http://www.trivia-library.com/a/president-george-wa****ngton-personal-life.htm
Personal Life: A romantic and emotional young man, Wa****ngton loved to
dance and craved the company of attractive women. He was socially
handicapped, however, by his shyness and his modest financial
resources. By the time he was 25 he had fallen painfully in love
several times, and on at least 2 occasions his proposals of marriage
had been rejected.
The young soldier's deepest affections were reserved for a married
lady. Through his brother Lawrence, Wa****ngton became friendly with
the brilliant Fairfax family, and spent many evenings playing cards,
dancing, or acting in amateur theatricals with the elegant Sally
Fairfax. Two years older than Wa****ngton, the slim and sophisticated
Sally was the daughter-in-law of his former employer and the wife of
his good friend. She was also a notorious flirt, and may not have
realized how deeply she had smitten the awkward and impressionable
Wa****ngton. Nonetheless, Wa****ngton's devotion to her was enough to
scandalize some of the Fairfax relatives. One of them wrote to the
young officer in camp that fighting the enemy was "a nobler prospect
than reflections of hours past that ought to be banished from your
thoughts." Wa****ngton's many letters to Sally leave no doubt as to the
depth of his passion--and frustration--in this impossible love. Even
after his engagement to another, he wrote to her pledging his devotion
and declaring: "Misconstrue not my meaning; doubt it not, nor expose
it. The world has no business to know the object of my love declared
in this manner to you, when I want to conceal it." Three months later,
Wa****ngton married Martha Custis, a short, plump, amiable woman, who
at the death of her 1st husband had become the richest widow in
Virginia. No one ever assumed that her marriage to Wa****ngton was a
love match: George was anxious for money and social prestige, while
Martha needed an administrator for her vast estates and a guardian for
her 2 children. It soon became clear that she had made a wise decision
in choosing Wa****ngton. A 1st-rate administrator and a skillful
businessman, he steadily expanded her already sizable holdings. An
estimated net worth of $530,000 at his death marked them as one of the
wealthiest couples in America. Over the years, it appears that George
and Martha developed a genuine, if not passionate, attachment to one
another. Many of the details of their relation****p remain in doubt,
since Martha burned all their correspondence after Wa****ngton's death.
Though they never had children, Wa****ngton proved an overly indulgent
stepfather to Martha's offspring from her previous marriage. When her
son Jacky died at age 27, leaving behind children of his own, George
and Martha formally adopted 2 of his youngsters.
At Mount Vernon, the Wa****ngtons offered generous but down-to-earth
hospitality. Martha, who could barely read and write, was known as a
homebody. She took a special interest in cooking and often appeared
with a ring of kitchen keys tied at her wide waist. When she became
First Lady, her receptions were considered somewhat stiff and old-
fa****oned. All presidential entertainments ended promptly at 9 P.M.,
when George and Martha went to bed. Martha survived her husband by 2
1/2 years.
The year before he died, Wa****ngton wrote a final letter to Sally
Fairfax, the love of his youth, who was a destitute widow of 68 living
in London. In it, Wa****ngton told her that not all the glories of the
Revolution, not even the splendors of the Presidency, had "been able
to eradicate from my mind those happy moments, the happiest of my
life, which I have enjoyed in your company."
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