Martha Dandridge^[1]

1731 - 1802  (70 years)

• Name	Martha Dandridge  [2, 3]
  Birth	21 Jun 1731	Chestnut Grove, New Kent, Virginia, USA   [2, 3, 4]
  Gender	Female
  Death	22 May 1802	Mount Vernon, Fairfax, Virginia, USA   [2, 3, 4]
  Burial	Mount Vernon, Fairfax, Virginia, USA   [4]
  Person ID	I47612	Master
  Last Modified	9 Feb 2023

  
  

  Father	John Dandridge,   b. 14 Jul 1700, Chestnut Grove, New Kent, Virginia, USA d. 31 Aug 1756, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Virginia, USA (Age 56 years)
  Mother	Frances Orlando Jones,   b. 6 Aug 1710, St Peters Parish, New Kent, Virginia, USA d. 9 Apr 1785, New Kent, New Kent, Virginia, USA (Age 74 years)
  Family ID	F10817	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 1	Daniel Parke Custis,   b. 15 Oct 1711, Queens Creek, James City, Virginia, USA d. 8 Jul 1757, , New Kent, Virginia, USA (Age 45 years)
  Marriage	1749  [1]
  Children	1. Daniel Parke Custis, II,   b. 19 Nov 1751, New Kent, New Kent, Virginia, USA d. 19 Feb 1754, Eltham, New Kent, Virginia, USA (Age 2 years)   2. Frances Parke Custis,   b. 12 Apr 1753, New Kent, New Kent, Virginia, USA d. 1 Apr 1757, Williamsburg, Independent Cities, Virginia, USA (Age 3 years) + 3. John Parke Custis,   b. 27 Nov 1754, New Kent, New Kent, Virginia, USA d. 5 Nov 1781, Eltham, New Kent, Virginia, USA (Age 26 years)   4. Martha Parke Custis,   b. 1756, New Kent, New Kent, Virginia, USA d. 19 Jun 1773, , , Virginia, USA (Age 17 years)
  Family ID	F10815	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	5 Feb 2023

  
  

  Family 2	George Eskridge Washington,   b. 22 Feb 1732, Wakefield Plantation, Westmoreland, Virginia, USA d. 14 Dec 1799, Mount Vernon, Fairfax, Virginia, USA (Age 67 years)
  Marriage	6 Jan 1759	, New Kent, Virginia, USA   [2]
  Family ID	F10814	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	5 Feb 2023

  
  

• Event Map

  Marriage - 6 Jan 1759 - , New Kent, Virginia, USA  = Link to Google Earth

  
  

• Notes

  02 Jun 1731 - May 22 1802 First Lady, 30 Apr 1789 - 04 Mar 1797 On 31 Dec 1799, shortly after her husband's death, Martha Washing responded to the congressional request that he be buried in "Washington City," the new American capital. "I must consent to the request made by congress," she wrote, "...and in doing this I need not---I cannot say what a sacrifice of individual feeling I make to a sense of public duty." That principle governed her conduct throughout her 40-year marriage to George Washington. She was raised to be a southern belle and a plantation mistress. She delighted in domesticity, describing herself at Mt. Vernon as "fairly settled downn to the pleasant duties of an old fashioned Virginia house-keeper, steady as a clock, busy as a bee, and as cheerful as a cricket." Yet in the public interest she repeatedly left the home she loved to share with her husband the hardships, discomforts, and dangers of his winter headquarters during the seven years that the American Revolution dragged on. After that war both the Washingtons hoped to spend the rest of their lives in the tranquility of Mt. Vernon. But George Washington bowed to the public will that he serve as the nation's first president and Martha Washington moved with him to New York and then to Philadelphia. Willinly and almost without complaint, she endured her separation from the relative and friends she loved best to undertake the repososibilities of a "very dull life" in which she felt "more like a state prisoner than anything else." Martha Dandridge was born at Chestnut Grove, a modest 500-acre plantation on the pamunkey River in New Kent County, VA, on 02 Jun 1731. Her father, John Dandridge, came to North America from England when he was at years old with his older brother William. Starting out as merchants, they both rapidly acquired land and status. Her mother, Frances Jones, was the granddaughter of an Oxford-educated Anglican rector. Like most well-off girls of her time, Martha was probably tuaght domestic arts and household management by her mother and the three Rs by her parents and grandparents, an itinerant tutor, or an indentured servant. She learned to dance, perhaps to play an instrument a little, and to ride horseback expertly. She attended church regularly. Her social life and her affections centered in her relations with her seven siblings and the gentry of the countryside. She was slim and petite, just under five feet tall, with brown hair and hazel eyes. When Martha was 17, she attracted the attention of Daniel Parke Custis, like her father a vestryman in her church. The 39-year-old Custis was a man eager to marry but still under the thumb of his wealthy, eccentric, and irascible father. The elder Custis did not allow Daniel to manage and eventually own one of his estates, White House, until he was far into his maturity. No young woman, the father seemed to think, was worthy of his oly son---or, perhaps more important, of iheriting the considerable Custis fortune. Martha's marriage to Daniel was delayed until she was 19, when in a sudden about-face Custis snior declared he was "as much enamored with her character as you (Daniel) are with her person, and this is owing chiefly to a prudent speech of her own." They were married at her home and settled down at White House to raise a family. Custis indulged his young bride with fine clothes ordered from London. In the next seven years she bore four babies, two boys and two girls. But the infant deaths so commonplace in the 18th century soon claimed the first two. In 1757 her husband died suddenly, leaving her with her two small children: Martha Parke "Patsy" Custis, born 1754; and John Parke "Jacky" custis, born in 1755. He also left her perhaps the wealthiest widow in Virginia.

  
  

• Sources

  [S1091] Ancestry.com, Alabama, U.S., Surname Files Expanded, 1702–1981, (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), Alabama Department of Archives and History; Montgomery, AL; Alabama Surname Files; Box or Film Number: M84-4558. [S1162] Ancestry.com, Geneanet Community Trees Index, (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.). [S781] Ancestry.com, Web: Netherlands, GenealogieOnline Trees Index, 1000-Current, (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.). [S751] Ancestry.com, U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current, (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.).