The Mother of Washington and Her Times

by Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

There was no lack of service in Mary Washington's day. The negro was docile, affectionate, and quick to learn, at least these were the characteristics of those employed in households. But even as late as in Mary Ball's girlhood the negroes had no language intelligible to their employers. One of the Lancaster clergymen, Mr. Bell, writes that his congregation includes many "negroes, who cannot understand my language nor I theirs." There is something infinitely pathetic in this picture of the homeless savage in a strange land. The African, finding himself not understood, made haste to acquire the language spoken to him. His intimate association was with the indented white men who labored with him, and he then and there created a language distinctively known as his own, to which he still clings and which contains, I believe, no word that can be traced to African origin—at least this is true of the Virginia negro's dialect. "It appears that the indented servants from whom he learned must have come from Warwickshire. The negro dialect can be found in Shakespeare;[8] for instance, 'trash,' afterwards accentuated by 'po' white trash.' 'What trash is Rome, what rubbish, what offal,' says Cassius. 'They are trash,' says Iago, etc. 'Terrify,' for 'aggravate' or 'destroy,' is Warwickshire; also 'his'n,' 'her'n,' for 'his' and 'hers'; 'howsomdever,' for 'however' (Venus and Adonis); 'gawm,' for 'soiling hands or face'; 'yarbs,' for 'herbs'; 'make,' for 'kindle' (make the fire); 'like,' for 'likely' (I was like to fall); 'peart,' for 'lively'; 'traipsing,' for 'walking idly about'; 'ooman,' for 'woman'; 'sallit,' for 'green stuff'; 'yourn,' for 'yours.' These and many more negro words are taken from Warwickshire dialect, and are to be found in Shakespeare." Upon this root the negro grafted, without regard to its meaning, any and every high-sounding word which he happened to hear, and which seemed to him magnificent. The meaning signified so little that he never deemed it necessary to ask it. The result was, to say the least, picturesque.

The church being his earliest school, he was soon impressed by the names of certain of the Hebrew Patriarchs, and the first names with which he endowed his children were Aaron, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Isaiah. Why he scorned Jeremiah, Nahum, Ezekiel, and others, is best known to himself. Later, he caught from the companionship of the schoolboys the names of the heroes of antiquity, giving decided preference to Pompey and Cæsar. There was a Josephus in a Fredericksburg family, differentiated in the next generation by Jimsephus. Later still his fancy was caught by the shining lights of the Revolution. A goodly crop followed of Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Randolphs. There was even a Rochambeau, unhappily corrupted into "Rushingbow."

While the queen of the nursery was an ebony incarnation of faithful love, tenderness, and patience, she never surrendered her sceptre until her charges were actually married. She never condescended to be taught by those to whom she had herself been teacher. "Mammy," exclaimed a little Fredericksburg maiden of ten, "what do you think? I have found an ungrammatical error in the Bible." "Kill him, honey! Kill him quick! He'll eat up the pretty book-mark!" exclaimed the old nurse, too proud to acknowledge her ignorance of the beautiful new word.

"Po' white trash" was a term applied to all householders who could not afford style in living and equipage, notably to those (and they were few) who owned no slaves. There was no squalor, no pauperism in Virginia in 1740 and later. Even indented servants prospered sufficiently after a few years to send to England for servants of their own. The convict labor of Virginia was mainly employed in the fields and on the boats; and it is recorded that these convicts were short-lived, the hot sun giving them always a "seasoning fever" which often proved fatal. Of course political convicts were of a different class, and when found to have been educated were employed as teachers.

Entirely distinct from these was the class who were entitled to write "Gent" after their names, as their English fathers had done. "The term 'Gentleman,'" says Mr. Lyon Tyler, "assumed a very general meaning in the succeeding century, but its signification at this time was perhaps what Sir Edward Coke ascribed to it, qui gerit arma, one who bears arms."

It was not the custom then as now to address a man without some prefix. He was "Squire" if he was a member of the King's Council; "Gent" if he bore arms, otherwise "Mr."; and if in humble life, "Goodman." Women of any degree were "Mistress"—Mistress Evelyn Byrd, Mistress Mary Stagg; in middle class, "Dame"; of gentle blood, "Madam" and "Lady." In the Virginia Gazette "Lady Washington's" comings and goings are duly chronicled. Even now the Virginian loves to endow his fellows with a title, and risks "Colonel" in default of a better.

The Virginia woman, at the period of which we write, felt keenly the disadvantage of her remoteness from that centre of knowledge and courtly usage, the mother country. Men who were educated abroad began to accumulate books for ambitious libraries, but these books were largely in the Latin tongue, and the Virginia girl had not the courage of Queen Elizabeth, and did not address herself to the study of the Classics that she might "match the men." She had good, strong sense, and the faculty known as mother-wit, but I am afraid I must confess she had small learning. What time had she—married at fifteen—to read or study? As to Mary Washington, her library, for ought we know to the contrary, seems to have begun and ended with "Sir Matthew Hale." In 1736 Mr. Parks published his Virginia Gazette for fifteen shillings a year. Beverley & Stith had published their "Histories," and William Byrd his "Pamphlets." These she may have read; but it is extremely doubtful whether she read the poems and other society doings, records of races and other happenings, which appeared weekly in the Gazette, or approved of seeing the names, qualities, and fortunes of the ladies recorded as frankly as at the present day.

These ladies were the daughters, sisters, and wives of men of brilliant genius and attainments. They could hardly sustain such relations with such men without becoming themselves superior women. Dr. Archibald Alexander knew Mrs. Meredith, the sister of Patrick Henry. "She was, in my judgment, as eloquent as her brother; nor have I ever met with a lady who equalled her in powers of conversation."

Something then was said of a woman besides what she wore, whither she went, and whom she entertained at dinner and tea. There were women of whom the Gazette kindly said they possessed "amiable sweetness of disposition, joined with the finest intellectual attainments," but I am constrained to challenge the latter if it presupposes the attainments to have been literary. How could it be otherwise when Thomas Jefferson prescribed that his daughter's time should be divided between dancing, music, and French? And when Charles Carter, of "Cleve," after ordering that his sons, John and Landon, then in England, should master languages, mathematics, philosophy, dancing, fencing, law, adds, "And whereas the extravagance of the present age, and the flattering hopes of great Fortunes may be a temptation to run into unnecessary Expenses of Living, it is my positive Will and desire that my Daughters may be maintained with great frugality, and taught to dance."

The young women whose brothers had tutors at home were fortunate. They learned to "read and write and cypher." Then there were men