![]() ![]() He was a soldier in the Virginia Regiment of the colonial service she was a wealthy widow with two children, and the manager of her late husband’s plantation. When the Washingtons met in 1758, they were both 26. “No wife or Mother of the Nation,” Fraser notes, “was wanted in the virile American 19th century.”įraser’s study corrects this lopsided version of history, revealing the centrality of Martha Washington to her husband’s life, and how the public and private lives of America’s first First Family were intertwined. In that process, his wife, Martha, was erased from the story. The Father of the Nation appeared on postage stamps and dollar bills cities and buildings were named in his memory. In the century following Washington’s death in 1799, a cult grew around him. Flora Fraser’s dual biography of George and Martha Washington opens by confronting questions of legacy and inheritance. ![]()
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