The Style of Martha Washington

Miniature portrait of Martha Washington by Charles Willson Peale

The year 2002 marked the 200th anniversary of the death of Martha Washington in May of 1802. The occasion to celebrate the life of the first First Lady also provided an opportunity to devote the annual George Washington Symposium to reconsidering her contributions to early America. What emerged was much more than the grandmotherly figure in a mob cap. Martha Washington was a woman of strength, style, determination and intellectual curiosity. She served in a variety of meaningful roles throughout her life including businesswoman, plantation mistress and steadfast aid to the Continental Army.

Images of Martha Washington are plentiful, yet those drawn from life are scarce. In an age before photography, some of the best clues to understanding Mrs. Washington’s personal appearance come from portrait miniatures and paintings done during her lifetime. Many of them were rendered later in her life and prompt us to think of Martha as a simply dressed matron with hair tucked neatly into her mop cap. A different Martha Washington emerges, however, through early renderings, contemporary descriptions, invoices, correspondence, and surviving personal articles.

In 1757, at the death of her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, Martha assumed the administration of the Custis estate, as well as her late husband’s extensive business operations. She was called upon to deal directly with the London mercantile community. It was an unusual role for an 18th-century  woman to play, yet Martha was astute in her dealings. In addition to negotiating tobacco sales, she requested and received fashionable English laces, silks, jewelry, footwear, bonnets, and dozens of kid gloves and silk stockings. Martha was quite direct about the kind and quality of goods she desired, specifying repeatedly that they be of the “best” and “fine” variety. Of the goods shipped by Cary and Company of London, the largest amounts were spent on the textiles ordered for Martha and her children—the majority in dress silk and to Mantuamaker John Scherberg, who specialized in rich silks produced at the Spitalfields factories. A comparison of Martha’s dress fabrics to Spitalfields examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection indicates that her dress fabrics likely came from this celebrated factory. And, several even appear to the be the hand of Anna Maria Garthwaite, the factory’s most famous designer.

When Martha Custis married the young Colonel George Washington in January of 1759, she wore the finest of those goods shipped to her by Cary and Company. Nineteenth-century paintings would have us remember the bride as a young woman dressed in a white silk gown that Queen Victoria established as standard attire in the 19th century. In the 18th-century tradition of wearing one’s best dress, however, Martha Custis actually chose a stunning combination of silks that offered an exhibition of her finery as well as her social and economic standing. Her descendants recorded that she wore a gown

Martha Washington wedding dress fragments

of yellow silk damask with a petticoat of cream silk highlighted with interwoven silver threads. Remarkably, samples of the silk have survived through these descendants, as have sections of the lace that trimmed her gown. The yellow damask woven silk was certainly among the finest of goods delivered to the colonies, and the lace was perhaps the ‘best superfine lace’ or ‘Dresden’ lace sent to Martha a few months earlier. On her feet she  wore a pair of purple satin woven silk slippers heavily ornamented with silver. The combination brought together some of the most costly goods available.

1750s

Martha Washington's garnet and pearl jewelry

Martha Washington’s jewelry certainly kept pace with her clothing. In the  and 1760s, she frequently purchased jewelry featuring garnets, which were highly fashionable and popular at the time. In 1760, she received “a pair [of] 3 dropt Garnet Earrings,” presumably to wear with one of the two garnet necklaces sent to her the previous year. An additional pair of earrings arrived in 1764, and examples of both the earrings and the necklace survive at Mount Vernon.

Although diamonds were becoming more available to American colonials by the latter half of the 18th century, paste stones or diamond substitutes remained exceedingly popular. They were usually set by jewelers with the same care given to precious stones. Martha Washington ordered paste shoe buckles for herself and her children, and in 1770 “A Complete Sett of Paste necklace, earrings, sprig, and hair combs together with Pins and Buttons for the Stomacher” and “A Pair of Paste Shoe Buckles to suit” them.

            Clearly, Martha Washington’s attire was not wanting as she established herself as

Martha Washington's dress

mistress of Mount Vernon. She secured precisely the goods she wished in what was likely a very conscious effort to establish herself in her new community and circle of acquaintances. Yet she avoided the appearance of ostentation. Of their agreement on attire, George Washington said “…her wishes coincide with my own as to simplicity of dress and everything which can tend to support propriety of character without partaking of the follies of luxury and ostentation.”  Ostentation was something that both Washingtons clearly wished to avoid, yet maintaining their appearance at their elevated position was important, particularly after George Washington’s success as Commander in Chief. As Mr. Olney Winsor noted in 1788, “Mrs. Washington is an elegant figure for a person of her years, perhaps 45… She was dressed in [a] plain black Sattin gown, with long Sleves, figured Lawn Apron & Handkf, guaze french night Cap with black bowes—all very neat—but not guady.” 

When George Washington was elected President in 1789, Martha Washington was 58 years old. Although she initially referred to feeling like a ‘state prisoner’ with all of the restrictions placed upon her, she seemed by December of 1789, to be embracing the opportunities offered by the Presidency. The range of items available to the Washingtons was enhanced by the offerings of local shops in Philadelphia and New York. On average, the Washingtons each spent between $600 and $800 a year on clothing. Martha Washington paid $200 per year to her hairdresser and spent about $150 annually on new jewelry. She wrote to her niece back at Mount Vernon, “My Hair is set and dressed every day—and I have put on white muslin Habits for the summer—you would I fear think me a good deal in the fashion if you could but see me My dear Fanny.”  

With the onset of the new classical styles, George Washington purchased “pearl pins and earrings for Mrs. Washington, ” numerous examples of which survive at Mount Vernon. Although many pieces were later re-worked by her descendants in the 19th century, the simplicity and elegance that made them accord so well with neoclassical styles is clearly evident. It is also likely that at this time Martha Washington acquired a necklace of fashionable amber that remains today in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution. Amber was important to the Greeks and Romans, so it is not surprising that it rose to great popularity in the classical revivals of the Federal period. And it is no coincidence that Martha Washington chose a necklace with references to the golden era of a former republic.

This extravagance later in Martha Washington’s life may seem out of character, but it was in perfect keeping with a woman who understood the importance and meaning conveyed by personal appearance. And as her husband entered the presidency, Mrs. Washington sought to define her role as a reflection of  the ideological foundation of the new republic. Her title was debated, with suggestions including the French and English aristocratic addresses of ‘Marquise’ and ‘Lady.’   She did, however, keep to the philosophical premises of the new nation and sought to avoid any appearance of an American aristocracy or court culture. She remained simply Mrs. Washington, thereby distinguishing herself from her European counterparts—a distinction she made further apparent in her choice of attire. Abigail Adams, wife of second President John Adams, described to her sister her first impression of Martha Washington : “…She is plain in her dress, but that plainness is the best of article…. Her manners are modest and unassuming, dignified and feminine.” Clearly, Mrs. Adams was well pleased with her country’s First Lady, and no doubt kept Mrs. Washington’s model in mind when she became First Lady herself.

Martha Washington’s life was full, and the legacies she left behind great. She understood the meanings conveyed by the clothing and jewelry she wore, and the objects with which she surrounded herself. She acquired finery from the East and West, yet avoided any appearance of ostentation. We might consider that one of Martha Washington’s enduring legacies is the style and grace she offered as a First Lady role model. She would, no doubt, also wish to be remembered as one of her guests described: “she reminded me of the Roman matrons of whom I had read so much, and I thought that she well deserved to be the companion and friend of the greatest man of the age.”

Carol Borchert Cadou

Curator

Mount Vernon Annual Report, 2002

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:  Ashelford, Jane. The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society, 1500-1914. London: The National Trust, 1996. Fales, Martha Gandy. Jewelry in America: 1600-1900. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1995. Fields, Joseph E., Comp. “Worthy Partner”: The Papers of Martha Washington. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994. Fitzpatrick, John C., Ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799, 39 vol. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1931-1943. Jackson, Donald, and Dorothy Twohig, Eds. The Diaries of George Washington, 6 vols. Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1976-1979. Kaminski, John P. and Gaspare J. Saladino. The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Vol. VIII. Madison, Wisconsin: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1988. Mitchell, Stewart, Ed. New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788-1801. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947. Rothstein, Natalie. Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century. London: The Bullfinch Press, 1990.