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.”

Genealogy of a Colony: Matrimonial Matters

1.

William Byrd married a 21-year-old widow whose dead husband was the son of a former governor of Virginia. She agreed that William’s first son would be named after him; a heritage the son wore so proudly he went on to become the future founder of Richmond.

2.

William Byrd, the son, married Lucy, one of two daughters of Daniel Parke who holds the honor of being the only British colonial governor…