Mothers

Family

The section intro text on your left reads:

King George III and George Washington were known as the fathers of their countries, but they were also fathers. George III and Queen Charlotte had fifteen children. Washington had no biological children of his own, but he was stepfather to Martha Washington’s children from her first marriage. He also helped raise nieces, nephews, and grandchildren.

Both Georges and their families were influenced by Enlightenment ideas about humanitarianism and individual rights as well as older beliefs about hierarchy and dominance. They both made practical marriages and settled into family lives that projected domestic contentment. As powerful patriarchs, they controlled the lives of family members, including rebellious children, and in Washington’s case, the enslaved families who served him.

Mothers

The text panel in front of you reads:

George Washington and George III were both the oldest sons of widowed mothers. Mary Ball Washington was born in Virginia around 1708. She was the daughter of an indentured servant and a prosperous tobacco planter. Orphaned as a child, she became the second wife of Augustine Washington, a widower with three children. Augusta, Princess of Wales, was born in Germany in 1719. She married Frederick, Prince of Wales, at age seventeen.

Both women attracted criticism for the control they were presumed to wield over their sons when they were young. Only recently have historians and biographers begun to reassess them, taking into account the prejudices and limitations they faced as women.

Augusta, Princess of Wales, and Her Family

There is a large graphic on the wall to your right. The label reads:

The child on the far left wearing a dress and seated on a cushion is the future George III. The other two children are his brother, Prince Edward, and sister, Princess Augusta. The women are governess Arabella Herbert (left) and Lady Jane Hamilton (right), mistress of the robes. The man standing behind the princess is Sir William Irby, vice chancellor to Princess

Exhibit Item(s)

• Augusta. Jean-Baptiste Van Loo. Augusta, Princess of Wales with Members of Her Family and Household, 1739. © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust. A color painting depicting Augusta, Princess of Wales, surrounded by her family.

The display case to your right contains three objects:

1. “I am viewed as a delinquent”

George Washington had a difficult relationship with his mother, who raised him and his siblings on her own after his father died. He dictated this chilly letter to a secretary when he was fifty-five and his mother was nearing eighty. He complained that she had taken all the proceeds of the plantation Washington rented from her, leaving him without “one farthing.” He added that, because of her complaints, “I am viewed as a delinquent. & considered perhaps by the world as unjust and undutiful Son.”

Exhibit Item(s)

• George Washington to Mary Ball Washington, February 15, 1787. George Washington Papers, Series 2, Letterbook 2, pp. 13–19, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (134.00.01). A two-page spread from a handwritten notebook beginning with the words “February 1787, In the last two years, I made no Crops.”

A quote to the right of the label reads:

“Mary Ball, the mother of Washington, has been the object of much sentimental writing; but the cold record of her own and her sons’ letters shows her to have been grasping, querulous, and vulgar. She was a selfish and exacting mother, whom most of her children avoided as soon and as early as they could; to whom they did their duty, but rendered little love.”
— Samuel Eliot Morison. The Young Man Washington: An Address Delivered at Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, February 22, 1932.

2. “Any thing so sensibly affecting His Mother, must prove extreemely uneasy to him”

When the future George III turned eighteen, his grandfather, George II, offered him the opportunity to leave his mother’s house and live at court. The prince replied to his grandfather’s offer in this letter to Lord Waldegrave, his governor. He accepted the allowance, but chose to remain at Leicester Square, where he and his brother, Prince Edward, lived next door to their mother, Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales.

Exhibit Item(s)

• Letter from George, Prince of Wales, to Lord Waldegrave, 1756, p. 1 (reproduction). © His Majesty King Charles III 2025 (009.01.00). A handwritten letter beginning with the words “The Prince of Wales desires the Earl Waldegrave, to lay him at His Majesty’s feet.”

3. “The Royal Dupe”

This caricature shows a young George III sleeping in his mother’s lap. On the left, the Earl of Bute, George III’s tutor and an important early influence, steals the king’s scepter. On the right, the politician Henry Fox, Lord Holland (represented as a fox), picks his pocket.

Exhibit Item(s)

• “The R---l Dupe,” Political Register and Impartial Review, July 1770 (reproduction). Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (011.01.00). A black-and-white print in a book showing King George III asleep on his mother’s lap in a chair.