Mary Ball Washington, George Washington’s mother, is one of the most misunderstood women in American history. Even the great historian Ron Chernow got her wrong in his masterpiece on Washington.
History has been very unfair to Mary, depicting her as shrewish and shrill. It is partly due to the fact that people, especially Americans, like moral balance in their lives and history. For every good person, there must be a bad person. For every good action, there must be a bad action. For every ying, there must be a yang. We like tidiness.
If anything, Mary was tough because she had to be tough. She was a single mother raising six children. He husband, Augustine, had died after a short illness, leaving her the head of the household.
An illustrated portrait of Mary Ball Washington, mother of George Washington. (Wikimedia Commons)
The 1700’s was not a time kind to women. They of course could not vote, but they also could not own property. And Augustine, Mary’s husband, had left several farms to his sons. Mary could be the caretaker, but that was it until the sons—including George—reached the age of majority.
In the 21st century, we are guilty of committing the crime of presentism—that is, judging the people of the past by the standards of today. And that is the tragic and, yes, deliberate mistake many left-wing historians make today.
Yes, Mary owed slaves, but many people in her era did. There is much more to Mary Ball Washington than this fact. She was the mother to the most important man in American history, the essential man, George Washington.
Without Washington, there is no successful Revolutionary War, there is no U.S. Constitution, and there is no United States of America.
Illustration showing Mary Ball Washington with her son George Washington sitting on her lap. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
A cousin of George’s, Lawrence Washington, once said, “I was often there with George, his playmate, schoolmate and young man’s companion. Of the mother I was ten times more afraid than my own parents. She awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was indeed truly kind…and even now, when time had whitened my locks and I am the grandfather of a second generation, I could not behold that magnificent woman without feelings it is impossible to describe.”
An engraving entitled “Washington Receiving Instruction from His Mother,” depicting a young George Washington as he listens to his mother, Mary Ball Washington. (Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images)
She was a devoted mother, often stopping George from pursing prospects she thought a mistake. As a young man, George wanted to become a British cabin boy, but Mary wrote a letter to her brother in London, asking his opinion about the matter.
He wrote back and told her under no circumstances could George be allowed to do this, that he would be treated like a “dog” and even worse. There was a caste system for British cabin boys, and Americans came last on the list, even after Jamaican slaves.
Her loyalties were dubious during the Revolution, and this was understandable. She had grown up in British society (in America), she ate British food, she wore British fashion, and she had a king most of her life. She worshiped at the Church of England. The Revolution presented a tough discontinuity for someone who was a loyal subject to the crown. And indeed, though George was a faithful correspondent with his mother, he did not write her for the seven years of the Revolution, not trusting the mails and maybe fearful that his letters would be intercepted by British spies.
Nonetheless, she was proud of her son, and he always credited her with his moral and principled upbringing—though he made it clear in her dotage that he did not want her living with him and Martha at Mt. Vernon, preferring she live with one of his siblings instead.
Portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, 1776. (VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images)
A depiction of George Washington (center) and his mother, Mary Ball Washington, attending a ball celebrating the surrender at Yorktown in 1781. (Wikimedia Commons)
They had their moments; and to some, she seemed to nag George. Despite her sometimes cantankerous nature, Mary was also a good and attentive mother — maybe a bit of a helicopter mother. But Washington once said that it was by Mary’s “Maternal hand [that] I was lead to manhood.”
In his letters to his mother, Washington always addressed her as “Honored Madam,” and indeed this honored madam must hold a high position in the history of America.
An engraving entitled “Washington Taking Leave of His Mother,” depicting George Washington as he says goodbye to his mother, Mary Ball Washington, after his election as President of the United States, Fredericksburg, Virginia, 1789. (Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images)
Mary died in her early 80’s of breast cancer despite the best efforts of Dr. Benjamin Rush (a favored revolutionary colleague of Washington’s). And she died with many mysteries following her. We don’t know the exact date of her birth or what she looked like. The commonly thought portrait of Mary is not her. After her death, a painter asked family members to describe her; and on this information, he painted her portrait, but it still looks suspiciously like George in drag.
A print of a portrait of Mary Ball Washington called “Mary Ball Washington at the age of about Four Score” attributed to Robert Edge Pine. (Wikimedia Commons)
And that terrible disease of breast cancer has followed down through the Ball family chain. An antique dealer we knew not far from Epping Forest, Mary’s childhood home, died recently of breast cancer. She was a Ball descent.
Washington mourned his mother’s passing; but at the time, he was in New York trying to form a new government. Still, he went into a room alone to grieve and finally went to Fredericksburg as soon as possible.
We don’t know where she was buried, but there is a large obelisk dedicated to Mary in Fredericksburg, Virginia, inscribed simply as “The Mother of Washington.”
Obelisk dedicated in Mary Ball Washington Mary in Fredericksburg, Virginia. (Wikimedia Commons)
Craig Shirley is a presidential historian and Reagan and Trump biographer. He is the author of twelve books of presidential history, including the forthcoming book Upheaval about the 2024 Trump campaign. It is due out this fall and can be preordered on Amazon.