TRADITIONS OF MARY BALL'S EARLY LIFE
Of the ancestry of Mary Washington's mother nothing is known. She
was the "Widow Johnson," said to have descended from the Montagus
of England, and supposed to have been a housekeeper in Joseph
Ball's family, and married to him after the death of his first
wife. Members of the Ball family, after Mary Washington's death,
instituted diligent search to discover something of her mother's
birth and lineage. Their inquiries availed to show that she was an
Englishwoman. No connection of hers could be found in Virginia.
Since then, eminent historians and genealogists, notably Mr. Hayden
and Mr. Moncure Conway, have given time and research "to the most
important problem in Virginia genealogy,--Who and whence was Mary
Johnson, widow, mother of Mary Washington?" The Montagu family has
claimed her and discovered that the griffin of the house of Montagu
sometimes displaced the raven in General Washington's crest; and it
was asserted that the griffin had been discovered perched upon the
tomb of one Katharine Washington, at Piankatnk. To verify this, the
editor of the _William and Mary Quarterly_ journeyed to the tomb of
Katharine, and found the crest to be neither a raven or a griffin
but a wolf's head!
It matters little whether or no the mother of Washington came of
noble English blood; for while an honorable ancestry is a gift of
the gods, and should be regarded as such by those who possess it,
an honorable ancestry is not merely a titled ancestry. Descent from
nobles may be interesting, but it can only be honorable when the
strawberry leaves have crowned a wise head and the ermine warmed a
true heart. Three hundred years ago an English wit declared that
"Noblemen have seldom anything in print save their clothes."
Knowing that Mary Johnson was an Englishwoman, we might, had we
learned her maiden name, have rejoiced in tracing her to some family
of position, learning, or wealth; for position and learning are
desirable gifts, and wealth has been, and ever will be, a synonym
of power. It can buy the title and command genius. It can win
friendship, pour sunshine into dark places, cause the desert to
bloom. It can prolong and sweeten life, and alleviate the pangs of
death.
These brilliant settings, for the woman we would fain honor, are
denied us. That she was a jewel in herself, there can be no doubt.
We must judge of her as we judge of a tree by its fruits; as we
judge a fountain by the streams issuing therefrom. She was the
mother of a great woman "whose precepts and discipline in the
education of her illustrious son, himself acknowledged to have been
the foundation of his fortune and fame:--a woman who possessed not
the ambitions which are common to meaner minds." This was said of
her by one who knew Mary, the mother of Washington,--Mary, the
daughter of the obscure Widow Johnson.
Indeed, she was so obscure that the only clew we have to her
identity as Joseph Ball's wife is found in a clause of his will
written June 25, 1711, a few weeks before his death, where he
mentions "Eliza Johnson, daughter of my beloved wife."
Until a few months ago it was supposed that Mary Ball spent her
childhood and girlhood at Epping Forest, in Lancaster County; that
she had no schooling outside her home circle until her seventeenth
year; that she visited Williamsburg with her mother about that time;
that in 1728 her mother died, and she went to England to visit her
brother Joseph, a wealthy barrister in London. Her biographers
accepted these supposed facts and wove around them an enthusiastic
romance. They indulged in fancies of her social triumphs in
Williamsburg, the gay capital of the colony; of her beauty, her
lovers; how she was the "Rose of Epping Forest," the "Toast of the
Gallants of her Day." They followed her to England,--whence also
Augustine Washington was declared to have followed her,--sat with
her for her portrait, and brought her back either the bride, or soon
to become the bride, of Augustine Washington; brought back also
the portrait, and challenged the world to disprove the fact that
it must be genuine and a capital likeness, for had it not "George
Washington's cast of countenance"?
The search-light of investigation had been turned in vain upon the
county records of Lancaster. There she had not left even a fairy
footprint. What joy then to learn the truth from an accidental
discovery by a Union soldier of a bundle of old letters in an
abandoned house in Yorktown at the close of the Civil War! These
letters seemed to lift the veil of obscurity from the youthful
unmarried years of Mary, the mother of Washington. The first letter
is from Williamsburg, 1722:--
"Dear Sukey--Madam Ball of Lancaster and her sweet Molly have
gone Hom. Mama thinks Molly the Comliest Maiden She Knows. She
is about 16 yrs. old, is taller than Me, is verry Sensable,
Modest and Loving. Her Hair is like unto Flax. Her Eyes are the
colour of Yours, and her Chekes are like May blossoms. I wish
You could see Her."
A letter was also found purporting to have been written by Mary
herself to her brother in England; defective in orthography, to be
sure, but written in a plain, round hand:--
"We have not had a schoolmaster in our neighborhood until now in
five years. We have now a young minister living with us who was
educated at Oxford, took orders and came over as assistant to
Rev. Kemp at Gloucester. That parish is too poor to keep both,
and he teaches school for his board. He teaches Sister Susie
and me, and Madam Carter's boy and two girls. I am now learning
pretty fast. Mama and Susie and all send love to you and Mary.
This from your loving sister,
"Mary Ball."
The fragment of another letter was found by the Union soldier. This
letter is signed "Lizzie Burwell" and written to "Nelly Car----,"
but here, alas! the paper is torn. Only a part of a sentence can
be deciphered. "... understand Molly Ball is going Home with her
Brother, a lawyer who lives in England. Her Mother is dead three
months ago." The date is "May ye 15th, 1728," and Mary Ball is now
twenty years old.
Could any admiring biographer ask more? Flaxen hair, May
blossoms--delightful suggestion of Virginia peach-blooms, flowering
almond, hedge roses! "Sensible, Modest, and Loving!" What an
enchanting picture of the girlhood of the most eminent of American
women! The flying steeds of imagination were given free rein. Away
they went! They bore her to the gay life in Williamsburg, then the
provincial capital and centre of fashionable society in the Old
Dominion. There she rode in the heavy coaches drawn by four horses,
lumbering through the dusty streets: or she paid her morning visits
in the sedan-chairs, with tops hitherto flat but now beginning to
arch to admit the lofty head-dresses of the dames within. She met,
perhaps, the haughty soldier ex-Governor, who could show a ball
which had passed through his coat at Blenheim: and also her Serene
Highness, Lady Spotswood, immortalized by William Byrd as "gracious,
moderate, and good-humored." Who had not heard of her pier glasses
broken by the tame deer and how he fell back upon a table laden
with rare bric-a-brac to the great damage thereof! Along with the
records of the _habeas corpus_, tiffs with the burgesses, the
smelting of iron, the doughty deeds of the Knights of the Golden
Horseshoe, invariable mention had been made of this disaster, and of
the fact that the gracious Lady Spotswood "bore it with moderation
and good-humor." This sublime example might have had some influence
in moulding the manners of Mary Ball--one of whose crowning
characteristics was a calm self-control, never shaken by the most
startling events!
And then we took ship and sailed away with our heroine to
England--Augustine Washington, as became an ardent lover, following
ere long. Anon, we bore her, a happy bride, home again, bringing
with her a great treasure,--a portrait true to the life, every
feature bearing the stamp of genuineness. Through how many pages did
we gladly amplify this, chilled somewhat by fruitless searches for
"Sister Susie"! "Never," said an eminent genealogist, "never reject
or lose tradition. Keep it, value it, record it _as tradition_;"
but surely this was not tradition. It was documentary evidence,
but evidence rudely overthrown by another document,--a dry old
yellow will lately found by the Rev. G. W. Beale in the archives of
Northumberland County, in Virginia.