The Mother of Washington and Her Times

by Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

Stern as was the parental discipline of the time, the spirit of the young men, who were accounted grown and marriageable at nineteen, was in no wise broken or quenched. Many of them ran away from their masters at the schools in England and Scotland, and their fathers' agents had much ado to find and capture them again. The sons of John Spotswood were lost in England for many months, but were back home again in time to be gallant officers in the Revolution. And even the conservative blood of the Washingtons was not strong enough to temper that of the Willises, for Mildred Washington's grandson "Jack" Willis ran away from school and joined a party to explore the wilderness of Kentucky. They were attacked by Indians, and were scattered; Jack escaped in a canoe, and was the first white man to descend the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. His father had sewed some doubloons in his jacket, but he gave them to a man in New Orleans to purchase clothing and food, and never again beheld his agent or the doubloons or their equivalent. He worked his way in a sailing vessel to New York, and walked from New York to his home in Virginia, arriving, like the Spotswood boys, just in time to enter the army with his father and serve to its close. He was a son of Lewis Willis, Washington's schoolmate.

About 1740 the importation of horses of the English racing stock commenced, also the breeding of horses for racing. Between 1740 and 1775 are recorded the names of fifty imported horses and thirty mares of note: Aristotle, Babraham, Bolton, Childers, Dabster, Dottrell, Dimple, Fearnaught, Jolly Roger, Juniper, Justice, Merry Tom, Sober John, Vampire, Whittington, Janus, Sterling, Valiant, etc. Owners of these horses among Mary Washington's neighbors were Roger Gregory, Colonel John Mercer of "Marlboro," Mr. Spotswood, William Fitzhugh of "Chatham," all the Thorntons, and later Colonel George Washington of Mount Vernon, who was a steward of the Alexandria Jockey Club and ran his own horses there and at Annapolis! There was a fine race-course at Fredericksburg, and purses were won from ten to a hundred pounds. This, the prime amusement in spring, summer, and autumn, was varied (alas!) by cock-fights, wrestling-matches, and rough games, in which the common people, as in England, participated, while the gentry looked on and awarded prizes. But in the long winter evenings, neighbors gathered for Christmas and other house-parties, indulged in the gentle art of story-telling. Later, old Fredericksburg boasted a notable, peerless raconteur, John Minor, but his stories were built upon Virginia's legends; his home, "Hazel Hill," was the rendezvous of all the neighbors, young and old, in quest of sympathy or counsel, or advice in the honorable settlement of quarrels, or for a season of genial companionship. Around the fireside at "Hazel Hill" the children would gather for their own story-telling hour "between daylight and dark," and there the immortal "B'rer Rabbit" appears, but not for the first time, in the annals of colonial history, and her Serene Highness, the "Tar Baby," held her nightly court.

Around the winter fireside in the old colonial houses, the children, and their seniors as well, learned the folk-lore of their native colony, for, young as was the new country, Virginia had already her legends: the mystic light on the lake in the Dismal Swamp, where the lost lovers paddled their ghostly canoe; the footprints of the Great Spirit on the rocks near Richmond; the story of Maiden's Adventure on the James River; the story of the Haunted House—the untenanted mansion at Church Hill—untenanted for eight decades because the unhappy spirit of a maiden tapped with her fan on the doors where wedded couples slept, invoking curses upon love that had failed her; of sweet Evelyn Byrd, who rested not under her monument at Westover, but glided among the roses, wringing her hands in hopeless grief for the loss of a mortal's love; and of the legend of the wonderful curative spring just discovered in Greenbrier County (learned from an old Indian of the tribe of the Shawnees)—how one of the great braves had once been missed from the council-fires and been found in a valley, weak and supine, binding the brows of an Indian maid with ferns and flowers; how two arrows had sped by order of the Great Spirit, one destined for the man, one for the maid; how the recreant warrior had been slain by the one, but the other arrow had buried itself in the earth and when withdrawn a great, white sulphur spring had gushed forth; how the maiden was doomed to wander as long as the stream flowed, and not until it ceased could her spirit be reunited to that of her lover in the happy hunting-grounds; also how the body of the slain warrior was laid towards the setting sun, and the form of the sleeping giant might be clearly discerned despite the trees that grew over it.

WESTOVER.

And one more Indian legend is so charming that we may be forgiven for perpetuating it on these pages, remembering that these are genuine Indian legends which have never before been printed. This last was the story of the Mocking-bird. How once long ago there were no wars or fightings, or tomahawks or scalpings among the Indians. They were at perfect peace under the smile of the Great Spirit. And in this beautiful time those who watched at night could hear a strange, sweet song sweeping over the hills and filling the valleys, now swelling, now dying away to come again. This was the music of all things; moon, stars, tides, and winds, moving in harmony. But at last Okee, the Evil One, stirred the heart of the red man against his brother, and the nations arrayed themselves in battle. From that moment the song was heard no more. The Great Spirit, Kiwassa, knew that his children bemoaned their loss, and he promised them the song should not be lost forever. It would be found some day by some brave—loftier, better, stronger, than all others.

It fell at last that a chieftain loved the daughter of a hostile chief. Both were captured and burned at the stake. Both died bravely, each comforting the other. After death the chief, because he had been so brave, was given the body of a bird, and sent in quest of the Lost Song. When he found it, and only then, could all be forgiven and the spirits of the lovers be reunited in the happy hunting-grounds. Since then the bird has travelled north, south, east, west, and wherever it goes it learns the songs of all creatures, learns and repeats them. But the hatchet is not yet buried; the Lost Song not yet found. Imagination can supply few pictures fairer than this: firelight playing on the attentive faces of old cavaliers and matrons, young men and lovely maidens, the centre their accomplished host, "the pink of a chivalric gentleman," gallant, cultured, refined, and at his knees, in his arms, and seated on his shoulders, happy children, not only those of his house-party, but others among his neighbors who dropped in especially for the children's hour.

It is evident that Mary Washington's social life must have been an active one. At the weddings and the christenings of her large circle of neighbors and kindred she was certainly present. But I doubt whether she ever attended the races, "Fish Frys, and Barbecues," of which her neighbors were so fond. Not that she ventured to express disapproval of things with which the clergy found no fault, but she was a strict economist of time, never wasting it on trifles. She kept her own accounts, managed her own plantation, and kept a stern watch on the overseers of her son's estates.

To do this, and at the same time fill her place in her large circle of friends, whose relations with her warranted their coming at will for long visits, required all the method and management of which she was capable.