George Washington Parke Custis

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Custis_George_Washington_Parke...

George Washington Parke Custis was a writer and orator who worked to preserve the legacy of their stepgrandfather, George Washington. Born in Maryland, Custis moved to Mount Vernon after the death of his father in 1781. He was expelled from college, served in the army, and lost election to the House of Delegates before moving to an inherited estate he called Arlington. In addition, Custis owned two other large plantations and property in four other counties. He promoted agricultural reform and commercial independence and disapproved of slavery on economic grounds, supporting gradual emancipation and colonization. During the War of 1812, Custis manned a battery, helped Dolley Madison save Washington's portrait at the White House, and delivered well-received orations on a variety of topics. In the years after the war, he began writing essays, often about Washington's family and career. He later turned to the penning of historical plays and operettas. Pocahontas; or, The Settlers of Virginia, from 1830, was dedicated to John Marshall and remains his most durable work. The patriotism of his plays fed into his work to preserve the legacy of his stepgrandfather. Custis curated a collection of Washington relics made available for public view and sometimes distributed as gifts. He arranged for portraits of Washington and painted his own scenes of life during the American Revolution (1775–1783). Custis died at Arlington in 1857.

Early Years

Custis was born on April 30, 1781, at Mount Airy, his maternal grandfather's estate in Prince George's County, Maryland. His elder sisters included Elizabeth Parke Custis Law and Eleanor "Nelly" Parke Custis Lewis, both of whom shared his devotion to preserving the legacy of George Washington. Their father, John Parke Custis, a planter and member of the House of Delegates, died on November 5, 1781, and on November 20, 1783, their mother, Eleanor Calvert Custis, married David Stuart, a physician and later a member of the Convention of 1788, and began a second family. Custis and his sister Nelly Custis grew up in the household of their paternal grandmother, Martha Custis Washington, and her second husband, George Washington, but Stuart, as Custis's stepfather, remained his official guardian.

Custis was expelled from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) in September 1797 for repeated misbehavior and left Saint John's College, in Annapolis, in July 1798 without completing his studies. Commissioned on January 10, 1799, a cornet in the army called up to meet the threat of war with France and promoted to second lieutenant on March 3 of that year, he served with a troop of Alexandria light dragoons and was discharged on June 15, 1800, with the brevet rank of major. In April 1802 Custis stood for election to the House of Delegates from Fairfax County as an old-line Federalist, opposing any further erosion of property qualifications for voting. He outpolled his stepfather but placed third among four candidates vying for the two seats.

Planter, Reformer, and Orator

Less than a month after the election Martha Washington died. After an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Mount Vernon from George Washington's nephew and heir, Custis moved to an 1,100-acre Alexandria County estate inherited from his father that he first called Mount Washington but soon renamed Arlington, for an ancestral property on the Eastern Shore. The estate lay in the area that Virginia had ceded to the federal government to become part of the District of Columbia and that Congress retroceded after a referendum in 1846. Custis owned two other large plantations totaling approximately 9,000 acres of land, Romancock in King William County and White House in New Kent County, which provided the foodstuffs and revenues to support him on his park estate at Arlington. He also inherited property in Northampton County, including Smith Island, and through marriage acquired land in Richmond, Stafford, and Westmoreland counties.

Custis believed slavery was an economic detriment to southern agriculture and blamed the institution for his financial problems. He supported the efforts of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States (popularly known as the American Colonization Society), but his opposition to the institution in theory did not lead him to manumit more than a handful of his slaves, nor did it prevent him from putting slaves on the auction block as punishment or when he became strapped for money.

On July 7, 1804, in the city of Alexandria, Custis married Mary Lee Fitzhugh, daughter of William Fitzhugh, a member of the Convention of 1776 and of the Continental Congress, and sister of William Henry Fitzhugh, a member of the Convention of 1829–1830. A prominent Episcopal lay leader and supporter of manumission and colonization, she died on April 23, 1853. Of their four daughters, only Mary Randolph Custis, who married Robert E. Lee, survived infancy. With a Custis family slave, Airy Carter, Custis had a daughter, Maria Carter, whom he educated and informally freed and to whom he gave about seventeen acres of the Arlington estate. She married and became the matriarch of a distinguished family that included her sons John B. Syphax, a member of the House of Delegates, and William Syphax, a prominent educator in Washington, D.C.

Deeply concerned about American dependency on foreign manufactures, Custis promoted commercial independence through agricultural reform and the improvement of domestic varieties of livestock. He described his vision in An Address to the People of the United States, on the Importance of Encouraging Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures(1808). Custis developed two breeds of sheep, the long-wooled Arlington Improved and the fine-wooled Smith's Island, also noted for the flavor of its mutton. Annual sheep shearings he held at Arlington from 1805 through 1812 evolved into full-scale agricultural fairs offering premiums for the best blankets, stockings, and yarn and to the family relying the least on imported material. Held on April 30, the date Washington had taken the oath of office as first president and therefore regularly celebrated by Federalists, the event became highly partisan. Custis closed each fair with an oration advocating the Federalist program, decrying the dangers of universal manhood suffrage, or warning of the threat to American liberty posed by Napoléon I.

During the War of 1812 Custis, an animated, gifted orator, became a speaker much in demand. On September 1, 1812, he delivered the funeral oration for James M. Lingan, a Revolutionary War veteran murdered by a Jeffersonian mob in Baltimore after helping to reopen and defend a Federalist newspaper office. Custis's stirring address, a tribute to the freedom of the press, was printed in Federalist pamphlets under various titles and circulated throughout the country. The following June 5 he addressed a Georgetown audience celebrating the failure of Napoléon's campaign in Russia. Custis helped man a battery at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814, and after the rout of the American army stopped at the White House to make sure that Dolley Madison moved Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Washington to safety.

Writer

During the marquis de Lafayette's triumphal tour of the United States in 1825, Custis began recording Lafayette's reminiscences of Washington, the Revolutionary War, and his own life and published them in sixteen parts in Alexandria's Phenix Gazette as "Conversations of La Fayette." The enthusiastic public response led Custis to begin setting down his own recollections of growing up at Mount Vernon. For the next three decades he wrote occasional essays on various aspects of Washington's life and the Revolution. These recollections often ran in the Alexandria or Washington newspapers on such anniversaries as Washington's Birthday or the Fourth of July or at times of national crisis, such as the sectional clash preceding the 'Compromise of 1850, in order to rekindle the fires of reconciliation and patriotism by reminding Americans of the achievements and sacrifices of Washington. Important for the details they contain about Washington in private life, Custis's recollections are also significant because in many cases they were the first appearance in print of certain stories. An 1826 essay on Mary Ball Washington, for example, was the first detailed piece ever printed about Washington's mother, and it remained the chief source for all nineteenth‑century historians examining Washington's childhood. In "His Portrait," another 1826 essay, Custis wrote that Washington had once thrown a piece of slate the size and shape of a dollar coin across the Rappahannock River. Custis never consummated plans to publish his essays in a single volume, but his daughter and the editor and illustrator Benson John Lossing collected many of the newspaper articles and family letters after his death and published them as Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington in several editions in 1859, 1860, and 1861.

At about the same time he embarked on the recollections, Custis began writing historical plays. Texts of only three of his ten plays survive. The lyrics of four songs from another appeared in contemporary newspapers. The plots of the others must be reconstructed from advertisements, playbills, reviews, and enigmatic comments in correspondence. All but one of his ten plays revolve around episodes in America's past and fit securely in the National Drama genre. Indian Prophecy; or Visions of Glory, premiered in Philadelphia on July 4, 1827, and was published with a variant subtitle the next year. A prosy, static drama with little action, the story of a meeting in 1770 between George Washington and an Indian chief who recounts an incident from the Seven Years' War and predicts military glory for Washington during the American Revolution nevertheless attracted such nationally prominent actors as Edwin Forrest and Joseph Jefferson Jr. and was revived at theaters across the country for the next dozen years. The Rail Road (1828), an operetta set in Baltimore and billed in the District of Columbia in 1829 as The Rail Road and Canal, had received at least 100 performances by December 1833. The operetta The Eighth of January, or, Hurra for the Boys of the West! celebrated Andrew Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans and premiered in New York City sometime before 1830. Custis wrote The Pawnee Chief; or, Hero of the Prairie about 1830, but it was not performed until 1832.

Pocahontas; or, The Settlers of Virginia (1830), dedicated to John Marshall, was Custis's most popular and durable work. Modern drama anthologies occasionally reprint it as the best surviving example of the historical genre. North Point, or, Baltimore Defended (1833) included a spectacular reenactment of the British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 and featured as a major character an African American veteran of the Revolutionary War. Custis planned a three-act Tecumseh, or The Last of the Braves (1833) for production in New York with Edwin Forrest in the title role but may never have completed it. The Launch of the Columbia, or, America's Blue Jackets Forever (1836) was a musical farce celebrating a frigate's launch in Washington. Custis wrote Montgomerie, or, The Orphan of a Wreck in 1830, but this unsuccessful melodramatic pastiche of Hamlet and Sir Walter Scott received its only recorded performances in1836. In the latter year he completed Monongahela, or, Washington on the First Great Field of His Fame, which he sent to Edward Everett in 1839 in a failed effort to have the work mounted in Boston.

Later Years

Custis used both his plays and his recollections of Washington to arouse patriotic feelings. As sectional tensions intensified, he sought to remind northerners and southerners of their common heritage by calling to mind the days of the Revolution when the separate colonies had come together and thrown off the British yoke. Only by recovering the legacy of Washington and the Revolution could the declension be halted. As part of his memorializing and preservation efforts, Custis placed a marker at Washington's birthplace in 1815 and enthusiastically supported an abortive congressional resolution in 1832 to disinter the president and his wife from Mount Vernon and to rebury them under the dome of the U.S. Capitol.

He made his own Washington Treasury, as he called his collection of Washington items, available for public viewing and distributed Washington relics in order to inspire public figures to follow in Washington's footsteps. Henry Clay, for example, received a fragment of Washington's coffin, which he brandished on the floor of the U.S. Senate when he introduced his compromise resolutions in 1850. By his own reckoning, Custis averaged one letter a week from people seeking information on Washington or asking for Washington autographs. He usually obliged autograph-seekers, and after he had given the last available signature to Queen Victoria, he began cutting up the account books in which Washington had recorded his management of the Custis estate. By distributing relics of Washington, Custis hoped to preserve the legacy of the Revolution and save the increasingly fragile Union.

Custis also contributed to the visual record of Washington. A number of artists went to Arlington to copy or engrave the Custis and Washington family portraits. Other painters, including Emmanuel Leutze, corresponded with Custis about which life portrait best represented the first president. In his last years, Custis devoted increasing attention to painting charmingly naive scenes from the American Revolution as described to him by Washington. He occasionally exhibited his monumental canvases at the U.S. Capitol, and several were reproduced in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1853. The days of the Revolution became his life. In 1848 he wrote, "The old Orator you know boasts of having two Religions, (most people have but one & many none) while I have the Religion of Christianity & the Religion of the Revolution."

For four decades Custis regularly gave speeches, often supporting the national independence movements of Greece, Poland, and South America. The cause of Irish independence he held particularly dear. A favored orator and sometime president of the Friends of Civil and Religious Liberty, Custis counted Saint Patrick's Day with Washington's Birthday and the Fourth of July as the three "holydays" he celebrated. Custis, who enjoyed playing the role of the Child of Mount Vernon and the Last Survivor of the Family of Washington, died of influenza at Arlington on October 10, 1857, and was buried there. His will ordered the emancipation of his 196 slaves within five years of his death.

Major Works

An Address to the People of the United States, on the Importance of Encouraging Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures (1808)

"Conversations of La Fayette" (sixteen-part serial in Phenix Gazette; 1825)

Indian Prophecy; or Visions of Glory (play; 1827)

The Rail Road (operetta; 1828)

The Eighth of January, or, Hurra for the Boys of the West! (operetta; before 1830)

Pocahontas; or, The Settlers of Virginia (play; 1830)

Montgomerie, or, The Orphan of a Wreck (play; written 1830 performed 1836)

The Pawnee Chief; or, Hero of the Prairie (play; written ca. 1830, premiered 1832)

North Point, or, Baltimore Defended (play; 1833)

The Launch of the Columbia, or, America's Blue Jackets Forever (musical; 1836)

Monongahela, or, Washington on the First Great Field of His Fame (play; 1839)

Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington (posthumous; 1859–1861)

Time Line

April 30, 1781 - George Washington Parke Custis is born at Mount Airy, in Prince George's County, Maryland. November 5, 1781 - John Parke Custis dies at Eltham, in New Kent County.

November 20, 1783 - Eleanor Calvert Custis and David Stuart, a physician, marry.

September 1797 - George Washington Parke Custis is expelled from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) for repeated misbehavior.

July 1798 - George Washington Parke Custis leaves Saint John's College, in Annapolis, Maryland, without completing his studies.

January 10, 1799 - George Washington Parke Custis is commissioned a cornet in the army called up to meet the threat of war with France.

March 3, 1799 - George Washington Parke Custis is promoted to second lieutenant in the army called up to meet the threat of war with France.

June 15, 1800 - George Washington Parke Custis is discharged after service with a troop of Alexandria light dragoons.

April 1802 - George Washington Parke Custis stands for election to the House of Delegates from Fairfax County but places third in race for two seats.

1802 - George Washington Parke Custis begins construction of Arlington House on an 1,100-acre property inherited from his father, John Parke Custis. Custis initially calls the estate Mount Washington.

July 7, 1804 - George Washington Parke Custis and Mary Lee Fitzhugh, of Chatham, marry in Alexandria.

September 1, 1812 - George Washington Parke Custis delivers a funeral oration for James M. Lingan, a Revolutionary War veteran murdered by a Jeffersonian mob in Baltimore.

August 24, 1814 - George Washington Parke Custis helps man a battery at the Battle of Bladensburg.

1825 - George Washington Parke Custis publishes the marquis de Lafayette's reminiscences of America in an Alexandria newspaper.

July 4, 1827 - George Washington Parke Custis's play Indian Prophecy premieres in Philadelphia.

April 23, 1853 - Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis dies at Arlington and is buried near the mansion.

October 10, 1857 - George Washington Parke Custis dies of influenza at his Arlington estate and is buried there.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alternate data to be reviewed...

Birthdate : 4/20/1781

Birth Location: Mount Airy, Maryland, United States

George Washington Parke Custis (April 30, 1781 – October 10, 1857), the step-grandson (and adopted son) of United States President George Washington, was a nineteenth-century American writer, orator, and agricultural reformer.

Through his mother Eleanor Calvert Custis Stuart, he was a great-grandson of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore and of Henry Lee of Ditchley. He was the grandson of Martha Washington through her first marriage to Daniel Parke Custis. His father, John Parke Custis, died in November 1781, when "Wash" was an infant. He and his sister "Nelly" (Eleanor Parke Custis) were raised at Mount Vernon by George and Martha Washington.

Wash and Nelly were 8 and 10, respectively, when brought to New York City in 1789 to live with their grandparents in the first presidential mansion. Following the transfer of the national capital, the First Family occupied the President's House in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1797. Wash Custis attended but did not graduate from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.

Upon reaching his majority in 1802, he inherited vast sums of money, land and slaves from the estates of his father and grandfather, as a well as bequests from his grandmother and step-grandfather. Almost immediately, he began the construction of Arlington House on a high hill directly across the Potomac River from the National Mall, Washington, DC. It took 16 years to complete the mansion, which he intended to serve as a living memorial to George Washington.

On July 7, 1804, Custis married Mary Lee Fitzhugh. Of their four children, only one daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, survived. She married Robert E. Lee at Arlington House on June 30, 1831.

In 1799, Custis was commissioned as a cornet in the United States Army and aide-de-camp to General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. During the War of 1812, Custis volunteered in the defense of Washington, D.C., at the Battle of Bladensburg.

In 1853, the writer Benson John Lossing visited Custis at Arlington House. See the Cornell University Library transcription of Harper's New Monthly Magazine article: [1] (starting on page 433). Four of the Custis paintings mentioned in the Harper's article can be seen in color (Battle of Germantown/Battle of Trenton/Battle of Princeton/Washington at Yorktown) in the February 1966 issue of American Heritage magazine.

Custis was notable as an orator and playwright. Two addresses delivered during the War of 1812 had national circulation, Oration by Mr. Custis, of Arlington; with an Account of the Funeral Solemnities in Honor of the Lamented Gen. James M. Lingan (1812) and The Celebration of the Russian Victories, in Georgetown, District of Columbia; on the 5th of June, 1813 (1813). Two of Custis's plays, The Indian Prophecy; or Visions of Glory (1827) and Pocahontas; or, The Settlers of Virginia (1830), were published. Other plays include The Rail Road (1828), The Eighth of January, or, Hurra for the Boys of the West! (ca. 1830), North Point, or, Baltimore Defended (1833), and Montgomerie, or, The Orphan of a Wreck (1836). Custis wrote a series of biographical essays about his adoptive father, collectively entitled Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, which was posthumously edited and published by his daughter.

Memorial Drive and the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington House is visible on the hill above.When Custis died in 1857, his son-in-law Robert E. Lee came to control (as executor of the will) almost 200 slaves on Custis's three plantations, Arlington, White House in New Kent County, and Romancoke in King William County. Under Custis's will, the slaves were to be freed once the legacies from his estate were paid, and absolutely no later than five years after his death.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the 1,100-acre Arlington Plantation was confiscated by Union forces for strategic reasons (protection of the river and national capital). But the burial, beginning in 1864, of 16,000 War dead surrounding Confederate General Robert E. Lee's home attests to the cold resentment against the commander of the Confederate Army. Arlington Plantation is now Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington House, built by Custis to honor Washington, is now the Robert E. Lee Memorial, and is open to the public under the auspices of the National Park Service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Parke_Custis

Birth Location: Mount Airy, Maryland, United States

George Washington Parke Custis (April 30, 1781 – October 10, 1857), the step-grandson (and adopted son) of United States President George Washington, was a nineteenth-century American writer, orator, and agricultural reformer.

Through his mother Eleanor Calvert Custis Stuart, he was a great-grandson of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore and of Henry Lee of Ditchley. He was the grandson of Martha Washington through her first marriage to Daniel Parke Custis. His father, John Parke Custis, died in November 1781, when "Wash" was an infant. He and his sister "Nelly" (Eleanor Parke Custis) were raised at Mount Vernon by George and Martha Washington.

Wash and Nelly were 8 and 10, respectively, when brought to New York City in 1789 to live with their grandparents in the first presidential mansion. Following the transfer of the national capital, the First Family occupied the President's House in Philadelphia from 1790 to 1797. Wash Custis attended but did not graduate from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.

Upon reaching his majority in 1802, he inherited vast sums of money, land and slaves from the estates of his father and grandfather, as a well as bequests from his grandmother and step-grandfather. Almost immediately, he began the construction of Arlington House on a high hill directly across the Potomac River from the National Mall, Washington, DC. It took 16 years to complete the mansion, which he intended to serve as a living memorial to George Washington.

On July 7, 1804, Custis married Mary Lee Fitzhugh. Of their four children, only one daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, survived. She married Robert E. Lee at Arlington House on June 30, 1831.

In 1799, Custis was commissioned as a cornet in the United States Army and aide-de-camp to General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. During the War of 1812, Custis volunteered in the defense of Washington, D.C., at the Battle of Bladensburg.

In 1853, the writer Benson John Lossing visited Custis at Arlington House. See the Cornell University Library transcription of Harper's New Monthly Magazine article: [1] (starting on page 433). Four of the Custis paintings mentioned in the Harper's article can be seen in color (Battle of Germantown/Battle of Trenton/Battle of Princeton/Washington at Yorktown) in the February 1966 issue of American Heritage magazine.

Custis was notable as an orator and playwright. Two addresses delivered during the War of 1812 had national circulation, Oration by Mr. Custis, of Arlington; with an Account of the Funeral Solemnities in Honor of the Lamented Gen. James M. Lingan (1812) and The Celebration of the Russian Victories, in Georgetown, District of Columbia; on the 5th of June, 1813 (1813). Two of Custis's plays, The Indian Prophecy; or Visions of Glory (1827) and Pocahontas; or, The Settlers of Virginia (1830), were published. Other plays include The Rail Road (1828), The Eighth of January, or, Hurra for the Boys of the West! (ca. 1830), North Point, or, Baltimore Defended (1833), and Montgomerie, or, The Orphan of a Wreck (1836). Custis wrote a series of biographical essays about his adoptive father, collectively entitled Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, which was posthumously edited and published by his daughter.

Memorial Drive and the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington House is visible on the hill above.When Custis died in 1857, his son-in-law Robert E. Lee came to control (as executor of the will) almost 200 slaves on Custis's three plantations, Arlington, White House in New Kent County, and Romancoke in King William County. Under Custis's will, the slaves were to be freed once the legacies from his estate were paid, and absolutely no later than five years after his death.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the 1,100-acre Arlington Plantation was confiscated by Union forces for strategic reasons (protection of the river and national capital). But the burial, beginning in 1864, of 16,000 War dead surrounding Confederate General Robert E. Lee's home attests to the cold resentment against the commander of the Confederate Army. Arlington Plantation is now Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington House, built by Custis to honor Washington, is now the Robert E. Lee Memorial, and is open to the public under the auspices of the National Park Service.

Will of George Washington Parke Custis

In the name of God, amen. I, George Washington Parke Custis, of Arlington House, in the county of Alexandria and State of Virginia, being sound in body and mind, do make and ordain this instrument of writing as my last will and testament, revoking all other wills and testaments whatever. I give and bequeath to my dearly beloved daughter and only child, Mary Ann Randolph Lee, my Arlington House estate, in the county of Alexandria and State of Virginia, containing eleven hundred acres, more or less, and my mill on Four-Mile Run, in the county of Alexandria, and the lands of mine adjacent to said mill, in the counties of Alexandria and Fairfax, in the State of Virginia, the use and benefit of all just mentioned during the term of her natural life, together with my horses and carriages, furniture, pictures, and plate, during the term of her natural life.

On the death of my daughter, Mary Ann Randolph Lee, all the property left to her during the term of her natural life I give and bequeath to my eldest grandson, George Washington Custis Lee, to him and his heirs forever, he, my said eldest grandson, taking my name and arms.

I leave and bequeath to my four granddaughters, Mary, Ann, Agnes, and Mildred Lee, to each ten thousand dollars. I give and bequeath to my second grandson, William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, when he shall be of age, my estate called the White House, in the county of New Kent and the State of Virginia, containing four thousand acres, more or less, to him and his heirs forever.

I give and bequeath to my third and youngest grandson, Robert Edward Lee, when he is of age, my estate in the county of King William and State of Virginia, called Romancock, containing four thousand acres, more or less, to him and his heirs forever.

My estate of Smith's Island, at the capes of Virginia, and in the county of Northampton, I leave to be sold to assist in paying my granddaughters' legacies, to be sold in such manner as may be deemed by my executors most expedient.

Any and all lands that I may possess in the counties of Stafford, Richmond, and Westmoreland, I leave to be sold to aid in paying my granddaughters' legacies.

I give and bequeath my lot in square No. 21, Washington city, to my son-in-law, Lieut. Col. Robert E. Lee, to him and his heirs forever. My daughter, Mary A. R. Lee, has the privilege, by this will, of dividing my family plate among my grandchildren, but the Mt. Vernon altogether, and every article I possess relating to Washington and that came from Mt. Vernon is to remain with my daughter at Arlington House during said daughter's life, and at her death to go to my eldest grandson, George Washington Custis Lee, and to descend from him entire and unchanged to my latest posterity.

My estates of the White House, in the county of New Kent, and Romancock, in the county of King William, both being in the State of Virginia, together with Smith's Island, and the lands I may possess in the counties of Stafford, Richmond, and Westmoreland counties are charged with the payment of the legacies of my granddaughters.

Smith's Island and the aforesaid lands in Stafford, Richmond, and Westmoreland only are to be sold, the lands of the White House and Romancock to be worked to raise the aforesaid legacies to my four granddaughters.

And upon the legacies to my four granddaughters being paid, and my estates that are required to pay the said legacies being clear of debt, then I give freedom to my slaves, the said slaves to be emancipated by my executors in such manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from the time of my decease.

And I do constitute and appoint as my executors Lieut. Col. Robert Edward Lee, Robert Lee Randolph, of Eastern View, Rt. Rev. Bishop Meade, and George Washington Peter.

This will, written by my hand, is signed, sealed, and executed the twnty-sixth day of March, eighteen hundred and fifty-five.

George Washington Parke Custis.

26th March, 1855

Witness:

Martha Custis Williams.

M. Eugene Webster.