Maria Carter Custis

MARIA CARTER CUSTIS

Maria Carter Custis, Mrs. Charles Syphax, was the daughter of an enslaved maid named Arianna Carter, and George Washington Parke Custis, who was born in 1803 at an undetermined location. This may have been at Mount Vernon where Carter may have been enslaved, Arlington Plantation, or somewhere else. Maria may not have been Custis’s only child from an enslaved woman, but she seemed to receive special, paternal attention from him. The Syphax Family

In 1821, he allowed her to marry Charles Syphax, an enslaved house servant, in the parlor of Arlington House, ten years before Custis’s white daughter, Mary, would wed Lt. Robert E. Lee in the same room. Charles Syphax was the son of a free black itinerant Alexandria street preacher and an enslaved woman from Mount Vernon. He was enslaved at the Mount Vernon estate and was transferred to Arlington House when Martha Washington died, one of fifty-seven enslaved people who came to Arlington from Mount Vernon with George Washington Parke Custis in 1802. He was about 9 years old. The enslaved people owned by the Custis family ended up moving not only to Arlington House, but also Tudor Place and Woodlawn. The separation at Mount Vernon was a heart-wrenching time; enslaved people who were emancipated in George Washington’s will were separated sometimes from family and friends who were enslaved to Martha Washington’s estate – the majority of the people enslaved at Mount Vernon. At Arlington House, Charles Syphax oversaw the dining room and was the unofficial leader of the Arlington enslaved community. The Syphax Family

Maria Syphax died in 1886 leaving the 17 acres to be divided among the surviving children. Families grew and with the exception of Ennis Syphax dispersed into the wider Washington, DC, area and beyond. In 1944, the 17 acres was condemned and for the second time the remaining Syphaxes were expelled from the property they were given by George Washington Parke Custis and returned by Congress.

Genealogy

The Syphax Family