Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2025

The 'Keeper of George Washington's Legacy': Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis (1779–1852)

Throughout her life, [Nelly Custis] Lewis regarded herself as the keeper of George Washington’s legacy. She shared memories and mementos, entertained and corresponded with those seeking information, and verified or debunked new accounts. Her husband had been one of Washington’s executors and was instrumental in having a grand tomb erected at Mount Vernon, completed in 1835. At the time of Lewis’s death, she had little fortune to leave but her remaining Mount Vernon artifacts, which she distributed among her grandchildren. Woodlawn was sold in 1846, and after numerous vicissitudes, in 1951 the house and a portion of the grounds became the first property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Nelly Custis was the delight of George and Martha Washington’s lives and the most accurate purveyor of information about them. During her long life, stretching from the American Revolution until the crucial decade leading up to the  American Civil War  (1861–1865), she was a livin...

A Granddaughter’s Grief: Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis and George Washington by Elizabeth Reese

Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis (Mrs. Lawrence Lewis), 1804, by Gilbert Stuart. (Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington/ The Journal of the American Revolution) Nelly was raised in an environment where she was denied very little. The product of upper-class Virginia gentry and the influence of Washington’s status, her life was comfortable and privileged. She was accustomed to not only wealth, but the relationship of two parent figures who had a mutual love and respect for each other. Devoid of both wealth and affection, Nelly was forced to reconcile with the fact that the comforts of her childhood could not be replicated in her marriage. The Journal of the American Revolution has published a biography of Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis, the granddaughter of George Washington, by Elizabeth Reese that I think personalizes the Washington family and brings their story to life. George Washington is an icon in America, which causes us to think of him as some sort of superhuman and his family mem...