First Family

George Washington's Heirs and the Making of America

by Cassandra A. Good

On Sale: 06/06/2023

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First Family

George Washington's Heirs and the Making of America

by Cassandra A. Good

On Sale: 06/06/2023

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Amazon Indigo

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About the Book

Award-winning historian Cassandra A. Good shows how the outspoken stepgrandchildren of George Washington played an overlooked but important role in the development of American society and politics from the Revolution to the Civil War.

While it’s widely known in America that George and Martha Washington never had children of their own, few are aware that they raised numerous children together. In First Family, we see Washington as a father figure, as well as meet the children he helped raise and trace their complicated roles in American history.

The children of Martha Washington’s son by her first marriage—Eliza, Patty, Nelly and Wash Custis—were born into life in the public eye. Raised in the country’s first “first family,” they remained well-known as Washington’s family and keepers of his legacy throughout their lives. By turns petty and powerful, glamorous and cruel, the Custises used Washington as a means to enhance their own power and status. As enslavers committed to the American empire, the Custis family embodied the failures of the American experiment that finally exploded into civil war—all the while being celebrities in a soap opera of their own making.

First Family brings new focus and attention to this surprisingly neglected aspect of George Washington’s life and legacy. As the country grapples with concerns about political dynasties and the public role of presidential families, the saga of Washington’s family offers a human story of historical precedent.

Critical Praise

“Using an impressive range of sources and with vivid storytelling, Cassandra Good views issues of history, memory, class, and race and slavery through the experience of the ‘first’ (and arguably the most famous) American family. Analyzing the kin network created by George and Martha Washington, Good illumines the complexity in the very definition of ‘family’ and American identity. First Family is an important entry in the new historical re-examination of the role of ‘blood family’ in what we tell ourselves about the past.”—Catherine Allgor, author of A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation

“This compelling narrative of the Custis family and its efforts to shape the historical reputation of George Washington reveals how their continued enslavement of Black laborers betrayed the Revolution’s promise of liberty. Rather than follow Washington’s example of emancipation, the grandchildren of Martha Washington variously supported expatriation to Africa, the hiring out of enslaved people, and forced relocation to the Deep South in their failed efforts to reconcile slavery with their vision for America. Good shows how the Custises’ reluctance to end slavery and their determination to be political players paralleled the nation’s descent into sectional crisis. This is a fascinating study of the impact of slavery on contests over national memory and political influence.”—Bruce Ragsdale, author of Washington at the Plow: The Founder Farmer and the Question of Slavery

“Cassandra Good blends deep historical research with her gifts as a storyteller to recover the legacy of George Washington and the powerful role his family played in preserving his memory. First Family delivers new and important insights on the complexities of kinship and the creation of political dynasties in American history.”—Tamika Y. Nunley, award-winning author of At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C.

"In First Family, Cassandra Good details the private life of George and Martha Washington's heirs and descendants. Focused largely on the first presidents Custis' step-grandchildren, Good examines their impact on the ideas of political power and fame in America. Exhaustively researched and engagingly written, the author successfully recreates the star power of the nation's first First Family and convincingly explains their impact on the American obsession with celebrity—while never losing sight of the enslaved workforce attending them at every turn."—Ramin Ganeshram, author of The General's Cook

“To a growing collection of Founding Family biographies comes Cassandra Good’s elaborately detailed account of the Custis family, the step-grandchildren of George Washington. Spanning the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War, First Family gives us a front-row seat to the drama and tensions of a new nation struggling to define the meaning of freedom and citizenship. Opportunistic Custises seize every occasion to trumpet their association with Washington, boosting their social profile, while his actual blood relatives shy away from the spotlight. Meanwhile, the children George Washington Parke Custis had with enslaved women did not even enter the Custises’ calculus of family. With her exhaustive research and vibrant storytelling, Good has brought us into the intimacy of Washington’s adopted family circle, inviting us to consider who constitutes ‘family,’ and the implications of that very important question for claims of citizenship, in both the Custises’ d -