Born: 1731
Died: 1802

Martha Dandridge was the oldest of seven children of a prominent Virginia planter. Like other young women of her background, she had limited formal education, but she was able and pleasant and took a positive view of life. At 18, she married 38-year-old tobacco heir Daniel Parke Custis, inheriting his fortune when he died eight years later. She and Custis had four children; two died in childhood, a daughter died at 17, and a son died at 26. Two years after Custis’s death. Martha married 26-year-old Colonel George Washington, bringing her wealth and two young children to his Mount Vernon plantation. Though Martha had no children with George, they raised her son and daughter and later two of her grandchildren.

For 43 years, Mount Vernon was Martha’s home. She ran the plantation while George was away, but traveled to his northern encampments every winter of the Revolutionary War. Welcomed by the soldiers as “Lady Washington,” Martha never forgot the nation’s veterans, giving many financial aid later on. When her husband became President, Martha joined him at the nation’s first capital, New York, and then Philadelphia, where she acted as dignified hostess to the numerous visitors and official guests who came to call. When George retired, the couple returned to private life at Mount Vernon, where they enjoyed their final days.

First President
George Washington

Born: 1732, Pope’s Creek, VA
Died: 1799

George Washington was raised in the tradition of the gentlemen farmer. As a young man, he was a surveyor in the Shenandoah Valley. He fought in the French and Indian War (1753-1757) and resigned his commission to manage his Mt. Vernon plantation. These experiences, farming the land and fighting for it, awakened in him a vision of a vast agricultural America reaching into the uncharted West.

In 1775 he served as a Virginia delegate to the Second Continental Congress. His opposition to British rule and his military background made him the obvious choice to command the largely untrained Continental Army. Over the next six years, Washington’s tenacity and shrewd tactics wore down the British, who surrendered at Yorktown in 1781. Following an interval at Mt. Vernon, Washington chaired the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The Constitution was ratified by the states and Washington’s immense popularity led to his unopposed election as President. He nurtured the fledgling republic through the adoption of the Bill of Rights (1791), the establishment of the United States Bank and, following his re-election, the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion. He declined to run for a third term and retired to Mt. Vernon. The nation’s capital was named in his honor.

First President
Federalist