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

National Archives Museum
Online

Award-winning historian Cassandra A. Good shows how the outspoken step-grandchildren of George Washington played an overlooked but important role in the development of American society and politics from the Revolution to the Civil War. 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. Joining the author in conversation will be Lindsay M. Chervinsky, Senior Fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.