John Stadler was a "Musick Professor" originally from Germany. Starting in 1766, Stadler gave singing and music lessons at Mount Vernon to Martha Washington, her two children Martha Parke Custis and John Parke Custis, and their young friend, Sarah (Sally) Carlyle, who visited from Alexandria to attend.1 Prior to coming to Virginia, he taught in New York and Philadelphia, also giving lessons at Robert Carter's Nomini Hall. Stadler was described by Philip Vickers Fithian, the tutor at Nomini Hall, as having "much simplicity & goodness of heart—He performs extremely well—He is kind and sociable with me." On another occasion Fithian wrote of Stadler, that "I always feel sorry when he leaves the Family; his entire good-Nature, Cheerfulness, Simplicity & Skill in Music have fixed him firm in my esteem."2
Notes: 1. Judith S. Britt, Nothing More Agreeable: Music in George Washington's Family (Mount Vernon, Virginia: The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, 1984), 19-23.
2. Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian 1773-1774: A Plantation Tutor, ed. Hunter Dickinson Farish (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1978) 138, 189.
