#Eleanor Calvert Custis

[cuntycassandra]

On February 3, 1774, Jacky Custis married Eleanor Calvert at Mount Airy, her father’s estate in Prince George’s County, Maryland. They had six daughters, including the social leaders Elizabeth Parke Custis Law and Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis Lewis, and one son, the writer and orator George Washington Parke Custis. Until late in 1778 Custis and his family divided their time among White House, Mount Vernon, and Mount Airy.

- Jacky’s domestic life after he left King’s College in New York to instead become a planter, politician and a family man. Eliza was definitely one of his favourite children, they were extremely close.

[venicepearl]

Eleanor Calvert Custis Stuart (1757/1758 – September 28, 1811), born Eleanor Calvert, was a prominent member of the wealthy Calvert family of Maryland. Upon her marriage to John Parke Custis, she became the daughter-in-law of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington and the stepdaughter-in-law of George Washington. Her portrait hangs today at Mount Airy Mansion in Rosaryville State Park, Maryland.

[ohhthatssosarella]

John "Jacky" Parke Custis

John "Jacky" Parke Custis was born on November 27, 1754 in White House Plantation, New Kent County, Virginia, British America. His parents were Daniel Parke Custis [1711-1757] and Martha Dandridge [1731-1802]. George Washington [1732-1799] was his step-father. He had three [3] siblings: Daniel Parke Custis Jr. [1751-1754], Frances Parke Custis [1753-1757] and Martha "Patsy" Parke Custis [1756-1773].

In 1774 Jacky married Eleanor Calvert [1757/1758-1811]. Together they had seven [7] children: Unnamed daughter [1775-1775], Elizabeth "Eliza" Parke Custis Law [1776-1831], Martha "Patsy" Parke Custis Peter [1777-1854], Eleanor "Nelly" Parke Custis Lewis [1779- 1852], Unnamed twin daughters [1780-1780] and George Washington "Wash" Parke Custis [1781-1857].

Jacky died on November 05, 1781 in Eltham Plantation, New Kent County, Virginia, U.S.. The cause of death was "camp fever" (either epidemic typhus or dysentery). He was laid to rest at his family's plot near Queen's Creek in York County, near Williamsburg, Virginia.

[sonofhistory]

didn't washington have not so good relationship with his stepson?

George Washington first met John Park “Jacky” in mid-March of 1758 when he courted his mother Martha Dandridge Custis. Jacky was on four years old at the time. While Washington adopted both Jacky and his sister Patsy, they retained their Custis surname. The children arrived to reside at Mount Vernon with their own slaves–Jacky’s was a ten year old named Julius. In his diary, Washington sometimes referred to his stepchildren as “Jacky Custis” and “Patsy Custis” as if they were visitors.

Although Washington enjoyed his children, “his formal presence tended to freeze their jollity.” His adopted grandson said, “They felt they were in the presence of one who was not to be trifled with.” He doted in Patsy, a girl who enjoyed music, while Jacky studied the violin and flute. He also hired a dancing master at Mount Vernon for the two children. Washington once himself stated that he had a more relaxed style with girls and that he could govern men not boys. Jacky shared many traits with his late father and the differences he had in temperament with his step-father created issues. Washington was harsh at the same time he was reluctant to apply discipline to Jacky.

Jacky was outwardly sweet and affectionate towards his mother but showed a degree of reserve and disrespect for Washington. His feckless nature was intolerable to Washington and he found himself in a predicament of wanting to disciple Jacky for his actions without seeming brutal to his wife. Towards the end of 1767, Washington sought to find a new teacher for the thirteen-year-old and contacted Reverend Jonathon Boucher, an Anglican clergyman who ran a small academy for wealthy boys in his home near Fredericksburg. In his introductory letter, Washington described Jacky as “as promising boy” who was “untwining in his morals and of innocent manners” but confessed his “anxiety to make him fit for more useful purposes than a horse racer.” Washington rode to Boucher’s school with Jacky, Jacky’s personal slave Julius and two horses.

Boucher’s first letter home described Jacky as a little angel, “a boy of so exceedingly mild and meek a temper” that Boucher worried he might be too artless, with “all the harmlessness of the dove” and none of “the wisdom of the serpent.” He concluded, “I have not seen a youth that I think promises ferried to be a good and useful man than John Custis.” However, a year later, Boucher whistled a different tune. “You will remember my having complained of Jack’s laziness, which, however, I now hope is not incurable,” he wrote to Washington. Later he wrote, “The chief failing of [Jacky’s] character are that he is constitutionally somewhat too warm, indolent and voluptuous.” He added, “Sunk in unmanly sloth, [Jacky’s] estate will be left to the management of some worthless overseer and himself soon be entangled in some matrimonial adventure.” Jacky saw little need to apply himself to his studies.

Martha Washington was a very overprotective mother who would not allow her son to swim because she feared he would drown. In the end, Jacky became so uncontrollable he began staying with other friends after his lessons and often spent the night elsewhere. “I would beg leave to request,” Washington told Boucher, “that [Jacky] may not be suffered to sleep from under your own roof … nor allow him to be rambling about at nights in company with those who do not care how debauched and vicious his conduct may be.” Boucher soon admitted he’d “Neve did in my life know a youth so exceedingly indolent to so surprisingly voluptuous. One would suppose nature had intended him for some Asiatic prince.” Boucher suggested the best way to control Jacky was to send his two horses back to Mount Vernon but Martha, his mother, refused.

Washington attempted to give his stepson everything education wise that he never got to have. He monitors Jacky’s education so narrowly because he took seriously his role as guardian of him. Early 1773, Washington found it high time to send Jacky off to college. For Martha, College of William and Mary would of been desirable considering it’s location, but Washington wanted to send Jacky off to College of New Jersey, however, Boucher wanted to steer him toward King’s College. After, Washington was decidedly in favor of King’s. In December of 1771, unfortunately, Jacky began to court Eleanor “Nelly” Calvert. Washington disapproved of the marriage but told Mr. Calvert to wait for marriage for two or three years until Jacky had completed his education. 

When Jacky returned to Mount Vernon, he had with him in tow Charles Willson Peale who painted a portrait of Washington while there and miniatures of Martha, Patsy and Jacky. In May 1773, Washington accompanied his stepson to New York City and enrolled him in King’s College. Instead of socializing with other students, Jacky dinned with President Myles Cooper and his turbos. “I believe I may say without vanity that I am looked upon in a particular light” by the faculty, Jacky told his mother. “There is as much distinction made between me and the other students as can be expected.” He also bragged he and his friend Joe had their own suite rooms. When Patsy, his sister, died, his fiancee, Nelly, was staying with the Washington’s and her presence proved providential and she stepped into a huge emotional void left Patsy’s death, becoming like a second daughter. 

During their first year of marriage, after Jacky dropped out of King’s College, Jacky and Nelly divided their time between Mount Airy and Mount Vernon, despite Martha’s wishes that they move permanently to Mount Vernon. Washington found solace that her son, of whom she was so attached to, may now provide emotional support for her and care for her. He asked Jacky and his bride to stay full time at Mount Vernon. While Washington was in Cambridge, on November 16th, 1775, accompanied by Jacky and Nelly, Martha piled into a carriage set for this destination. They arrived on December 11th, 1775 have not seen him since May. Washington soon pressed Jacky into service as a messenger. 

In a letter in which Jacky intended to be solely about his mother’s recovery from her smallpox inoculation, he used the occasion to express gratitude for everything his step father had done for him, thanking him for the “parental care which on all occasions you have shown me. It pleased the Almighty to deprive me at a very early period of life of my father, but I cannot sufficiently adore His goodness in sending me so good a guardian as you, Sir. Few have experienced such care and attention from real parents as I have done. He is best deserves the name of father who acts the part of one.”

Martha, temporarily away from her husband at Mount Vernon, was there to witness the birth of her second grandchild to Jacky’s wife on New Year’s Eve in 1777. However, Jacky soon dwelled in selfish ways when he stalled in settling debts to his stepfather so he could repay in cheaper currency. With four children, Jacky took up residence at Mount Vernon in Washington’s absence and even named his last child George Washington Parke Custis in honor of him.

Jacky, in 1781 volunteered his services as an aide to Washington while before contributing only modestly to the war effort. Amid the unsanitary conditions at Yorktown, Jacky contracted camp fever and, knowing the condition most often to be fatal, expressed a last wish of witnessing Cornwallis’s surrender. He was carted thirty miles to Eltham in New Kent County, the estate of his uncle and his mother, his wife and his father-in-law were summoned to attend to him. By the time Washington arrived he learned the doctors had failed and Jacky was dying. The young man expired a few hours later, three weeks before his twenty-seventh birthday. On French observed remarked that Washington had a profound emotional response to Jacky’s death and was “uncommonly affected.” Washington remained in Eltham, attended to Jacky’s funeral before escorting his stepson’s recent widow and his wife. 

Jacky left behind three small daughter and a baby boy. The Washingtons decided to adopt informally the two youngest children, Eleanor Parke Custis, then two years old called “Nelly” and George Washington Parke Custis, seven months old. Washington took seriously his duties toward the children and wrote in his will that it had “always been my intention, since my expectation of having issues has ceased, to consider the grandchildren of my life in the same light as I do my own relations.”

Jacky Custis left behind a murky legacy. Many years later his eldest daughter Elizabeth, raised by her mother and stepfather told how her father would hoist her on a table and forced her to sing indecent songs that he had taught her in order to divert his inebriated friends. “I was animated to exert myself to give him delight,” she wrote. “The servants in the passage would join in their mirth and I, hold my head erect, would strut about the table to receive the praises of the company. My mother remonstrated in vain.” Because he had not had a son until later, Jacky told his guests that little Elizabeth “must make fun for him until he had.”

[cuntycassandra]

Patsy went to her room to retrieve a recent letter from her brother who was away at college in New York when she fell to her final fatal seizure. Hearing a strange noise coming from Patsy's bedroom, Eleanor Calvert found the young woman on the floor in the throes of a life-threatening seizure. Patsy was moved onto the bed until the duration ended, while George Washington knelt beside the stepdaughter he had raised since she was an infant with tears streaming down his face, praying for her recovery. Less than two minutes later she was pronounced dead, "without uttering a Word, a groan, or scarce a Sigh."

An account of Patsy Custis’s death, highlighted line was taken from the Washington Diaries.

Felt like a sprinkle of angst was due. Patsy’s death with always make me really sad. She was so precious and innocent, she really didn’t deserve what happened to her.

[cuntycassandra]

“I am afraid I shall not have the Pleasure of escorting Mamma to Camp, as She Proposes to set off so soon, Nelly will not be in such a Situation as I could leave Her, and My Toe is not recovered from an ugly Frost Bit I got some Time ago. I will however do myself that Pleasure as soon as it is in my Power. I must now conclude with intreating you to beleive Me Yr most Affecte,

J. P. Custis”

To: George Washington

From: John ‘Jacky’ Parke Custis

Date: 14/01/1778

—

I don’t have much to say about this extract, just Jacky being a great family man.

God I love him… 💛

[cuntycassandra]

“Jacky Custis was on his way to enroll at King’s College, now Columbia University. George Washington had been dissatisfied with his young stepson’s progress under Jonathan Boucher and his desire to settle Jacky in college was further strengthened by the young man’s engagement to Nelly Calvert.”

- a diary entry labelled 8th May, 1773, The Washington Papers

Small, slice of life, snippet from the Washington’s papers, an edited extract from Washington’s own diary. Here we see a Jonathan Boucher being a dick as per usual because he couldn’t teach Jacky and single damn thing.

[cuntycassandra]

“I am happy in informing you of the safe Delivery of my dear Nelly of a fine Daughter, both She and the Child are well—Nelly desires to be remember’d to you, in the most Affectionate Manner, and sincerely wishs you every Success.”

To: George Washington

From: John ‘Jacky’ Custis

Date: 14th January, 1778.

—

Jacky’s words over one of his newborn daughters, who unfortunately did not live to see adulthood, and instead died in infancy. She would have been the third (living) daughter of the Parke-Custis’s children, had she survived past her juvenile years.

[cuntycassandra]

“I am now happy enough to inform that Nelly and my two youngest Girls are recovered from their Illness, my eldest is still afflicted with the Fever & Ague, Nelly begs You will accept Her affectionate regards, and joins with Me in wishing You every Blessing in this Life and Success in Your present Undertaking.”

To: George Washington

From: John ‘Jacky’ Parke Custis

Date: October 7th 1779

Jacky Custis discussing his wife and daughters recovery after they were struck with an illness nearing the end of September. Jacky stayed with his daughters in an attempt to help them recover, but in the process neglected his plantations and found himself behind on the harvest.

In short- devoted dad, my beloved.

[cuntycassandra]

Lmao I just realised jacky had 7 kids and he dies before his 27th birthday

There isn’t much of a connection, but still

It was a brain fart

Lmao it’s alright, Su!

You’d be right though! His first daughter was born in 1775, Jacky had been 21, and he and Eleanor had one baby per year from then until he died. (Sparing 1778)

Birth orders:

First born daughter - 1775

Elizabeth - 1776

Martha - 1777

Eleanor - 1779

Unnamed twins - 1780

George - 1781

[cuntycassandra]

Venus, Earth and Capricornus? <3

Venus: what’s your favourite tv show?

Turn: Washington spies (is this classed as a ‘tv’ show? Either way, it’s a show lmao)

Earth: If you could be anybody for a day, who would you be?

Either Eleanor Calvert-Custis, or Richard Kidder Meade (do dead people count??)

Capricornus: what’s a song lyric you relate too?

“Just because you know you’re colourblind doesn’t mean you can see the colours” - Empty, Jaiden Dittfach. It’s a really relatable lyric about how being aware of a hidden disability or mental illness doesn’t mean it will automatically go away and you can continue to live your life as normal.

Thank you for the asks Elle!! 💛

[cuntycassandra]

Actually: we’re doing it now 😎 screw consistency

Four of them lived to adulthood, three of them died in infancy. Eleanor had 23 children all together, but I don’t know much about the children from her later relationships. I don’t like her newer husband tho :(

Elizabeth Parke Custis Law (August 21st, 1776)

- absolute daddy’s girl. Loved her father, and tbh she was probably his favourite, if he had one

- after her father’s death she was quite sickly, which is believed to be due to the loss and grief.

- she continued to live with her mother and younger sister in their family home

- she married Thomas Law, and her grandparents were outraged.

- she died in 1831, and it was quite a surprise.

Martha Parke Custis Peter (31st December, 1777)

- she was born in Mount Vernon :)

- definitely grew up in her mother’s shoes.

- she had a miniature of George Washington as a wedding gift….?

- she had eight children (following in her mother’s footsteps)

- she purchased Tudor Palace in Washington D.C

- she died in 1854 (exactly 100 years after her father was born)

Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis (March 31st, 1779)

- had barely any recollection of her father, but didn’t hold much resentment

- grew up under George and Martha Washington’s care with her brother, while her sisters stayed with their mother.

- she was definitely a daddy’s girl too, but more so towards George than her bio father, for obvious reasons

- she lived in Mount Vernon and then New York while Washington was President

- she loved to help out with domestics

- *sigh* sheMarriedGeorgeWashington’sNephew (I know it’s not a direct relation but still…….no?

George Washington Parke Custis (April 30th, 1781)

- named after his grandfather

- was raised by his grandmother and grandfather.

- didn’t know his father at all, and it resonated within him.

- he was a really good author and loved books, unlike his father

- he didn’t like his stepfather, Dr. David Stuart (and neither do I)

- he never graduated university, but he attended Philadelphia Academy

- he was very much like his father when it came to academics, excluding reading/writing; but he would never admit so

- he had a few affairs and illegitimate children

- he was an active member of the American colonisation society

- he was quite admirable for his time

- he has his own legacy, unlike his siblings

There :) lmao love a good ramble.

I think my favourite Custis child is Elizabeth :)

I am up and awake and wanna know more about Jacky! 👏 You got any facts abt him?

Hey Byrd 😎

Imma spit some dumbass facts. You ready, fave??

- he died three weeks before his 27th birthday :(( big sad all around

- he had seven children before he died 😳 He and Nelly were busy

- he met his wife while studying in Maryland under his tutor, Reverend Boucher (bitchface)

- at age fourteen he ignored Boucher for a solid four day period. The reasoning is not quite clear, but I read that Jacky felt his “honour had been disrespected” and that he (I’m paraphrasing here) held utmost respect for his elders but did not feel as though Boucher deserved his respect. Pop off king.

- when said tutor asked to borrow money from him at the age of literally fifteen he said no.

- he was an incredible brother and son, especially towards his mother and sister.

- he LOVED horses. He was even allowed to take two of his horses to Maryland with him.

- despite their age difference, it is believed he adored his wife, and she- him.

- as he grew up, he wasn’t a huge alcohol consumer.

- he didn’t like to read. At all. A book had to really capture his interest or hold sentimental value, otherwise he wasn’t reading it.

- he was a civilian aide de camp for Washington at the battle of Yorktown. A threat to his native state and property set this off.

- he liked to dip his toes in politics, but was quite lax

- Reverend Boucher wanted to take Jacky to Europe with him (probably to drown him or something idk. Well. I do know. But I don’t believe the real reason, call me skeptical) and Washington said no lmao.

- he really didn’t like wars, which was strange considering his love for all things horses, dogs and other connotations of war.

Thank you Byrd!! I hope you liked my dumbass facts!!

[cuntycassandra]

heeeeeeeeeeeeeeey I am here for THE INTERACTTTTTION

drop me your 7 favourite facts about your favourite historical figure? :)

Well, I feel like this would be too easy to do about Washington, Laurens or Hamilton, so we’re talking about my guy John (Jacky) Parke Custis.

Let’s be honest I just wanted to talk about him more.

1. His favourite pass time was horse riding. This kid LOVED to ride horses, much like his stepfather! He was really good at it too! To the point where Washington was worried that Jacky would want to drop all education and become some sort of Jockey instead of a planter or something with more ‘dignity’.

2. He was a very good older brother and son in general! He cared about his little sister a lot, and they kept in contact with one another while he was away at both boarding school and college. She was actually on her way to collect one of his letters from her bedroom when she had a seizure and passed away. After Patsy’s death, he returned home to be with his mother and father (when he was also present) to comfort them and bring reassurance that he was safe. (This is why I make him such a great brother and son in my fanfics lmao. He deserves to be known for his kindness and not just ‘Washington’s disobedient stepson’)

3. During the battle of Yorktown, Jacky showed up as a volunteered aide de camp! He just....rocked up....like what a legend. Unfortunately, this did end in his death with camp fever however, which makes me very sad :(

4. He absolutely detested reading unless connotations could be provided! He liked to read when something fun or personal was tied into it (so maybe an interesting novel, or a book of his mothers) but otherwise, reading was the bane of this kid’s existence.

5. He got engaged at the age of 19 to a woman named Eleanor Calvert, which might seem reasonable as everybody got married young back then, but George and Martha were practically mortified. They were not expecting it at all.

6. "He best deserves the Name of Father who acts the Part of one. . . ." Is my favourite quote of Jacky’s to Washington

7. He had a watch stolen from him by the Reverend of his boarding school, who proceeded to admitting to the theft to Washington, but still insisted he beat Jacky. I freaking hate this man, I started a Reverend Boucher hate club, AND this is a Reverend Boucher hate blog lmao. He can rot.

I guess these aren’t really facts...and more random things I like about Jacky....lmao oops.

Thank you though Tori!!