Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington's Mother

by Craig Shirley, Kirsten Potter (Read by), TBD (Read by)

Overview

The Mother of the Father of our Country.

Mary Ball Washington was an unlikely candidate to be the mother of history’s most famous revolutionary. In fact, George Washington’s first fight for independence was from his controlling, singular mother.

Stubborn, aristocratic Mary Ball Washington was entrenched in the Old World ways of her ancestors, dismissing the American experiment even as her son led the successful rebellion against the crown. During his youth, ambitious George dove into the hard-scrabble work of a surveyor and rose through the ranks of the fledgling colonial army, even as his overprotective mother tried to discourage these efforts.

Mary’s influence on George was twofold. Though she raised her eldest son to become one of the world’s greatest leaders, Mary also tried many times to hold him back. While she passed down her strength and individuality to George, she also sought to protect him from the risks he needed to take to become a daring general and president. But it was this resistance itself which fanned the spark of George’s independence into a flame. The constant tug of war between the two throughout the early years helped define George’s character.

In Mary Ball Washington, New York Times bestselling author Craig Shirley uncovers startling details about the inner workings of the Washington family. He vividly brings to life a resilient widow who singlehandedly raised six children and ran a large farm at a time when most women’s duties were relegated to household matters. Throughout, Shirley compares and contrasts mother and son, illuminating the qualities they shared and the differences that divided them.

A significant contribution to American history, Mary Ball Washington is the definitive take on the relationship between George and Mary Washington, offering fresh insight into this extraordinary figure who would shape our nation—and the woman who shaped him.

 Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982688349
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	12/03/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 5.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kirsten Potterhas performed at theaters across the country, including the Geffen Playhouse, Mark Taper Forum, Laguna Playhouse, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and Arena Stage. Her film and TV work includeJudging Amy,Bones,andThe Eyes Have It; and she has voiced numerous roles for animation and video games.Kirsten has narrated numerous audiobooks, includingHattie Big Sky, If I Stay, Madapple, The Neighbor, Sammy's House,andThe Snowball.She hasreceived threeAudioFileEarphones Awardsfor her outstanding narration.

Craig Shirley is the author of Reagan Rising, Rendezvous with Destiny, Reagan’s Revolution, Last Act, and the New York Times bestseller December 1941. The founder, chairman, and CEO of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, he is the Visiting Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, lectures often at the Reagan Library and the Reagan Ranch, and is a media commentator and contributor to leading publications. He and his wife, Zorine, live in Virginia.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Chapter 1 Virgin Land and Virgin Love 11

Chapter 2 "To Look to the Sky" 26

Chapter 3 The Rose of Epping Forest 49

Chapter 4 The Marriage of Mary Ball and Augustine Washington 64

Chapter 5 In the Shadow of the Empire 82

Chapter 6 Fredericksburg 102

Chapter 7 Matriarch 119

Chapter 8 Lieutenant Colonel Washington 140

Chapter 9 Before the Revolution 165

Chapter 10 Off to War 187

Chapter 11 A Separate Peace 225

Chapter 12 Honored Madam 242

Chapter 13 Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return 260

Epilogue A Monumental Legacy 279

Acknowledgments 291

Notes 297

Index 327

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher

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

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

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

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

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

Craig Shirley has delivered a long-overdue, captivating book about the exceptional mother of the Father of our country.

Gay Hart Gaines

10/01/2019

Shirley (Reagan Rising) acknowledges that this biography is as much a work of historiography as it is history. The life of Mary Ball Washington (1707–89) is relatively unknown, an amalgam of myth, legend, and oral tradition. Spending most of her days in Fredericksburg, VA, Washington was a devout widow who raised six children while tending to the family farm. George, her eldest son, always addressed her as "Honored Madam," terminology that is at the heart of any attempt to unravel their complex relationship. What is most fascinating about her life and legacy is the way in which she has been perceived throughout history, alternately presented as a heroic mother of a prominent leader or a demanding mother who aimed to rein in her rebellious son. There is a lot of material here for a dual-biography of the pair, although that is not Shirley's intent. He does a masterly job of sorting through these contradictions, using a rich array of primary sources to tell Mary's story against the backdrop of Colonial America, slavery, and the marriage, child-rearing, and religious customs of the time. VERDICT For general readers of American history, especially those interested in the revolutionary period.—Marie M. Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ

Library Journal

2019-08-28
Media commentator Shirley (Citizen Newt: The Making of a Reagan Conservative, 2017, etc.) confronts the problem faced by all of Mary Ball Washington's biographers: lack of material.

"Much of her life was a mystery," writes the author, leaving him to speculate about her personality, appearance, beliefs, and especially her relationship with her eldest son, George. "Was she part helicopter mother, part ‘Mommie Dearest,' " he asks, using popular, if anachronistic, allusions, "or was she a saint and a joy for George? Historians down through the years have portrayed her as both." Shirley looks to several earlier historians for their conclusions, making his biography "just as much a historiography of Mary Washington as it is a history." Those historians, though, also worked with scant evidence, and their portraits were shaped by their own assumptions about how Colonial women must have, or should have, behaved as wives, mothers, and citizens. Hagiographical portraits depicted Mary as "the grandmother and redeemer of America" while one of Washington's early biographers portrayed Mary as an ardent Loyalist, fiercely opposed to the Revolution. Shirley finds a sympathetic reading in Nancy Byrd Turner's The Mother of Washington (1930), to which he frequently refers. He dismisses Marion Harland's Story of Mary Washington, published in 1893, as being so hagiographical that it "glossed over" the death of Mary's infant daughter "as if it was a distraction to the grand character of Mary and her relationship to her children." Shirley thinks that Mary "must have been beside herself" because of the "inseparable and deeply unique connection between mother and daughter." However, neither historian knows for sure. Throughout, Shirley guesses what Mary probably, might have, or perhaps felt. Although he draws on archival material from the papers of George Washington, the resources of the Mary Ball Washington House, and many biographies of Washington, at best, he offers more about Mary's times—likely familiar to readers of Colonial history—than details of her life.

A well-meaning but frustrated attempt to pierce the veil of history.

Kirkus Reviews