Like many mothers of famous men, Mary Ball Washington has been the object of both beatifying praise and disdainful condemnation. Ron Chernow's 2010 biography of her eldest son, George, followed a long tradition in calling her “shrewish,” “hypercritical” and “illiterate.” Today people might be inclined to denounce her as a woman of privilege who, unlike her son, never questioned holding human beings in bondage or separating them from their families.
Rejecting facile judgements, Amherst College historian Martha Saxton's brilliant and gripping book instead helps readers understand Mary Ball Washington within her own place and time. Drawing on local histories and archaeology as well as letters, diaries and a broad knowledge of related historiography, “The Widow Washington” is a clear-eyed biography of the mother of our first president and a fascinating window into the generation before the American Revolution's founding fathers and mothers.
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