Washington, Martha Custis (1731–1802)

US first lady. Her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, died in 1757, and two years later she married future US president, George Washington, in 1759. She had four children by her first marriage, two of whom died in childhood; George Washington helped raise the other two, and when the son, John Custis, died in 1781, his two youngest children were raised at Mount Vernon. The daughter of a wealthy landowner, she was born Martha Dandridge in New Kent County, Virginia. During the American Revolution, she spent winters in army camps with her husband and organized a women's sewing circle to mend clothes for the troops.