Whatever happened to the literal children of the figurative father of our nation?
For all of George Washington’s renown, his descendants have become all but forgotten. Our first president had no biological children, but he and Martha raised children and grandchildren from Martha’s first marriage. What became of them and their offspring? Many interesting things, it turns out.
In First Family: George Washington’s Heirs and the Making of America, a well-researched and highly readable biography of Washington’s offspring, the historian Cassandra Good seeks to tell the “story of four proud but profoundly flawed people that has much to reveal about how we understand both our country and our families.” Good’s account examines not only how George and Martha related to the children they nurtured but also how they and their own children contributed to the national discourse.
The first first family comprised George and Martha and Martha’s children from her marriage to the late Daniel Parke Custis: John “Jacky” Parke Custis and Martha “Patsy” Parke Custis. Jacky died shortly after marrying Eleanor Calvert and left behind four grandchildren to the Washingtons: Elizabeth “Eliza” Custis; Martha “Patty” Custis; Eleanor “Nelly” Custis; and George Washington “Wash” Parke Custis. When Eleanor grew overwhelmed, George and Martha raised the younger two — Nelly and Wash — as their own in Mount Vernon. As Good puts it, “for Americans from the Revolution to the Civil War, the Custis grandchildren were George Washington’s family.”
Interestingly, at one point, Washington’s natural childlessness was counted as a virtue. “Having
