First Family: George Washington’s Heirs and the Making of America

George and Martha Washington’s grandchildren were “proud but profoundly flawed people,” according to this immersive family biography by historian Good (Founding Friendships). Martha’s wealthy first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, died in 1757, two years before she married George, who became step-grandfather to her son Jacky’s children, Elizabeth (Eliza), Martha (Patty), Eleanor (Nelly), and Wash. After Jacky’s sudden death in 1781, George and Martha adopted and raised Nelly and Wash, who “enter[ed] their young adulthood just as the country was experiencing an awkward stage in its own growth.” Good tracks the Custis girls through their courtships and marriages and details George’s “stern advice and guidance” to Wash, who had “an almost unconquerable disposition to indolence in every thing that did not tend to his amusements,” according to his grandfather. Light is also shed on how slavery helped the Custises build their wealth, and on Wash’s support—influenced by “a growing race science that codified supposed African American racial inferiority”—for the American Colonization Society, which sought to relocate free Blacks to Africa. Throughout, Good’s meticulous research and fluid prose buttress her case that the Custises were emblematic of “America’s story in its first century: military triumph and tragedy; democracy and old aristocratic ties; visions of liberty coexisting alongside the horrors of slavery.” It’s a fascinating perspective on the nation’s growing pains. (June)