Marriage
On February 22, 1799, Nelly Custis married George Washington's nephew, the widower Lawrence Lewis, of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The Washingtons' wedding gift was 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) adjacent to Mount Vernon, on which the Lewises built Woodlawn Plantation.
Upon her marriage, Nelly Lewis inherited about 80 slaves from her father's estate. Her grandfather, Daniel Parke Custis's estate was liquidated following Martha Washington's 1802 death, and Nelly Lewis inherited about 35 "dower" slaves from Mount Vernon. Following the death of her mother in 1811, the John Parke Custis estate was liquidated, and she inherited approximately 40 additional slaves.
About 1830 the Lewises moved to Audley plantation in Clarke County, Virginia. Beginning in the mid-1830s they began dividing their time between Virginia and their daughters' homes in Louisiana. Nelly Custis Lewis continued to live at Audley after her husband's death in 1839.
Throughout her life, she regarded herself as a preserver of George Washington's legacy. She shared memories and mementos, entertained and corresponded with those seeking information on the first president, and verified or debunked stories. She is buried at Mount Vernon in an enclosure adjacent to George and Martha Washington's tomb.
Read more about this topic: Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis
Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend
that all’s certain and good, that the marriage won’t end.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“We hope the day will soon come when every girl will be a member of a great Union of Unmarried Women, pledged to refuse an offer of marriage from any man who is not an advocate of their emancipation.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)