Mary Washington was not yet thirty-six, the age at which American women are supposed to attain their highest physical perfection. Her husband had left a large estate under her management to be surrendered in portions as each child reached majority. Their lands lay in different parts of the country,--Fairfax, Stafford, King George, and Westmoreland. She found herself a member of a large and influential society, which had grown rapidly in wealth, importance, and elegance of living since her girlhood and early married life in Westmoreland. Her stepson, Lawrence, married a few months after his father's death, and she was thus allied to the Fairfaxes of Belvoir--allied the more closely because of the devotion of Lawrence to her own son George. Lawrence, with his pretty Anne Fairfax, had gone to live on his inherited estate of "Hunting Creek," which he made haste to rechristen in honor of an English admiral, famous for having recently reduced the town and fortifications at Porto Bello; famous also for having reduced the English sailors' rum by mixing it with water. He was wont to pace his decks wrapped in a grogram cloak. The irate sailors called him, and the liquor he had spoiled, "Old Grog." The irreverent, fun-loving Virginians at once caught up the word, and henceforth all unsweetened drinks of brandy or rum and water were "grog," and all unstable partakers thereof "groggy."
Mary Washington, young, handsome, and the mistress of a fine estate, was closely connected by ties of kindred with nearly all of the families we shall describe hereafter. She could have elected for herself a gay life of social pleasure, and could have been a prominent figure in that life. The pictures we have of her were nearly all drawn by George Washington Parke Custis, whose authorities were the old neighbors who knew and remembered her well at a later day, and in their turn had gathered impressions from the companions of her early womanhood.
"She is the most excellent woman," says Goethe, "who when the husband dies, becomes as a father to the children."
This was the part which Mary Washington, in her thirty-sixth year, elected to perform for her five fatherless children,--George, Elizabeth, Samuel, John Augustine, and Charles. Pleasing stories are told of how the young widow would gather her brood around her, reading them lessons from some good book, and then repairing to her domestic tasks. She exacted the strictest obedience from her children. She directed alike their amusements and their education, manifesting in her administration of family affairs great good sense, resolution, and business capacity.