good evening, ladies and gentlemen. good evening. my name is kevin butterfield. i'm the executive director of the washington library. it's my great pleasure to welcome you here tonight on behalf of the mount vernon ladies association and to our annual martha washington lecture. the event was created to share scholarship and insights into the life and times of martha washington and is made possible through a generous grant from the richard s reynolds foundation of richmond, virginia. tonight's exciting program celebrates the publication of an important new book, the papers of martha washington, one many years in the making actually part and related to a much bigger project, the papers of george at the university of virginia and sponsored by the mount vernon ladies association. since 1968, the project began with the ambitious aim of publishing all of george washington's correspondence, but it's since expanded to include other members of his family, allowing us to know so much more about the personal lives and associates of this remarkable founding family at this time, i'd like to thank each of the donors of the papers of martha washington project. hold your applause to the end, because there are several the richard reynolds foundation. i'd like to particularly thank major and pam reynolds, who are likely watching us virtually tonight. thank you for all of your support. the dr. shaw foundation, the founders washington committee for historic mount vernon, karen buchwald, right. julia colby cook. jacqueline b mars. the honorable paul michael and miss p brooke england. mr. and mrs. c ashton newell. miss kate schuster. the h.w. wilson foundation and the mount vernon ladies association of the union. please join me in thanking them. tonight. it's going to be a lot of fun because when we're done, we're going to walk out into the reception area and continue the conversation and the celebration. copies, copies of the papers of martha washington, along with for frazier's award winning book, the washingtons will be available for purchase. i've seen many people lining up already for will be signing copies of her book. miss washington is not here to sign her book. we were serving rum punch and authentic 18th century recipe from the book dining with the washingtons. we'll have several original letters written by martha washington on view in a display case, so be sure to track those down. we'll also be and you would have seen it as you came in the hand-sewn reproduction of martha washington's children's games quilt, which is an exact copy of the original in our collection expert quilter cecilia anne masterly completed it after two years of meticulous work, a process that uncovered ms.. washington's remarkable skill and eye for detail. cecilia's passionate about sharing the craft and history of quilting and will be available to answer your questions now to welcome our wonderful speakers. and there will be a panel following where you'll have an opportunity to ask questions of both of them. for frazier, as a professional writer and historian, his career began with apprenticeships under her grandmother and mother, both well known historical biographers. she's written numerous historical biographies of her own, including princesses the daughters of george, the third, the unruly queen, the life of queen caroline, venus of empire. the life of pauline bonaparte, and of course, the washingtons, george and martha, joined by french crowned bivalve, which received 2016 george washington book prize for it was also mt. vernon georgian papers fellow where she worked at windsor castle and the archives on her forthcoming biographies of the jacobite heroine flora macdonald and lord horatio nelson. after a presentation by four frazier, katherine geren come to the podium. she's a research editor at the papers of george washington. and the center for digital editing at the university of she holds degrees from bowling green state university and sarah lawrence college, and she was one of the team of editors who completed the papers of martha washington and is now working on the digital edition of the papers of bush. rod washington. i also want to say this broom and the 200 and i think 300 people who are watching us virtually is just such an exciting celebration of what we've been able to do across years. we've been diving into this project to better understand martha washington and women in the 18th century. this martha washington lecture is just such a success. i'm to see so many people here. i know there are a few hundred more watching us virtually. thank you so much for being here. now, please me in welcoming our first speaker for a frazier. thank you, director, and thank you very much director and all mount vernon for hosting me here it always such a pleasure to speak to the many distinguished guests who come from all over region and beyond. and i very much forward to answering any. you may have a later or just discussing martha washington which i love to do so. oh. let me just. see and. well all of a slide's are a background and what i really oh it may be a blank background owing to my technical income pittance, but when i first had the opportunity have viewing these this volume the papers of martha washington i felt like keats on looking into chapman's homer then felt i like some watcher of the skies when the new planet swims into his can. it really is a most remarkable addition to. 18th century and founding era scholarship. this this volume. and i have to congratulate everyone. catherine and all her team who worked on it and i believe have supplied a very worthy companion to the papers of george washington. and now. martha's first marriage to daniel custis was, all important in her story. and indeed, in washington's the daughter, a virginia court clerk, she persuaded this irascible. but prominent virginia council member john custis to let her be daniel's. and in she made such a success she persuaded him this irascible man who hated her uncle, a fellow member of the ruling council, that daniel's father said he'd rather daniel marry her than than any woman in in virginia. those that's the sort of woman that martha was. she was redoubtable. she was persistent. and throughout the papers of of martha washington, you see these powers of persuasion when she's a first wife living close to her own family on the poor monkey river and then when she's the wife of george washington here, mount vernon, and bringing up two children, jackie and patsy, her children she had with daniel and. you see it when she's lady washington can going effectively into battle for the republican cause or you could say she is coming to come and give solace to washington the general and commander in chief in his wintering campaigns. so this is young martha and the first section of the papers martha washington shows her. in total control as a young widow. how martha's father husband and two of her infant children have died. but in the space to have. i think it's three years and bear that in mind because she has a well you could say she does death very badly all her life and we'll see that later but this in her twenties she is a act as her first husband executor as the administrative two of her young sons infant sons estate until. he can assume a control of them on his majority and she does it with almost perfect composure and authority. 80 in august 1757, the papers is open with this. this is the first communication we have from martha washington that that extent she writes to a merchant in london to whom she's consigning the years tobacco. i shall yearly ship a considerable part of the tobacco i make to you. and i hope you will your in endeavors to get me a good price. she's a very, very businesswoman. and that's what you see all the way through. and as the as the. papers show and as the editors note had a good grasp of loans which were an important part of the tobacco economy and in in virginia at that time and but you could say that with two small children, with with these these are the largest states to that. and two very small children to manage the advent of a certain george washington coming down to to bear her and the children of north was not unwelcome and and you could say also that the wealth that martha brought washington was not unwelcome. and indeed mount vernon was in banished in advance of their marriage. but it continued a while washington had the use of of martha's money for his life to certainly a very a very. important part. and as we know john john adams in a sour mode said would washington george washington ever become commander in chief and president had it not been for his marriage to the rich. mrs. custis. as i say, john was in a silo mood that day well, this is a copy the earlier one, but i think the copy shows how dear this portrait of the children and was, and how very dear these two children were to both george and martha washington and who were not to have children together and through. i particularly like the the cardinal, but the symbol of virginia. i hope it is a cardinal. a modern jack is hand, but but. this is a different phase of martha's life. and the section in the papers that dwells on this on this period of a happy a happy married life a happy, educative experience for jackie at home and here he is as he grows and a and i'm afraid martha him which is perfectly plain both from the papers of george washington and and if you look at martha's correspondence with sister nancy plain there to and here is paul patsy this heiress and i'm not sure if you can see but she is first wound with expensed jewelry from london but that perhaps doesn't doesn't entitle early detract or if you like it can't do away with that very pale and frail appearance which has washington and martha seeking everywhere for remedies or cures for these fit and in her teens these fit what historical postmortems the difficult did for our. daisy but epileptic fits is a fair of i guess and without without. and so when she would the age of 16 and 17 being courted by every young young man in search of a rich bride in the region. she stayed at home dancing on the terracehen when when she was when was up to it. and but ts apparently bucolic and peaceful exist, as we know, in the 1770 his gave gave way to deep, dissatisfied action with. the noleast with the tobacco merchants in london on the part of those virginia farmers who were really quite sick of being taken to the cleaners time they sent over some tobacco and asked for the best goods possible back and got you know last year frocks if they were lucky and carriages which didn't roll and so on. i mean i've always thought that was part of you know there are niggles as well as the great. affairs of state that trigger a final. of a final decision to throw off those traces and washington as we know, it was late to declare himself ready to go to war for his principles. but when he went, martha went him. as i say, she she became this if you like this battle ax of the republic and lady washington, they would cry when she came into and that actually does have in the at least one of the original all in print i think it's the one in yale the the the a contemporary print. and it has lady underneath and. so there was the general and then there was lady washington and she came to the first w had caught us toambridge massachusetts and of course it 't just that was one of the few places is whereartha martha came to cheer washington's life, where s actuallyithin a hearing of a battle f if you like with the the of of boston and. she writes a like a rather like washington himself wrote saying it was wonderful to hear the the bullet bullets singing around my my my my my head in the in an earlier war. well she caused splendid with her sister nancy, who still was married and lived so down on the poor monkey. and nancy martha's correspondence with nancy comes singing out that this book that nancy was her favorite sister is the person in all martha's life that i think she unburdened herself to whether it was about her children, whether it was about politics. and you see and in in her charisma, on her letters to nancy, we don't have nancy's to her that. every woman in war was political and martha was, well, very conservative in other ways. and in in fact, of want in the the american cause to succeed she was ferocious and i think in it would be very interesting to see what what other the pay what papers of other women of this period emerge which in one part of her letter they're talking about their children or the sewing or the cooking and then they'll have a paragraph of absolute you know the news as it's being made. well, course it wasn't only other american who martha met, but her circle broad dinners as the papers show, and those lafayette first coming as a volunteer who she meet in the winter at valley forge and then there the young women betsy schuyler and of course we know about that courtship and marriage, but there were many others, many other of these women and many of them much younger than martha lucy flack and knox, a remarkable woman. and we do her correspondence with her husband, henry, in the gilda lamb and institute. but there was a kitty, catherine littlefield, green. and so but martha would gather these women at in these in encampments and provide a of atmosphere of normality as as was possible. and then of course, she was not involved in the in the in the summer campaigns and went back to mount vernon. but i'm sorry, but the war too was a time of terrible loss again for martha and she lost not only her sister, nancy, and she did write to her. brother in law a verbal basset and say, i'm after nancy's death and say i must own that she the greatest favorite i had in the world. and i think this was this idea of, friendship and friendships comes really startlingly. the papers many the papers here are to be found elsewhere, but it's when they're together and the focus is on martha that you really see how they they gel together. and, of course, forth of her children. jackie dies in the hour of victory. he's not an officer, but he's in attendance at yorktown and dies of camp fever. and and martha is at the lowest ebb. washington couldn't have been more more, more keen to console her and. but jackie is left out. a wife who's sweet but a bit of a and four children, thankfully for the park custis estates there's a son and but there are three daughters and so we find when inevitably after a period at mount vernon, when the washingtons have time to take stock and see what being away for eight years has done, despite martha's efforts, despite the efforts of land, washington washington george's cousin, as to keep the estates going there is not wrack and ruin but but they martha feels strongly that they have earned the right that washington has earned the right to enjoy retirement. but as we know, he is called to new york to be the first president of the states. and with them go on left martha's grounds and washito george washington park is known as wash or, wash or indeed tub. i leave you toorout and eleanor or nellie and so they have to make a republicanourt which must both satisfy americans as bei democrat not monarchical but al satisfy visiting envoys, ambassadors from the courts of europe. a and this is something they are doing over the next seven or seven years as washington's serves two terms at the same time the bringing up in effect and educating a new generation and of course as children and they'll not they're not spring chickens and i'm glad to say that with nellie, they succeed and washes very much. his father's son and spoiled rotten by by martha washington despairs of him but he can't despair all over again. and i'm saying he washes his hands of him but it's but they leave new york that's a later house. but on this side, cherry street in new york and in in philadelphia. oh, here, martha, really does have some she she makes some very interesting friendships, as does as does washington and not always with those in government, many of whom were with them in the in the war. but with the philadelphians and mrs. powell and samuel powell, that interesting couple. and samantha snyder here is at work on a book, a biography of elizabeth will willing polled so looking forward to that and so many more of these mercantile professional families and so martha again expands her circle as does george but but she she does it always quite natural really. and she has a gift for whether she's in the cramped revolutionary sort of pot house in in in valley forge entertaining or at a at one of these drawing rooms. as her reception are called, even liston, the british ambassador or envoy extraordinary wife who comes not to well, anyway, possibly with a critical a gives us not only gives us a very detailed analysis of the republican court, but makes quite clear that that martha's receptions and martha as the first first lady is is doing an exceptional job. it is not, however, a job that martha. and it is undoubtedly with relief that and washington himself says when they leave he finishes his second term they return to mount vernon and he says sweetly that they are more or less painting mount vernon and being like the young married couple because they're just so happy to be back and looking forward to years of sort of renovating this this estate which has again gone to not and ruin, but the it certainly needs the watchful eye of washington but unfortunately it's that watchful eye which is washington's undoing and in december. 1799, as i'm sure you are aware better than i it carol fine. caroline branham, an enslaved maid who has been at mount vernon for. since birth, i think, or know she's a mary thompson. any of those who worked on that magnified and extraordinary the mount vernon slavery date database of which the which the papers draws on and builds, will tell me whether she, caroline is a diverse custis slave, but caroline is called early in the morning by martha when she comes in to make up the fire in the washington's bedroom to call washington secretary and, to call the doctor and. he washington have gone out ridden round the estate and and and an inflamed throat was there was nothing to be done and martha here in this miniature which in which she had done for to show her every day face for her grandeur children so that it was the the informal martha and she turns her face to the wall. she no more to to be in a world without washington because she was since her marriage to washington although am still young and pretty when she married him from that moment to honor a one man woman and all those who visit her and. meri thornton, the architecture of the capitals wife abigail adams, mrs. list and all that she is undone. she talks only of going to to meet washington and she has a no one. martha no one of those who've who were with her at the start of her journey. she has the the lovely nellie who the toast of washington of philadelphia and then in fact, the toast of the federal city when she went in to visit her, her her sisters, you could say she threw herself away on her husband, but nellie was there. but martha retreated and is very old, very sure of neti. i think it is of the bedroom room here is it was imagine and not as it is now. reconsider erupted does it was that this just gives me the feel of martha having turned her face to the wall and the papers a give of such an extruding record no logical tour. doris on of martha dandridge custis washington's a life that i can only say as as in another republic concord in england in the 17th century. oliver cromwell all told mr. lilly, a court painter, to remark all these rough roughness is when you paint my picture pimples, warts and everything as you see me. otherwise will never pay you a farthing for in the papers of martha washington. i guarantee you we have a picture truly like her roughness, if not