A new biography of George Washington’s mother finally answers this question about Mary Ball Washington: Was she the “Mother of Christ,” as described by early historians, or the nasty authoritarian who was loyal to England even after her son became the founding president, as depicted in more recent books.
To Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, who has turned his investigative powers to the nation’s first mother, she was a bit of both.
Describing his just-out book, Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington’s Mother, Shirley told Secrets:
“This is the first definitive book about Mary and George Washington, their relationship, both loving and tempestuous. For a time after their deaths, she was portrayed as June Cleaver, but after a fashion, she was depicted as Joan Crawford. Both and neither are true. She was a single mother who raised five children, including the man whom King George III would one day describe as the greatest man in the world. This book is about how she raised George in a century that was not very kind to women.”
Over 345 pages of research and storytelling, Shirley writes more of what he calls a “historiography” than a biography, in part because so little original material and so few letters from or about Washington exist.
In it, he not only tells her story and details the hot-and-cold relationship between the leader of the American Revolution and his mother but also sets straight some glaring historical inaccuracies about mother Washington, born about 1708.
In just one paragraph, Shirley sizes up the relationship between the two. He wrote: “He addressed her mostly with respect in his few letters to her, no matter his personal feelings. Through anger and resentment, financial worry, and updates on her health and well-being in times of war, George always addressed his letters to his mother as ‘Honored Madam.’ This salutation served two purposes: it showed his respect for her while holding her at arm’s length.”
Shirley has written several biographies of Reagan and is noted for his curiosity and research.
In this case, he told Secrets that he became interested in Mary Ball Washington because she had always been described simply by biographers.
NYT bestselling historian Craig Shirley has written a new book on the woman behind the success of our first president titled: “Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington’s Mother” it releases December 3rd. Pre-order your copy here!https://t.co/3pKt5l1Uf7
— Craig Shirley (@CraigSbpa) December 2, 2019
And as Shirley spent time in his home area in Virginia’s rural Northern Neck, where the Ball family lived, his curiosity was piqued.
“Because she has been made a one-dimensional caricature, misunderstood, and George Washington’s mother, she deserves better,” Shirley said.
“Also, we occasionally attend White Chapel Episcopalian church on the Northern Neck, the ancestral church of the ancient Ball family. I got interested in her as [my wife] Zorine and I live in this area of the Northern Neck and the Middle Peninsula steeped in Ball and Washington family history. I will always be a Reagan biographer, but doing a book on Mary Ball Washington was too tempting to pass up. People need to understand that if Mary was tough, it was because she had to be to survive in a century not very hospitable to women,” he added.
