Mary Ball Washington : like mother, like son -- A child in the Chesapeake -- A generation of orphans -- Bruising the small spirit -- Mary, her kin, and her books -- Mary Ball, Augustine Washington, and Matthew Hale -- Wife and mother -- People and property at the Ferry Farm -- As sparks fly upward -- The widow Washington -- Single mother -- Mary's stewardship : scraping by -- Midcentury : a wedding, a murder, a family death -- Mary and George's Seven Years War -- Between the wars : kin, consumption, conflict -- The Revolution : a family affair -- The endless Revolution : wartime virtue, wartime woe -- Mary's war ends -- "You must one day fade" -- Epilogue: An uneasy afterlife

"Biography of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother. Places her life as an orphan, a young wife in rural Virginia, a slaveholder, a widow, and mother to the first president in the context of the changing economic circumstances and cultural values of colonial Virginia and a young nation"--