SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS
The essential principles in the drama of human life are ever
the same although its outward aspect changes with changing
circumstances. But in some ages events develop more rapidly than in
others under the urgency of peculiar conditions.
In colonial Virginia the story was told over and over again before
the final fall of the curtain. Scenes shifted with wonderful
rapidity. The curtain, in mimic drama, is usually rung down at the
church door after the early or late wooing and marriage; but in
Virginia in the eighteenth century this was only the first in a
drama of five or more acts. The early death of the first bride left
a vacancy speedily filled by new and successive unions with new
associations and combinations. Five times was not an unusual number
for men to remarry.
This meant five wooings, five weddings, five "infairs," many births
(varying in number from one to twenty-six), five funerals,--all to
be included in thirty adult years more or less. Then, too, there
were five tombstones to be erected and as many epitaphs to be
composed--no two of which to be alike. One wife (usually the first)
almost exhausts the vocabulary of adoring affection, another's piety
is emphasized, another "lived peacably with her neighbors"; each one
was "as a wife dutiful." "Obedient" was a word dear to the colonial
husband.
We have no authority for supposing that the officiating clergyman
at a funeral was ever actually retained for the ensuing nuptials of
the bereaved. Initial steps in that direction were never taken in
Virginia until a husband or wife was well under the sod. Divorce
being unknown, unthinkable indeed, husbands and wives were united
in bonds indissoluble, until death did them part. But when it
did--why, then there was no reasonable cause for delay. It was not
at all unusual for the new husband to offer for probate the will
of his predecessor. Man in those days did not believe he was made
to mourn, at least not for maid or matron, nor that charming women
were created to weep in widow's weeds beyond the decent period of
two months. The little hands were firmly drawn from their pressure
upon the tearful eyes, tucked comfortably under a new, strong arm,
and the widow's little baronry stitched to a new sleeve. There were
exceptions, of course, but not many. When one of the husbands of
Mary Washington's charming nieces (the Gregory girls) lay mortally
ill, he looked up with anguish at the lovely young wife bending
over him, and implored her to keep herself for him. She readily
promised never again to marry, and kept her promise. Another, left a
widow, essayed to follow the sublime example of her sister. One of
the masterful Thorntons sued for twenty years, but won at last. The
statute of limitations in Cupid's court held for twenty years only
in colonial Virginia.
Writers of the period explain these multiplied marriages by
the necessity of a protector for every woman owning land to be
cultivated by negro slaves and indented servants, and on the other
hand the woful state of a large family of young children left
motherless at the mercy of those servants. The new master and the
new mother became a necessity.
It sometimes happened that the newly contracting parties had already
many children from the three or four previous marriages. These must
now be brought under one sheltering roof. The little army must
be restrained by strict government; hence the necessity for the
stern parental discipline of colonial times. "It is gratifying, my
dear," said an amiable patriarch, "to find that _your_ children,
_my_ children, and _our_ children can live so peacefully together,"
nobody knowing so well as the patriarch and the children at what
price the peace had been purchased.
Thus it can be easily seen how maddening an enterprise is the
attempt to trace Virginia relationships, and how we so often lose a
woman and give her over as dead to find her resurrected under a new
name. We once lost Mary Washington's sister Hannah (Ball) Travers.
She turned up at last as Mrs. Pearson! To sort and label and
classify Virginia cousins means nervous prostration. In the families
of Thornton, Carter, and their kin, it means more! Madness lies that
way!
The spinster of uncertain age, known irreverently as an "old maid,"
was a rare individual in colonial Virginia. We all know Colonel
Byrd's "Miss Thekky, mourning her virginity." We really cannot name
another.
When a good man, addressing himself to the compilation of family
records for his children, was constrained to admit that one was
unmarried, he made haste to declare that she "lived single by her
own choice." Colonel Byrd Willis says of his daughter Mary, "She is
unmarried--but by her own choice. It will be a fine fellow who can
tempt her to leave her home. She has not seen him yet!" He goes on
to enumerate her social triumphs. There had been a "Bouquet Ball,"
of which a certain commodore was made king. He chose Miss Mary
Willis, and bestowed upon her the bouquet. A foot-note informs us
that she isn't single any more! She has married the commodore!
[Illustration: Colonel Byrd.]
Stern as was the parental discipline of the time, the spirit of the
young men, who were accounted grown and marriageable at nineteen,
was in no wise broken or quenched. Many of them ran away from their
masters at the schools in England and Scotland, and their fathers'
agents had much ado to find and capture them again. The sons of John
Spotswood were lost in England for many months, but were back home
again in time to be gallant officers in the Revolution. And even
the conservative blood of the Washingtons was not strong enough
to temper that of the Willises, for Mildred Washington's grandson
"Jack" Willis ran away from school and joined a party to explore
the wilderness of Kentucky. They were attacked by Indians, and were
scattered; Jack escaped in a canoe, and was the _first white man_ to
descend the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. His father had sewed some
doubloons in his jacket, but he gave them to a man in New Orleans to
purchase clothing and food, and never again beheld his agent or the
doubloons or their equivalent. He worked his way in a sailing vessel
to New York, and _walked_ from New York to his home in Virginia,
arriving, like the Spotswood boys, just in time to enter the army
with his father and serve to its close. He was a son of Lewis
Willis, Washington's schoolmate.
About 1740 the importation of horses of the English racing stock
commenced, also the breeding of horses for racing. Between 1740 and
1775 are recorded the names of fifty imported horses and thirty
mares of note: Aristotle, Babraham, Bolton, Childers, Dabster,
Dottrell, Dimple, Fearnaught, Jolly Roger, Juniper, Justice, Merry
Tom, Sober John, Vampire, Whittington, Janus, Sterling, Valiant,
etc. Owners of these horses among Mary Washington's neighbors were
Roger Gregory, Colonel John Mercer of "Marlboro," Mr. Spotswood,
William Fitzhugh of "Chatham," all the Thorntons, and _later_
Colonel George Washington of Mount Vernon, who was a steward of
the Alexandria Jockey Club and ran his own horses there and at
Annapolis! There was a fine race-course at Fredericksburg, and
purses were won from ten to a hundred pounds. This, the prime
amusement in spring, summer, and autumn, was varied (alas!) by
cock-fights, wrestling-matches, and rough games, in which the common
people, as in England, participated, while the gentry looked on and
awarded prizes. But in the long winter evenings, neighbors gathered
for Christmas and other house-parties, indulged in the gentle art of
story-telling. Later, old Fredericksburg boasted a notable, peerless
raconteur, John Minor, but his stories were built upon Virginia's
legends; his home, "Hazel Hill," was the rendezvous of all the
neighbors, young and old, in quest of sympathy or counsel, or advice
in the honorable settlement of quarrels, or for a season of genial
companionship. Around the fireside at "Hazel Hill" the children
would gather for their own story-telling hour "between daylight and
dark," and there the immortal "B'rer Rabbit" appears, but not for
the first time, in the annals of colonial history, and her Serene
Highness, the "Tar Baby," held her nightly court.
Around the winter fireside in the old colonial houses, the children,
and their seniors as well, learned the folk-lore of their native
colony, for, young as was the new country, Virginia had already her
legends: the mystic light on the lake in the Dismal Swamp, where the
lost lovers paddled their ghostly canoe; the footprints of the Great
Spirit on the rocks near Richmond; the story of Maiden's Adventure
on the James River; the story of the Haunted House--the untenanted
mansion at Church Hill--untenanted for eight decades because the
unhappy spirit of a maiden tapped with her fan on the doors where
wedded couples slept, invoking curses upon love that had failed her;
of sweet Evelyn Byrd, who rested not under her monument at Westover,
but glided among the roses, wringing her hands in hopeless grief
for the loss of a mortal's love; and of the legend of the wonderful
curative spring just discovered in Greenbrier County (learned from
an old Indian of the tribe of the Shawnees)--how one of the great
braves had once been missed from the council-fires and been found in
a valley, weak and supine, binding the brows of an Indian maid with
ferns and flowers; how two arrows had sped by order of the Great
Spirit, one destined for the man, one for the maid; how the recreant
warrior had been slain by the one, but the other arrow had buried
itself in the earth and when withdrawn a great, white sulphur spring
had gushed forth; how the maiden was doomed to wander as long as the
stream flowed, and not until it ceased could her spirit be reunited
to that of her lover in the happy hunting-grounds; also how the body
of the slain warrior was laid towards the setting sun, and the form
of the sleeping giant might be clearly discerned despite the trees
that grew over it.
[Illustration: WESTOVER.]
And one more Indian legend is so charming that we may be forgiven
for perpetuating it on these pages, remembering that these are
genuine Indian legends which have never before been printed. This
last was the story of the Mocking-bird. How once long ago there were
no wars or fightings, or tomahawks or scalpings among the Indians.
They were at perfect peace under the smile of the Great Spirit.
And in this beautiful time those who watched at night could hear a
strange, sweet song sweeping over the hills and filling the valleys,
now swelling, now dying away to come again. This was the music of
all things; moon, stars, tides, and winds, moving in harmony. But at
last Okee, the Evil One, stirred the heart of the red man against
his brother, and the nations arrayed themselves in battle. From that
moment the song was heard no more. The Great Spirit, Kiwassa, knew
that his children bemoaned their loss, and he promised them the song
should not be lost forever. It would be found some day by some
brave--loftier, better, stronger, than all others.
It fell at last that a chieftain loved the daughter of a hostile
chief. Both were captured and burned at the stake. Both died
bravely, each comforting the other. After death the chief, because
he had been so brave, was given the body of a bird, and sent in
quest of the Lost Song. When he found it, and only then, could
all be forgiven and the spirits of the lovers be reunited in the
happy hunting-grounds. Since then the bird has travelled north,
south, east, west, and wherever it goes it learns the songs of
all creatures, learns and repeats them. But the hatchet is not
yet buried; the Lost Song not yet found. Imagination can supply
few pictures fairer than this: firelight playing on the attentive
faces of old cavaliers and matrons, young men and lovely maidens,
the centre their accomplished host, "the pink of a chivalric
gentleman," gallant, cultured, refined, and at his knees, in his
arms, and seated on his shoulders, happy children, not only those
of his house-party, but others among his neighbors who dropped in
especially for the children's hour.
It is evident that Mary Washington's social life must have been an
active one. At the weddings and the christenings of her large circle
of neighbors and kindred she was certainly present. But I doubt
whether she ever attended the races, "Fish Frys, and Barbecues," of
which her neighbors were so fond. Not that she ventured to express
disapproval of things with which the clergy found no fault, but she
was a strict economist of time, never wasting it on trifles. She
kept her own accounts, managed her own plantation, and kept a stern
watch on the overseers of her son's estates.
To do this, and at the same time fill her place in her large circle
of friends, whose relations with her warranted their coming at will
for long visits, required all the method and management of which she
was capable.
Besides the householders, with their sons and daughters, who
regularly exchanged visits with each other at least once or twice
annually, Virginia had also her class of impecunious bachelors,
whose practice was to visit from house to house, taking in all
the well-to-do families. Until the Revolution--when they had
something else to do--they represented the class of hangers-on to
wealth, known to-day as "the little brothers of the rich,"--very
nice, adaptable, agreeable gentlemen, whom everybody likes, and to
whom society is willing to give much, exacting little in return.
In pre-Revolutionary Virginia, however, they could and did give
something. They gathered the news from house to house, brought
letters and the northern papers; were intelligent couriers, in
short, who kept the planter well-advised of all political rumors.
They possessed certain social accomplishments, could carve fairy
baskets out of cherry stones, cut profile portraits to be laid on
a black background, and make and mend pens to perfection. "When
I was in Stafford County a month ago," says the tutor at "Nomini
Hall," "I met[7] Captain John Lee, a Gentleman who seems to copy the
character of Addison's Will Wimble. He was then just sallying out on
his Winter's Visits, and has got now so far as here; he stays, as
I am told, about eight or ten weeks in the yeare at his own House,
the remaining part he lives with his Waiting Man on his Friends."
Captain Lee, by the way, is further recorded as "a _distant_ cousin
of the Lees of Westmoreland."
[7] Fithian's Diary.
In making these visits to the large country houses, young people
would naturally confer together and manage to meet those they knew
best and liked best. Thus it would sometimes happen (and who so
willing as the hosts?) that a large house-party would assemble
unheralded, and the house be filled with a merry company. "The usual
retinue," says General Maury, "at my wife's home was fifteen or more
well-trained servants when the house was full of company; and as
many as thirty or more of the family and friends daily dined there
together for weeks and months at a time." This was at Cleveland,
near Fredericksburg; and hospitality quite as generous ruled all the
homes in Mary Washington's neighborhood.
It sometimes happened that the capacity of the elastic house reached
its limit. On one such rare occasion a belated Presbyterian minister
alighted at the front gate and walked in with his baggage,--a pair
of well-worn saddle-bags. He was warmly welcomed, of course, but
the lady of the manor was in despair. Where could he sleep? Every
corner was full. One couldn't ask a clergyman to spend the night on
a settee in the passageway, nor lie upon a "pallet" of quilts on
the parlor floor. The children heard the troubled consultation as
to ways and means with their "Mammy," and were full of sympathy for
the homeless, unsheltered guest. The situation was still serious
when the household was summoned to family prayers. The clergyman--a
gaunt specimen with a beaklike nose and mournful voice--launched
into the one hundred and second Psalm, pouring out, as the pitying
children thought, his own soul in its homeless desolation. When he
reached the words, "I am like a pelican in the wilderness: I am like
an owl in the desert: I am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop,"
the exultant voice of the youngest little girl rang out, "_Mamma, he
can roost on the tester!_" One cannot wonder at this advice from a
hospitable man who had been literally "eaten out of house and home,"
"I advise my son to keep out of other people's houses, and keep
other people out of his own."
One can hardly imagine the care and labor involved in so much
entertaining. Nobody ever passed a house without calling; nobody
ever left it without refreshment for man and beast. Horses and
servants attended every visitor.
[Illustration: The Kitchen of Mount Vernon.]
Think of the quantity of food to be provided! And yet, a housewife's
_batterie de cuisine_ was of the simplest. The kitchen fireplace
held the iron pot for boiling the indispensable and much-respected
gammon of bacon (Virginia ham), and there were lidded ovens,
large and small, standing high on four feet, that coals might
burn brightly beneath them. There was a "skillet," with its ever
ascending incense from frying chickens and batter-cakes,--a
long-handled utensil with no feet at all, but resting upon the
portable, triangular "trevet,"--which, being light, could be thrust
into the very heart of the fire or drawn out on the fire-proof
dirt floor. There was a "hoe," known as a cooking utensil only in
Virginia, slanting before the coals for the thin hoe-cake of Indian
meal. In front stood the glory and pride of the kitchen,--the
spit, like two tall andirons with deeply serrated sides, on which
iron rods holding flesh and fowl could rest and be turned to roast
equally. An ample pan beneath caught the basting-butter and juices
of the meat. This spit held an exposed position, and has been known
to be robbed now and then by some unmannerly hound, or wandering
Caleb Balderstone, unable to resist such temptations. What would
the modern queen of the kitchen think of "a situation" involving
such trials,--her own wood often to be brought by herself, her
breakfast, including four or five kinds of bread (waffles, biscuit
thick and thin, batter-cakes, loaf bread), her poultry to be killed
and plucked by herself, her coffee to be roasted, fish scaled and
cleaned, meats cut from a carcass and trimmed, to say nothing of
cakes, puddings, and pies? And all this to be done for a perennial
house-party, with its footmen and maids!
True, the negro cook of colonial times had many
"kitchen-maids,"--her own children. But even with these her
achievements were almost supernatural. With her half-dozen utensils
she served a dinner that deserved--and _has_--immortality! "Old
Phyllis," the cook at "Blenheim," "Mammy Lucy" at Cleveland,
and many others have a high place in an old Virginian's Hall of
Fame,--his heart!
There was no lack of service in Mary Washington's day. The negro was
docile, affectionate, and quick to learn, at least these were the
characteristics of those employed in households. But even as late
as in Mary Ball's girlhood the negroes had no language intelligible
to their employers. One of the Lancaster clergymen, Mr. Bell,
writes that his congregation includes many "negroes, who cannot
understand my language nor I theirs." There is something infinitely
pathetic in this picture of the homeless savage in a strange land.
The African, finding himself not understood, made haste to acquire
the language spoken to him. His intimate association was with the
indented white men who labored with him, and he then and there
created a language distinctively known as his own, to which he still
clings and which contains, I believe, no word that can be traced
to African origin--at least this is true of the Virginia negro's
dialect. "It appears that the indented servants from whom he learned
must have come from Warwickshire. The negro dialect can be found in
Shakespeare;[8] for instance, 'trash,' afterwards accentuated by
'po' white trash.' 'What trash is Rome, what rubbish, what offal,'
says Cassius. 'They are trash,' says Iago, etc. 'Terrify,' for
'aggravate' or 'destroy,' is Warwickshire; also 'his'n,' 'her'n,'
for 'his' and 'hers'; 'howsomdever,' for 'however' (_Venus and
Adonis_); 'gawm,' for 'soiling hands or face'; 'yarbs,' for 'herbs';
'make,' for 'kindle' (make the fire); 'like,' for 'likely' (I was
like to fall); 'peart,' for 'lively'; 'traipsing,' for 'walking
idly about'; 'ooman,' for 'woman'; 'sallit,' for 'green stuff';
'yourn,' for 'yours.' These and many more negro words are taken from
Warwickshire dialect, and are to be found in Shakespeare." Upon
this root the negro grafted, without regard to its meaning, any and
every high-sounding word which he happened to hear, and which seemed
to him magnificent. The meaning signified so little that he never
deemed it necessary to ask it. The result was, to say the least,
picturesque.
[8] "Warwickshire Dialect," by Mr. Appleton Morgan.
The church being his earliest school, he was soon impressed by the
names of certain of the Hebrew Patriarchs, and the first names
with which he endowed his children were Aaron, Moses, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and Isaiah. Why he scorned Jeremiah, Nahum, Ezekiel,
and others, is best known to himself. Later, he caught from
the companionship of the schoolboys the names of the heroes of
antiquity, giving decided preference to Pompey and Cæsar. There
was a Josephus in a Fredericksburg family, differentiated in the
next generation by _Jim_sephus. Later still his fancy was caught
by the shining lights of the Revolution. A goodly crop followed of
Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Randolphs. There was even a Rochambeau,
unhappily corrupted into "Rushingbow."
While the queen of the nursery was an ebony incarnation of faithful
love, tenderness, and patience, she never surrendered her sceptre
until her charges were actually married. She never condescended to
be taught by those to whom she had herself been teacher. "Mammy,"
exclaimed a little Fredericksburg maiden of ten, "what do you think?
I have found an ungrammatical error in the Bible." "Kill him, honey!
Kill him quick! He'll eat up the pretty book-mark!" exclaimed the
old nurse, too proud to acknowledge her ignorance of the beautiful
new word.
"Po' white trash" was a term applied to all householders who could
not afford style in living and equipage, notably to those (and they
were few) who owned no slaves. There was no squalor, no pauperism
in Virginia in 1740 and later. Even indented servants prospered
sufficiently after a few years to send to England for servants of
their own. The convict labor of Virginia was mainly employed in the
fields and on the boats; and it is recorded that these convicts were
short-lived, the hot sun giving them always a "seasoning fever"
which often proved fatal. Of course political convicts were of a
different class, and when found to have been educated were employed
as teachers.
Entirely distinct from these was the class who were entitled to
write "Gent" after their names, as their English fathers had done.
"The term 'Gentleman,'" says Mr. Lyon Tyler, "assumed a very general
meaning in the succeeding century, but its signification at this
time was perhaps what Sir Edward Coke ascribed to it, _qui gerit
arma_, one who bears arms."
It was not the custom then as now to address a man without some
prefix. He was "Squire" if he was a member of the King's Council;
"Gent" if he bore arms, otherwise "Mr."; and if in humble life,
"Goodman." Women of any degree were "Mistress"--Mistress Evelyn
Byrd, Mistress Mary Stagg; in middle class, "Dame"; of gentle blood,
"Madam" and "Lady." In the _Virginia Gazette_ "Lady Washington's"
comings and goings are duly chronicled. Even now the Virginian loves
to endow his fellows with a title, and risks "Colonel" in default of
a better.
The Virginia woman, at the period of which we write, felt keenly
the disadvantage of her remoteness from that centre of knowledge
and courtly usage, the mother country. Men who were educated abroad
began to accumulate books for ambitious libraries, but these books
were largely in the Latin tongue, and the Virginia girl had not
the courage of Queen Elizabeth, and did not address herself to
the study of the Classics that she might "match the men." She had
good, strong sense, and the faculty known as mother-wit, but I
am afraid I must confess she had small learning. What time had
she--married at fifteen--to read or study? As to Mary Washington,
her library, for ought we know to the contrary, seems to have begun
and ended with "Sir Matthew Hale." In 1736 Mr. Parks published his
_Virginia Gazette_ for fifteen shillings a year. Beverley & Stith
had published their "Histories," and William Byrd his "Pamphlets."
These she may have read; but it is extremely doubtful whether she
read the poems and other society doings, records of races and other
happenings, which appeared weekly in the _Gazette_, or approved of
seeing the names, qualities, and fortunes of the ladies recorded as
frankly as at the present day.
These ladies were the daughters, sisters, and wives of men of
brilliant genius and attainments. They could hardly sustain such
relations with such men without becoming themselves superior women.
Dr. Archibald Alexander knew Mrs. Meredith, the sister of Patrick
Henry. "She was, in my judgment, as eloquent as her brother;
nor have I ever met with a lady who equalled her in powers of
conversation."
Something then was said of a woman besides what she wore, whither
she went, and whom she entertained at dinner and tea. There were
women of whom the _Gazette_ kindly said they possessed "amiable
sweetness of disposition, joined with the finest intellectual
attainments," but I am constrained to challenge the latter if it
presupposes the attainments to have been literary. How could it
be otherwise when Thomas Jefferson prescribed that his daughter's
time should be divided between dancing, music, and French? And when
Charles Carter, of "Cleve," after ordering that his sons, John and
Landon, then in England, should master languages, mathematics,
philosophy, dancing, fencing, law, adds, "And whereas the
extravagance of the present age, and the flattering hopes of great
Fortunes may be a temptation to run into unnecessary Expenses of
Living, it is my positive Will and desire that my Daughters may be
maintained with great frugality, and _taught to dance_."
The young women whose brothers had tutors at home were fortunate.
They learned to "read and write and cypher." Then there were men
"Glad to turn itinerant
to stroll and teach from town to town"
and from plantation to plantation. From these the young ladies had
their music and dancing lessons. Their letters are very stilted and
polite,--poor dears,--but "intellectual attainments" do not appear
in many of them. They usually end with laying upon a bad pen all
the blame for all shortcomings. "Excuse bad spelling and writing,
for I have ane ill pen," said Jeanie Deans. The colonial ladies made
no apology for their phonetic spelling. Was not that all right?
If "hir" did not spell "her," pray, what did it spell? "Bin" was
surely more reasonable than "been"; "tha" than "they." There were
"Dixonaries" in the closets along with the Latin books, but they
were troublesome, and not always to be trusted. Dr. Johnson--if
we can imagine him as such--was in their day a sweet babe in long
clothes!
When the slow-sailing ships arrived from England one might have the
fashions of six months ago.
English cousins sometimes came over, and very nervous were the
Virginia girls lest the Western _ménage_ should be found to be
behind the times. Among old letters a certain Miss Ambler appears
to have been dreadfully aggrieved by the criticisms of some English
cousins. "Everything we eat, drink or wear seems to be wrong--the
rooms are too cold or too hot; the wood is not laid _straight_
on the Andirons:--and even poor Aunt Dilsey does not escape
censure,--dear Aunt Dilsey whom we all so love! Actually, Aunt
Dilsey came to me in tears, and said she had been ordered to pull
down her bandanna so that none of her wool would show in the back of
her poor neck, and to draw cotton gloves over her hands for they
were 'so black and nasty'!"
[Illustration: James Monroe.]
Many of the Virginians, at that early day, were advocates of negro
emancipation. James Monroe, who lived in Fredericksburg, was the
great friend of emancipation. Monrovia, the capital of Liberia,
was named in his honor. It was a citizen of Fredericksburg, in
1782, who introduced into the body, which had replaced the House
of Burgesses, the first resolution for the emancipation of negroes
and for the prohibition of the slave trade ever offered in America.
General John Minor, of "Hazel Hill," was the author and advocate of
this measure. In 1792 the first-published utterance against slavery
in this country appeared in a tract entitled, "Slavery Inconsistent
with Justice and Good Policy," by the Rev. David Rice. When estates
were settled large numbers of negroes were manumitted by common
consent and sent to Liberia.
We have reason to believe that house servants were treated with the
affectionate consideration they deserved. Mr. Custis distinctly
declares that this was true of Mary Washington,--that she was always
kind to her servants, and considerate of their comfort. The man
or woman who treated servants with severity was outlawed from the
friendship and respect of his neighbors, many of whom at a later day
freed their slaves and left them land to live upon.