Martha Washington, America’s first First Lady
A short letter written by Martha Washington in 1760, describing the recovery of her four-year-old daughter from a frightening illness, has found a permanent home at the Library of Congress. The document, addressed to her friend Margaret Green, was purchased for $47,500 through the Library’s James Madison Council Edwin L. The letter was written on September 29, 1760, long before George Washington became president of the United States. The Martha Washington letter was acquired alongside a letter from Mary Todd Lincoln, written on February 15, 1865, just two months before President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
The letter therefore documents not only a family crisis but also the medical practices available to a wealthy Virginia household in the mid eighteenth century. Because very little of Martha Washington’s private writing survives, photo credit: Martha Washington correspondence, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. (via blogs.loc.gov ) The acquisition matters.
In the letter, she tells Margaret Green that her daughter Martha Parke Custis, known as Patsy, is “much better” after suffering “fitts & fevours. Historians believe Patsy’s “fitts” may have been caused by epilepsy. Her treatment included “Bake” or “bark,” meaning cinchona, the source of quinine, as well as “bitters,” a liquid medicine, according to the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress says she appears to have destroyed most of her personal correspondence, leaving historians with only fragments of her voice. Kevin Butterfield, acting chief of the Manuscript Division, said the Library’s already vast collection of materials related to American history continues to grow, sometimes one letter at a time. Historians believe the reference concerns the “Hairy Eagle,” a framed woven eagle made from hair contributed by prominent politicians and their wives, intended as a gift to the Lincolns and created to raise money for sick and wounded Civil War soldiers.
Cox Legacy Trust. It is now the first original item in Martha Washington’s handwriting held by the Library’s Manuscript Division, making it an unusually intimate addition to the nation’s historical record, as per a report on Library of Congress. At the time, Martha was the widowed Martha Dandridge Custis, recently married to Washington and raising two surviving children from her first marriage. The words offer a rare, personal view of a future first lady as a worried mother rather than a distant historical figure. none were in her own hand Although the Library’s George Washington Papers contain eleven letters written by Martha Washington. Eight are letterbook copies, while three are drafts written in her husband’s hand. The letter joins a collection that includes materials connected to many former first ladies, including Dolley Madison, Lucretia Garfield, and Edith Wilson. In that letter, Mary Todd Lincoln wrote to Caroline R. Wright, wife of a former Indiana governor, and mentioned a “beautiful wreath of hair.
He noted that documents such as this one help the Library tell stories that it previously could not tell.
