The Widow Washington

"Biography of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother. Places her life as an orphan, a young wife in rural Virginia, a slaveholder, a widow, and mother to the first president in the context of the changing economic circumstances and cultural values of colonial Virginia and a young nation"-- Her son's biographers often paint her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her oldest child. Yet Mary Ball Washington had a greater impact on George than mothers of that time and place usually had on their sons, and she imbued him with many of the moral and religious principles by which he lived. The daughter of a wealthy planter and a formerly indentured servant, Mary was orphaned young and grew up working hard, practicing frugality and piety. She married planter Augustine Washington, had five children before his death eleven years later, and as a widow was deprived of most of her late husband's properties. Saxton tells the story of Mary's long, arduous life on its own terms, and not as her son's satellite. -- adapted from jacket