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