Why George Washington's family tree has no children of his own
George Washington never had biological children. Mount Vernon describes his family as his many siblings, his stepchildren and his step-grandchildren, and George Washington's family tree is drawn that way here.1 He married Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow with two living children, on 6 January 1759. The couple raised Patsy and Jacky Custis, and after Jacky died in 1781 they raised his two youngest children, Nelly and Washy, at Mount Vernon.9
Solid lines join George to his parents Augustine Washington and Mary Ball. Dashed step lines join him to Patsy and Jacky, the children of Martha and Daniel Parke Custis.
How to read George Washington's family tree
A double frame is the centre
George Washington is the centre of the chart, in the second row.
A line joins a couple
Augustine and Martha each have two marriage lines.
A dashed line is a step line
George is the stepfather of Patsy and Jacky.
A silhouette is a missing likeness
Eight people have no known free portrait, Augustine among them.
Augustine Washington and his two wives
Augustine Washington was most likely born in 1694, though no document gives the date. He married Jane Butler on 20 April 1715, and of their four children only Lawrence and Augustine Jr. lived to be adults. Jane died in the autumn of 1729 while Augustine was in England.3
On 6 March 1731 Augustine married Mary Ball. George was born in February 1732, and Augustine died at Ferry Farm on 12 April 1743.3 Mary was born between 1707 and 1709 at Epping Forest, the daughter of Joseph Ball and Mary Johnson. She died of breast cancer at Fredericksburg on 25 August 1789.4 Her portrait on the chart is a 1916 print of a painting attributed to Robert Edge Pine.
The brothers and sisters on George Washington's family tree
George was the eldest of the six children of the second marriage.5 His half-brother Lawrence married Anne Fairfax of Belvoir and renamed his estate Mount Vernon after Admiral Vernon. George sailed with him to Barbados in search of a cure, and Lawrence died of tuberculosis in July 1752. Through him George came to inherit Mount Vernon.6
| Sibling | Mother | From the record |
|---|---|---|
 Lawrence | Jane Butler | Named Mount Vernon |
| AJAugustine Jr. | Jane Butler | Half-brother |
 Betty | Mary Ball | Married Fielding Lewis, 1750 |
 Samuel | Mary Ball | Farmed at Harewood |
| JAJohn Augustine | Mary Ball | Father of Bushrod Washington |
| CCharles | Mary Ball | Charles Town bears his name |
| MMildred | Mary Ball | Died in infancy |
Martha Dandridge and her two husbands
Martha Dandridge was born on 2 June 1731 at Chestnut Grove in New Kent County, the eldest of eight children. In May 1750 she married Daniel Parke Custis, a planter twenty years older, and they had four children in seven years. Daniel died in July 1757 without a will, leaving 17,500 acres and almost three hundred enslaved people.910
Martha married George Washington on 6 January 1759 and moved to Mount Vernon that April. She outlived all four of her children and died at Mount Vernon on 22 May 1802.9 George had died there on 14 December 1799.2
Patsy, Jacky and the two who died young
Daniel and Frances died before the age of five.9 From the age of eleven or twelve Patsy had frequent seizures, which Mount Vernon calls probably a symptom of epilepsy, and she died after one in June 1773, aged seventeen.129
Jacky married Eleanor Calvert of Maryland on 3 February 1774. He served as an aide to his stepfather at Yorktown and died of camp fever soon after the surrender of Cornwallis in 1781.1113 Eleanor married the physician David Stuart in 1783.10
The four Custis grandchildren
Eliza married Thomas Law. Patty married Thomas Peter, and with their inheritance from Washington they built Tudor Place in Georgetown.10 After their mother remarried, the two youngest stayed in the care of their grandmother and step-grandfather.13
On 22 February 1799, Washington's last birthday, Nelly married his nephew Lawrence Lewis, the son of his sister Betty, and they settled at Woodlawn.14 The marriage joined the Washington and Custis sides of George Washington's family tree.
George Washington Parke Custis was known in his lifetime as the adopted son of Washington. He built Arlington House, and his daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis married Robert E. Lee in 1831.1310 The National Park Service records that he also had a daughter, Maria, born in 1803 to Arianna Carter, an enslaved woman.16
Where the records of George Washington's family tree disagree
George was born on 22 February 1732 by the modern calendar, which older pages write 11 February 1731.4 Mount Vernon dates Mildred 1737 to 1740 and Wikipedia 1739 to 1740, so her birth carries a question mark.517 One Mount Vernon article calls the mother of Nelly Elizabeth Calvert, where the others say Eleanor.1411 Wikipedia gives the full dates of Eleanor, Eliza, Patty and Nelly.18192021
Questions about George Washington's family tree
Did George Washington have children
He had no biological children. He raised his stepchildren Patsy and Jacky Custis and two step-grandchildren.
Who inherited Mount Vernon
His nephew Bushrod Washington, the son of John Augustine, inherited it after George and Martha died.
People and sources
A page of its own lists all 22 people on the chart, each with a short note and the sources for it, and the 21 numbered sources this article cites. It also gives the credits of the portraits and this page as a reference in the APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles, ready to copy.