Martha Washington's Bible
George Washington purchased a Bible for Martha Washington in New York on August 18, 1789, and she signed her name on several pages. The front and back covers are inlaid with lighter brown leather and embossed with gilt.
Martha Washington was a devout Christian. Her granddaughter Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis noted that she “never omitted her private devotions, or her public duties…"
Mrs. Washington regularly retired to her room between 9 and 10 o'clock in the morning "for an hour of meditation reading & prayer and that hour no one was ever allowed to interfere with." She and Nelly also prayed, read the Bible, and sang hymns in the evening in preparation for bed. Among the books surviving in the collections at Mount Vernon is a book of common prayer, authorized by the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. It bears an inscription by Nelly and records that Mrs. Washington read from this particular book twice a day from the time it came into her possession until her death in 1802.
George Washington purchased a Bible for Martha Washington in New York on August 18, 1789, and she signed her name on several pages. The front and back covers are inlaid with lighter brown leather and embossed with gilt.
She also saw that other members of the family, not just those in her immediate household, were provided with similar devotional materials.
In the fall of 1761, Washington ordered bibles and prayer books, "neatly bound in Turkey," with the young children's names "wrote in gilt Letters on the Inside of the cover" for his wife's 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. Six years later, Martha Parke Custis, known to the family as Patsy, was given a music book containing "the New Version of Psalms and Hymns set for the Spinnet [sic]."
When Mrs. Washington’s son, John Parke Custis, was a teenager, a large order for books was placed with an English agent for the boy. Of the 47 titles ordered, 11 (or 23.4 percent) concerned the subject of religion. Many years later, in the summer of 1794, a New Testament in Greek was purchased for Mrs. Washington’s grandson, George Washington Parke Custis. Granddaughter Nelly acquired the musical scores for songs with a decided religious flavor, such as "Angels ever bright & fair" and "Holy Holy Lord."2 Mrs. Washington also sent prayer books to her niece Fanny Bassett Washington, her husband's niece, Harriot Washington, and her two oldest granddaughters, Eliza and Patsy.3
In this episode from Mount Vernon's podcast "Secrets of Washington's Archives," explore a set of prayer books belonging to Martha Washington and her granddaughters.
Washington was said to have refused to take part in communion, but there are conflicting reports. Mary Thompson, Mount Vernon’s research historian, explains: “According to Martha Washington’s youngest granddaughter, Nelly Custis Lewis, George Washington regularly took communion prior to the Revolution, but did not after the war … During the presidency, when he was chastised from the pulpit for regularly leaving prior to the communion service in Philadelphia (something Nelly said was true of most of the congregation), Washington informed the minister that he was sorry for setting such a bad example and would not do it again. From that day on, he would simply not attend services on Sundays when communion was offered (at this time, the Anglican / Episcopal Church only observed communion 3-4 times per year, not every Sunday). It should be noted that Martha Washington continued to take communion.”