George Washington Parke Custis
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George Washington Parke Custis (April 30, 1781 – October 10, 1857), was the adopted son (and also step-grandson) of United States President George Washington.
He was the grandson of Martha Washington through her first marriage. After his natural father John Parke Custis died, he grew up at Mount Vernon with George and Martha Washington.
While George Washington lived in Germantown, Custis was sent to Germantown Academy (then called the Union School of Germantown), from which he eventually graduated. Custis went on to attend the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) and St. John's College in Baltimore.
In 1802 he began the construction of Arlington House on land he had inherited from his natural father. He intended the house also to serve as a memorial to his adoptive father. The house has been restored and is now open to the public as part of the National Park Service.
On July 7, 1804, Custis married Mary Lee Fitzhugh. Of their four children, only one daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, survived. She later married Robert E. Lee at Arlington in June 1831.
In 1799, Custis was commissioned as a cornet in the United States Army and aide-de-camp to General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Later, Custis volunteered in the defense of Washington, D.C., at the Battle of Bladensburg during the War of 1812.
In 1853, historian Benson John Lossing visited Custis at Arlington House. See the Cornell University Library transcription of Harper's New Monthly Magazine article: [link] (starting on page 433). Four of the Custis paintings mentioned in the Harper's article can be seen in color (Battle of Germantown/Battle of Trenton/Battle of Princeton/Washington at Yorktown) in the February 1966 issue of American Heritage magazine.
Custis is also notable as an orator and playwright. Two of his plays, The Indian Prophecy; or Visions of Glory (1827) and Pocahontas; or, The Settlers of Virginia (1830), were published. He wrote a series of biographical essays about his adoptive father, collectively entitled Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, which was posthumously edited and published by his daughter.
External links
References
- Bearss, Sara B. "The Federalist Career of George Washington Parke Custis," Northern Virginia Heritage 8 (Feb. 1986): 15–20.
- Bearss, Sara B. "The Farmer of Arlington: George W. P. Custis and the Arlington Sheep Shearings," Virginia Cavalcade 38 (1989): 124–133.
- Brady, Patricia. Martha Washington: An American Life. Viking/Penquin Group, New York, New York, 2005. ISBN 0-670-03430-4.
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