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George Washington Parke Custis (1781–1857)

Role

Custis wrote Bushrod Washington several letters concerning the estate of George Washington.

Description

George Washington Parke Custis, a grandson of Martha Washington, was born on 30 April 1781 at Mount Airy, his maternal grandfather’s estate in Prince George’s County, Maryland. When his father died later that year, Martha and George Washington took in Custis as their adopted son. A teenaged Custis was expelled from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) and left Saint John’s College (Annapolis) before graduating.

Citations

"George Washington Parke Custis." Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2310015195/UHIC?u=viva_uva&sid=bookmark-UHIC&xid=ace795a0. Accessed 23 Oct. 2022.

Sara B. Bearss, "George Washington Parke Custis (1781–1857)," in Bearss et al., eds., The Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Volume III, Caperton-Daniels (Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 2006), 63033.

Cassandra Good, "George Washington Parke Custis," Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington (George Washington’s Mount Vernon).

"To Thomas Jefferson from George W. P. Custis, 13 February 1804," Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-42-02-0397. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 42, 16 November 1803–10 March 1804, ed. James P. McClure. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, pp. 460–461.]

Murray H. Nelligan, "American Nationalism on the Stage: The Plays of George Washington Parke Custis (1781-1857)," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 58, Number 3 (July 1950), 299324.

Michael Robert Patterson, "George Washington Parke CustisColonel, United States Army," Arlington National Cemetery.

George Washington Parke Custis at Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial (National Park Service).

George Washington Parke Custis at Find a Grave.

George Washington Parke Custis at FamilySearch.