A short letter written by Martha Washington in 1760, describing the recovery of her four-year-old daughter from a frightening illness, has found a permanent home at the Library of Congress. The document, addressed to her friend Margaret Green, was purchased for $47,500 through the Library’s James Madison Council Edwin L. Cox Legacy Trust. It is now the first original item in Martha Washington’s handwriting held by the Library’s Manuscript Division, making it an unusually intimate addition to the nation’s historical record, as per a report on Library of Congress.The letter was written on September 29, 1760, long before George Washington became president of the United States. At the time, Martha was the widowed Martha Dandridge Custis, recently married to Washington and raising two surviving children from her first marriage. In the letter, she tells Margaret Green that her daughter Martha Parke Custis, known as Patsy, is “much better” after suffering “fitts & fevours.” The words offer a rare, personal view of a future first lady as a worried mother rather than a distant historical figure.
A mother’s relief in her own words
Martha Washington’s message captures the relief of a parent whose child has begun to recover. She wrote that Patsy had lost her “fitts & fevours bout” and appeared to be getting well quickly. The family had taken the little girl out in a carriage the day before, and Martha noted that the change of air had refreshed her considerably. The phrasing is simple and domestic, yet it carries the emotional weight of a mother watching a young child return to health.Historians believe Patsy’s “fitts” may have been caused by epilepsy. According to the Library of Congress, her treatment included “Bake” or “bark,” meaning cinchona, the source of quinine, as well as “bitters,” a liquid medicine. The letter therefore documents not only a family crisis but also the medical practices available to a wealthy Virginia household in the mid eighteenth century.The recovery described in 1760 did not last. Patsy’s seizures continued, and on June 19, 1773, George Washington recorded in his diary that “poor Patcy Custis Died Suddenly” at about five o’clock in the afternoon. She was 17 years old. Washington later wrote that the sudden loss had almost reduced his wife to “the lowest ebb of Misery,” a reminder that the earlier letter describes a temporary reprieve in a much longer family ordeal.
Photo credit: Martha Washington correspondence, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. (via blogs.loc.gov )
Why the letter is so rare
The acquisition matters because very little of Martha Washington’s private writing survives. The Library of Congress says she appears to have destroyed most of her personal correspondence, leaving historians with only fragments of her voice. Although the Library’s George Washington Papers contain eleven letters written by Martha Washington, none were in her own hand. Eight are letterbook copies, while three are drafts written in her husband’s hand.That makes the newly acquired letter especially significant. It is the first item in the Manuscript Division’s collections written in Martha Washington’s own handwriting. Researchers and visitors can now see her spelling, phrasing, and penmanship directly, rather than encountering her words only through copies or transcriptions made by others.Kevin Butterfield, acting chief of the Manuscript Division, said the Library’s already vast collection of materials related to American history continues to grow, sometimes one letter at a time. He noted that documents such as this one help the Library tell stories that it previously could not tell. The letter joins a collection that includes materials connected to many former first ladies, including Dolley Madison, Lucretia Garfield, and Edith Wilson.
A window into early American family life
The letter also illuminates the world of women and children in colonial Virginia, where illness and early death were common. Martha Washington had four children with her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, but two died young. After marrying George Washington in 1759, she and Washington raised Patsy and John “Jacky” Parke Custis. Martha ultimately outlived all four of her children, a painful pattern that the Library describes as not unusual in early Virginia, where death rates were high.After Jacky died in 1781 at the age of 26, Martha and George Washington raised two of his youngest children, George Washington Parke Custis and Eleanor “Nelly” Parke Custis. The new letter therefore sits within a much larger story of motherhood, loss, and resilience in the Washington household. It shows Martha not as a symbol of the founding era, but as a parent managing a child’s illness with the tools and anxieties of her time.The document also connects to the life of its recipient, Margaret Green, later Margaret Savage. Five years after Martha wrote to her, Margaret’s husband, the Reverend Dr. Charles Green, died. She later married Dr. William Savage, but the marriage ended in separation. George Washington helped Margaret pursue the annuity she was owed from Savage, who the Library describes as an evidently violent husband, sometimes contributing his own funds to assist her. Her financial and marital difficulties, recorded in the George Washington Papers, continued for more than thirty years.
Part of a larger acquisition
The Martha Washington letter was acquired alongside a letter from Mary Todd Lincoln, written on February 15, 1865, just two months before President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. In that letter, Mary Todd Lincoln wrote to Caroline R. Wright, wife of a former Indiana governor, and mentioned a “beautiful wreath of hair.” Historians believe the reference concerns the “Hairy Eagle,” a framed woven eagle made from hair contributed by prominent politicians and their wives, intended as a gift to the Lincolns and created to raise money for sick and wounded Civil War soldiers.Together, the two letters give researchers a more personal understanding of women who lived beside two of America’s most consequential presidents. The Library of Congress acquired the Martha Washington document during the nation’s commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary, and it plans to make the material available for research and public engagement. For historians, the $47,500 purchase is not simply a rare manuscript. It is a direct connection to Martha Washington’s handwriting, her family’s private struggles, and the everyday emotional life of early America.
