
Mary Ball Washington: The Mother of George Washington and her Times (Illustrated Edition)
Colonial Virginia, Plantation Life, and Republican MotherhoodBy Sara Agnes Rice PryorLength8h 39m
About this audiobook
Sara Agnes Rice Pryor's Mary Ball Washington is a richly contextualized biography of George Washington's mother, placing her life within the social, domestic, religious, and political world of eighteenth-century Virginia. Drawing on family papers, local tradition, genealogy, and historical documents, Pryor reconstructs Mary Ball Washington's experience as a daughter, wife, widow, and mother while examining the formation of the household that nurtured America's first president. The prose combines antiquarian research with the graceful, morally attentive style of the nineteenth-century literary biography, and the illustrated edition further evokes the people, landscapes, and material culture of the colonial period. Its patriotic emphasis and interest in exemplary character situate it within the tradition of early American memorial literature, even as its attention to women's domestic labor expands the conventional Washington narrative. Pryor, a Virginia-born author, preservationist, and collector of regional history, wrote from intimate familiarity with the state's families, traditions, and historical memory. As the wife of the Virginia statesman and writer Roger A. Pryor, she inhabited a culture deeply invested in the interpretation of the Commonwealth's past. Her antiquarian interests and concern for preserving women's voices evidently shaped this effort to recover Mary Washington from the margins of her son's biography and to present her as a historical personality in her own right. This volume will reward readers of Washington scholarship, colonial and women's history, genealogy, and Southern cultural history. Although its reverential tone reflects its era and should be read critically, Pryor's synthesis of documentary evidence, oral tradition, and vivid social detail offers an illuminating window into both Mary Washington and the ways later generations fashioned the nation's founding memory.
Audiobook details
GenreBiography and Memoir
Length8 hrs 39 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateDec 15, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (Unabridged) (Annotated)
2CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY
3CHAPTER II MARY WASHINGTON'S ENGLISH ANCESTRY
4CHAPTER III THE BALL FAMILY IN VIRGINIA
5CHAPTER IV COAT ARMOR AND THE RIGHT TO BEAR IT
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6CHAPTER V TRADITIONS OF MARY BALL'S EARLY LIFE
7CHAPTER VI REVELATIONS OF AN OLD WILL
8CHAPTER VII MARY BALL'S CHILDHOOD
9CHAPTER VIII GOOD TIMES IN OLD VIRGINIA
10CHAPTER IX MARY BALL'S GUARDIAN AND HER GIRLHOOD
11CHAPTER X YOUNG MEN AND MAIDENS OF THE OLD DOMINION
12CHAPTER XI THE TOAST OF THE GALLANTS OF HER DAY
13CHAPTER XII HER MARRIAGE AND EARLY LIFE
14CHAPTER XIII BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
15CHAPTER XIV THE CHERRY TREE AND LITTLE HATCHET
16CHAPTER XV THE YOUNG WIDOW AND HER FAMILY
17CHAPTER XVI BETTY WASHINGTON, AND WEDDINGS IN OLD VIRGINIA
18CHAPTER XVII DEFEAT IN WAR: SUCCESS IN LOVE
19CHAPTER XVIII IN AND AROUND FREDERICKSBURG
20CHAPTER XIX SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS
21CHAPTER XX A TRUE PORTRAIT OF MARY WASHINGTON
22CHAPTER XXI NOON IN THE GOLDEN AGE
23CHAPTER XXII DINNERS, DRESS, DANCES, HORSE-RACES
24PART II
25CHAPTER I THE LITTLE CLOUD
26CHAPTER II THE STORM
27CHAPTER III MARY WASHINGTON IN THE HOUR OF PERIL
28CHAPTER IV OLD REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS
29CHAPTER V THE BATTLE-GROUND
30CHAPTER VI FRANCE IN THE REVOLUTION
31CHAPTER VII "ON WITH THE DANCE, LET JOY BE UNCONFINED"
32CHAPTER VIII LAFAYETTE AND OUR FRENCH ALLIES
33CHAPTER IX IN CAMP AND AT MOUNT VERNON
34CHAPTER X MRS. ADAMS AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES
35CHAPTER XI THE FIRST WINTER AT MOUNT VERNON
36CHAPTER XII THE PRESIDENT AND HIS LAST VISIT TO HIS MOTHER
37CHAPTER XIII MARY WASHINGTON'S WILL; HER ILLNESS AND DEATH
38CHAPTER XIV TRIBUTES OF HER COUNTRYMEN