from her home in fredericksburg to plead with him not to go. She was frightened and recently nursed him back to health after a bout of smallpox and knew she couldnt prevent him from doing that she was alarmed as george wrote. Pulitzer prizewinning stabbing angrily out of mount vernon after failing to change her sons mind. Its psychologically a dramatic story he would end the suffering from humiliating treatment something that they both discussed obviously. And george invited her to stay out of mount vernon with his younger brother he was going to look after mount vernon while he was away. She did. She spent a lot of time there and johnny and the woman became his wife named their first child after her. After the campaign he suffered several more bouts and frequency state of his mothers house to be taken care of. These kind of passages ever make it into the biographies of george and george wrote that she was the main victim. Nor do the biographers recognize that george seemed to enjoy soaking his mothers tears. He wrote about the number of forces that got the shutout and a number of muskets that have gone through so he obviously liked playing her and making her more fearful. So, the relationship was more complex and interesting then the story of the victimized. Then theres the issue of money. Mary stepped into adolescence paired with the suffered from the death as other children of the chesapeake in this era suffered, but its in a greater degree than most. Historians hesitated to try to diagnose what the psychological syndrome might exist from these kind of widespread deaths. But it doesnt seem like a stretch to say that it was the fear of abandonment, want come and meet her struggle with her will to be selfreliant. After her mothers death, she stayed on which belonged to her elders to sister and her husband. The overseer who would be estate successfully for back pay. Later george wrote a girl advising her to make herself useful using the example of a young girl of 16. So responsible she ran a whole houseful. Its pretty clear to me that the virtuous model was his mother. Early ownership enslaves gave mary a roll but probably not much flexibility in understanding the role. Her devotional text guided her. She tried to lose by the readings and she taught her children and her grandchildren from these books and essential lesson that world of glory was nothing in what was essential was being a good christian so when death came god would welcome you to have them. On earth you should be a good sport and what was entrusted to you and in life. Spoiled with vanity and flattery. She believed these things fervently as she taught them to her children intensely. Most of all george who is her first and who she also began to rely as he became a little older. During the 60s 1760s george became irritated by his mother. This is after his marriage and everyone has gone away and married and shes poorer than ever. She begins asking george for little bits of money, 5 pounds, 6 pounds, 8 pounds as much as 2. He was then married, his wealth open him up to large avenues of credit which london merchants which is very tempting. The couple bought elegant close, traveled in a carriage, acquired more land and enslaved people and made very expensive improvement on mount vernon. Georgia going deeply into debt. He hated debt but he saw his own and fellow planters escalating consumption is a trap from which they cannot emerge because there showing each other how successful they were with all the things they would buy. This competition set a vicious cycle and you is 10000 pounds of debt by the 60s. His younger brother are in norma sums 500, 600 pounds from them. The things engulfed him were his mothers request for five, ten, 15 pounds. Which were request that would keep her out of debt. At the end of the decade in 1770 he decided to stop his mothers request and decided to take over the farm and make it productive and put her in a house in town. She chose a house, he bought it, she went to the, she still had land that was hers and she would go to visit the land but she was no longer at the very farm. He never seem to have made much Progress Making the farm profitable. It was first granted and then sold. George turned his attention rapidly to the growing intern real crisis and stopped complaining about his mother. When he left for the revolution he had an overseer and manager, his cousin pay his mothers rent that he owed her for the tools and livestock on the farm. In the enslaved people. During the war it was sold after it was rented. During the revolution mary suffered like other White Virginians from taxes, scarce food, and the british saw an uprising of smallpox in the inoculation process. She was responsible for growing enough cord to feed her enslaved men and women and she could not always do it. She complained of nearly starving at one point. As a land and slave owner, she became a vulnerable target. Poor white men like her overseer were angry about the exploitation and eager to take advantage for the confusion and class conflict that became much more dramatic. In the absence of any powerful man, checking on her overseer cheated for much of the work. Her youngest son charles who would help her look after the farm was drinking heavily and in many cases was not paying attention. This is the concluding antidote and then ill stop. Shortly before the battle of yorktown, mary and her nearby children a children were evacuated from fredericksburg. They thought the british were going to come there because there was an arms manufacturer there run by her soninlaw. Instead the british went to yorktown. Nevertheless mary who is not quite 80 at that point had just recovered from an illness, tracked a hundred miles across the shenandoah where her son samuel and charles and her soninlaw all headed home. They crammed into one little house, samuels house and within three weeks that winter sarahs son samuel died in her soninlaw who is of all of her relatives probably the most responsible and making sure everything was okay with her, they both died and betty almost died from the stress and her own illness which were many. Under the circumstances mary taught that anyone and anyone who would listen about how poor she was and how hard things were and she wondered out loud how she could pay her taxes because she would lose the property she had if she cannot pay her taxes. Charles was drunk and negligent, george was gone and johnny lived far away and did not pay any attention. She was feeling completely lost. In the anxiety of living through the war alone had put her in a crisis of fear. It was at this moment that the Virginia Assembly raised the issue of a possible pension for mary. The president of the assembly bench as i mentioned, washingtons friend wrote washington and told him about the subject being raised and he had stopped the discussion knowing it be embarrassing to washington. When george heard he was enraged at the potential slight to his reputation, he wrote harrison and all of his siblings defending himself in his behavior towards his mother and accusing her of imaginary needs and no sense of propriety. Historians use this as damning evidence of her greed, insensitivity and perhaps the worst of many indignities that he had to indoor at her hands. George said that he did not know what difficulty she labored, he not seen her for seven years. And he said she could not labor under difficulties because the whole family was ready to take care of her. The half of her family had just died. But he cannot take care of her because she was 7000 pounds and debt. Johnny wasnt paying any attention at all. And it was a nightmare. And mary did not know what to do. George spent the war at the top commanderinchief of the continent army and although he endured many difficulties and dangers he was never in danger of starving for these issues of inflation. It did not affect him in a personal way. It took him a long time when he came back to fredericksburg to understand why it was economically a disaster area and why the end of the war made things pick up. Both george and mary had a rhetorical habit of exaggerating poverty. They both wrote from time to time i will be ruined, i am ruined, so perhaps he felt that this is the kind of thing that she was doing. But in that. She simply was not. I cannot prove how the discussion arose in the Virginia Assembly but i do have a theory because a bitter enemy of georges was there and he lived in very close to her mary was evacuated. And perfectly responsible he used the occasion and heard the gossip and used it to embarrass george. I cannot prove this but in many cases it doesnt really matter. What is important that in 2010 the story comes down in the most recent player graffiti of mary and george. Ron wrote in spite of marys complaints about her poverty she had amassed substantial holdings the georgia loan inherited 400 acres of land. All of this property had been owned by woman who seem fit to position the virginia legislator for private pension during the war because her sons neglect. I think a better verb than amassed wouldve been held on for dear life because it was the last piece of property that mary owned and she owned it since she was three years old. She gave the other piece to johnny. There is no evidence that there was ever a petition and theres certainly no evidence that the petitioner herself. Only that she spoke often about her money worries. Mary lived carefully, pinched pennies, worried a lot much more as she got older. She never had much of a chance in her life to be sweet or compliant, circumstances of her life did not allow for. Her Work Experience did not sooth her or make her sweeter. But she was inventing her difficulties. George used his own imaginations generously towards him but without exception made it impossible to bring any generosity or real scholarship for that matter to imagine his mothers life. What they did was repeat stories that were established in the 40s and 50s particularly by douglas and his definitive biography. They have not gone back to check for themselves what her life was actually like. Mary and george sheer grit, persistence, a sense of duty, very close an ideas of right and wrong, identities on hard work and vigilance. They were critical and complained when they see things going on which often did. They were both tall and strong and good horse people they both had communing presences. These traits looked more becoming on her son when use fighting to create an independent nation and his mother tried to survive the war that he worked so hard to provoke and fight. George although he was very per case is about human nature had blind spots about his mother. This does not diminish his greatness. But it should not diminish her humanity either. Thank you. [applause] questions . I think there are microphones on both sides of the room. If you dont mind its been recorded so if you could speak into the mic. Can you hear me now . Yes. A couple of questions youre talking well into her 80s. She died just before she was about 80. After all that she went through, very often when you get older you sort of leisure faculties and children now roll their eyes a little bit, is there a lot of evidence of that that they just thought she was losing her faculties . Is actually contrary evidence. George said she became very, very for she never lost her wits. That she was sharp up until the end. Theres no question on the other hand that she probably, the traits of the young person become a bit exaggerated as we get older and i think her worries and anxiety and probably her tendency to repeat herself. But she does not at all seem to have lost her acuity. How old was she when she had george . It is not entirely clear because its not clear when she was born. She was born maybe 1709. And she had george in 1732. So approximately. Last question, did you find anything other than the devotion to religion tender about her story, youthful about her along the way, any sweetness or indication of sweetness or was it just a bette bitter life that involve to bitterness she was always suffering. She had a lot of difficulties in her life. For one she had a sense of humor and one point she describes herself as a raw sense of humor and she described herself as an almanac out of date. I think she was immensely fond of her small children, i think it gave her real joy that she experienced real joy having little ones and its clear she was an affectionate mother and all her children, her grandchildren were enormously fond of her. And she would tell them stories from her devotional book she was a good dancer, she went to dances and fredericksburg as a widow and she was i think she had plenty of pleasures in her life. She started out tough though. It was a bad beginning. I thought so. You then pleasures in the Bright Outlook usually no matter how tough it is been when youre young you have the whole world ahead of you. She was a great writer and a lot of independence she was a great joy. Yes. Thank you. Sure. The farm down and fredericksburg has opened up a reconstruction of the house that they imagine that he was raised in. Did you have any input on how theyre telling the story that you just told about mary and if not you have any reaction to what they are saying about mary at the new form . That is a nice question, i have not been there since they started to do tours. But i did spend a lot of time talking to the archaeologists and what theyve done is fabulous. Theres a woman named laura who wrote a wonderful piece on the curlers and other stuff. They have a lot of conversation. I think they are pleased to have a story about mary that is archival he based and as far as i know we dont disagree, their remarkable historians and archaeologists are also historians. They can so much for your lecture. I cannot wait to read your book. A couple questions. Can you talk about her relationship to betty because they were very close. And doing the tour of her house and fredericksburg, the guy said that she was known for riding her horse in her 60s up and down the street and fredericksburg that she was pretty active that coincides with your story. She loved horses, she kept them down in front of the house so she could look at the ones she liked best. And theres a famous story about george breaking and killing one of her cold that she was very fond of. But they both were very courageous writers. I am surprised in her 60s that she wouldve been doing this. I remembering 60s but im not the civic but it was into the years that you would not think riding a horse riding up and down. I would say that gentry woman was more money depended not to ride as much as mary did. She was accustomed to. When she was just growing up as a girl she had a lot of independence and girls would have at that point of the century went on in class differences became more structured and defiant most women stop doing it but mary loved it. She did at some point, when george got married, this wouldve been in the 60s she was on to keynes. So i dont know if that was permanent or i thought she then was in a single carriage after that. But i could be wrong. That just kind of stuck with me. And talk about the there is little on her letters and what other materials are available. Other people and fredericksburg the talk about in the letters of buddies . One of the things very helpful her early family was incredibly litigious. Court records which are fascinating. She had a halfbrother in england who wrote her sometimes very patriarchal, this is what you should think type of letters and with this way. But she had respect for him and she kept that correspondence so theres three letters and to me thats a treasure trove of letters. There were an awful lot it comes down to his correspondence and triangulating and what other people are saying. All of the people in town, many related to the washington so that occasionally cousins saying things that you can figure out where she was and what she was doing at that point. Her relationship with betty is close with any relationship. She was there for a rebirth of buddies and every death and they held each other, they did not correspond because they were quite close physically but i think the most important bond was helping each other in ways of work and providing apples or honey or whatever it was. So that was the relationship of her life. Thank you. Do we know anything about the relationship between martha and mary . Not that much. They think they do not get along particularly well, certainly they were quite different types of women. In many of georges biographers have assumed that he was the first to get away from the gloomy region mother and got bubbly martha. George brought martha to fredericksburg and many more visits than his by a first they really did know each other. And patty, marthas daughter who is epileptic was deceived with an epileptic fit at marys house at one point and they all stayed over for a while and they commiserated. It just was not as simple as they did not like each other. Mary always in her notes said her dearest very affectionate Community Messages to martha. Mary did not have small talk, she did not go to mount vernon and enjoy company she did not dress up. She wore a shift which is the thing that they were in the early 18th century and then when people got fancy she did not do that. It was embracing to george but i think they thought she was not quite presentable and the kind of company that they always kept after they became grant and after the presidency. So i dont think it was animosity, i think it was thats it. Thank you for much. Sure any other questions . Thank you so much for coming. [applause] [inaudible]