“The gifted historian Craig Shirley has written a surprising and important account of an essential figure long shrouded in the mists of time and legend: Mary Ball Washington, the woman who gave us the Father of our country.” — Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winner and number-one New York Times bestselling author of Destiny and Power, American Lion, and Thomas Jefferson “George Washington: gentleman farmer, revered military general, first American president, Father of our country . . . and son with mother issues? Craig Shirley brings to life America’s first First Family in vivid detail, in this dazzling biography of George’s colorful—and often difficult—mother. This riveting page-turner puts you at the center of one of the greatest Colonial family dramas—and you will see Washington and the forces that made him in a whole new light.” — Monica Crowley, New York Times bestselling author and columnist for the Washington Times “To read this magnificent biography of America’s First Mother is to understand the founding of our great nation from a fresh vantage point. Craig Shirley is at once a first-rate historian and a spellbinding writer. Mary Ball Washington is a major contribution to Colonial and early republic scholarship. Highly recommended!” — Douglas Brinkley, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and professor of history at Rice University, and CNN’s Presidential Historian “Craig Shirley brings the same appetite for fresh facts and original insights he applied to Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt to Mary Ball Washington, the mother—and prime shaper—of George Washington.” — Michael Barone, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute “Craig Shirley has delivered a long-overdue, captivating book about the exceptional mother of the Father of our country.” — Gay Hart Gaines, former Regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association “Written with verve, fairness and sympathetic imagination…it fills a long-standing void in our understanding of how George Washington evolved from an ambitious, largely self-educated young provincial who had trouble controlling his temper, into an inspiring, stoically self-disciplined leader of men.” — Washington Times

An insightful biography of Mary Ball Washington, the mother of our nation's father The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington’s mother, based on archival sources. Her son’s biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her oldest child. But the records tell a very different story. Mary Ball, the daughter of a wealthy planter and a formerly indentured servant, was orphaned young and grew up working hard, practicing frugality and piety. Stepping into Virginia’s upper class, she married an older man, the planter Augustine Washington, with whom she had five children before his death eleven years later. As a widow deprived of most of her late husband’s properties, Mary struggled to raise her children, but managed to secure them places among Virginia’s elite. In her later years, she and her wealthy son George had a contentious relationship, often disagreeing over money, with George dismissing as imaginary her fears of poverty and helplessness. Yet Mary Ball Washington had a greater impact on George than mothers of that time and place usually had on their sons. George did not have the wealth or freedom to enjoy the indulged adolescence typical of young men among the planter class. Mary’s demanding mothering imbued him with many of the moral and religious principles by which he lived. The two were strikingly similar, though the commanding demeanor, persistence, athleticism, penny-pinching, and irascibility that they shared have served the memory of the country’s father immeasurably better than that of his mother. Martha Saxton’s The Widow Washington is a necessary and deeply insightful corrective, telling the story of Mary’s long, arduous life on its own terms, and not treating her as her son’s satellite.

The mothers of famous men survive only in their sons. This is a rule almost as invariable as a law of nature. Whatever the aspirations and energies of the mother, memorable achievement is not for her. No memoir has been written in this country of the women who bore, fostered, and trained our great men. What do we know of the mother of Daniel Webster, or John Adams, or Patrick Henry, or Andrew Jackson, or of the mothers of our Revolutionary generals? This book is dedicated to Mary Ball Washington, the second wife of Augustine Washington, a planter in Virginia and the mother of George Washington, the first President of the United States. Contents: Mary Washington's English Ancestry The Ball Family in Virginia Coat Armor and the Right to bear it Traditions of Mary Ball's Early Life Revelations of an Old Will Mary Ball's Childhood Good Times in Old Virginia Mary Ball's Guardian and her Girlhood Young Men and Maidens of the Old Dominion The Toast of the Gallants of her Day Her Marriage and Early Life Birthplace of George Washington The Cherry Tree and Little Hatchet The Young Widow and her Family Betty Washington, and Weddings in Old Virginia Defeat in War: Success in Love In and Around Fredericksburg Social Characteristics, Manners, and Customs A True Portrait of Mary Washington Noon in the Golden Age Dinners, Dress, Dances, Horse-races The Little Cloud The Storm Mary Washington in the Hour of Peril Old Revolutionary Letters The Battle-ground France in the Revolution "On with the Dance, let Joy be unconfined" Lafayette and our French Allies In Camp and at Mount Vernon Mrs. Adams at the Court of St. James The First Winter at Mount Vernon The President and his Last Visit to his Mother Mary Washington's Will; her Illness and Death Tributes of her Countrymen

The mothers of famous men survive only in their sons. This is a rule almost as invariable as a law of nature. Whatever the aspirations and energies of the mother, memorable achievement is not for her. No memoir has been written in this country of the women who bore, fostered, and trained our great men. What do we know of the mother of Daniel Webster, or John Adams, or Patrick Henry, or Andrew Jackson, or of the mothers of our Revolutionary generals? This book is dedicated to Mary Ball Washington, the second wife of Augustine Washington, a planter in Virginia and the mother of George Washington, the first President of the United States. Contents: Mary Washington's English Ancestry The Ball Family in Virginia Coat Armor and the Right to bear it Traditions of Mary Ball's Early Life Revelations of an Old Will Mary Ball's Childhood Good Times in Old Virginia Mary Ball's Guardian and her Girlhood Young Men and Maidens of the Old Dominion The Toast of the Gallants of her Day Her Marriage and Early Life Birthplace of George Washington The Cherry Tree and Little Hatchet The Young Widow and her Family Betty Washington, and Weddings in Old Virginia Defeat in War: Success in Love In and Around Fredericksburg Social Characteristics, Manners, and Customs A True Portrait of Mary Washington Noon in the Golden Age Dinners, Dress, Dances, Horse-races The Little Cloud The Storm Mary Washington in the Hour of Peril Old Revolutionary Letters The Battle-ground France in the Revolution "On with the Dance, let Joy be unconfined" Lafayette and our French Allies In Camp and at Mount Vernon Mrs. Adams at the Court of St. James The First Winter at Mount Vernon The President and his Last Visit to his Mother Mary Washington's Will; her Illness and Death Tributes of her Countrymen

Biography of Mary Ball Washington, The Mother of George Washington. Details of her life covering 1708 to 1789.