Lunch at the Library: George Washington and Religious Texts

George Washington's library at Mount Vernon contained multiple Bibles, prayer books, and religious texts. These items were a central component of family life at Mount Vernon and were used by the Washingtons as daily devotional objects, tools for educational instruction, and repositories of family records.

Caroline Sharp will discuss multiple items held at the George Washington Presidential Library, examining their provenance, use, and materiality. This talk will explore the various functions of religious texts in daily life in 18th-century America, with a focus on how books from George Washington’s library were acquired, used, and disseminated by the family at Mount Vernon. These books will be reviewed as material objects, with a discussion about what we can learn from the printing, binding, and marginalia.

Highlighted items will include multiple editions of the Book of Common Prayer, which were owned and used daily by Martha Washington; the Washington Family Bible, which records the birth of George Washington; a beautifully-illustrated Bible purchased by George as a gift to Martha in 1789; and the newly-acquired Custis Bible. The Custis Bible was owned by Martha Washington’s first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, and was brought to Mount Vernon upon Martha’s marriage to George Washington. The Bible returned to Mount Vernon’s collections in 2025, over 200 years after it was last stored in George Washington’s library.

There will be an opportunity to view the original items after the talk.