Life ye 12th Day of April 1743, Aged 49
Years."

The mother, Mary Washington, was more of a factor, though chiefly by mere
length of life, for she lived to be eighty-three, and died but ten years
before her son. That Washington owed his personal appearance to the Balls
is true, but otherwise the sentimentality that has been lavished about the
relations between the two and her influence upon him, partakes of fiction
rather than of truth. After his father's death the boy passed most of his
time at the homes of his two elder brothers, and this was fortunate, for
they were educated men, of some colonial consequence, while his mother
lived in comparatively straitened circumstances, was illiterate and
untidy, and, moreover, if tradition is to be believed, smoked a pipe. Her
course with the lad was blamed by a contemporary as "fond and unthinking,"
and this is borne out by such facts as can be gleaned, for when his
brothers wished to send him to sea she made "trifling objections," and
prevented his taking what they thought an advantageous opening; when the
brilliant offer of a position on Braddock's staff was tendered to
Washington, his mother, "alarmed at the report," hurried to Mount Vernon
and endeavored to prevent him from accepting it; still again, after
Braddock's defeat, she so wearied her son with pleas not to risk the
dangers of another campaign that Washington finally wrote her, "It would
reflect dishonor upon me to refuse; and _that_, I am sure, must or _ought_
to give you greater uneasiness, than my going in an honorable command."
After he inherited Mount Vernon the two seem to have seen little of each
other, though, when occasion took him near Fredericksburg, he usually
stopped to see her for a few hours, or even for a night.

Though Washington always wrote to his mother as "Honored Madam," and
signed himself "your dutiful and aff. son," she none the less tried him
not a little. He never claimed from her a part of the share of his
father's estate which was his due on becoming of age, and, in addition,
"a year or two before I left Virginia (to make her latter days comfortable
and free from care) I did, at her request, but at my own expence,
purchase a commodious house, garden and Lotts (of her own choosing) in
Fredericksburg, that she might be near my sister Lewis, her only
daughter,--and did moreover agree to take her land and negroes at a
certain yearly rent, to be fixed by Colo Lewis and others (of her own
nom