Archive for the ‘Martha Washington’ Category

In celebration of Martha Washington’s birthday today, we just wanted to point out some of the fabulous teaching resources we have online that you can use in your classroom. Martha Washington: A Life is a website devoted entirely to teaching about Martha Washington with a biography, lesson plans, an Archive of artifacts and letters that were hers, as well as a list of Resources. We also have a range of lesson plans that teach about Martha Washington for different grade ranges on our main website. If you have a chance to visit Mount Vernon in person this summer, you will surely meet Martha Washington via our first-person interpreter, Mary Wiseman. This past weekend’s Washington Post article about Mary’s work as Martha Washington is a little teaser for all that you will experience when you meet her in person. So once again, Happy Birthday, Martha!

We are so pleased to announce the launch of two brand spankin’ new, “gonna blow your mind,”” just can’t control the excitement” websites! We will feature the first today, and check back tomorrow for the second (it’s called building the suspense). As you know, we have something of a love affair with Martha Washington- she was courageous, intelligent, loving, and beautiful. She sat right there through that winter at Valley Forge with the rest of the soldiers when she could have easily been sitting in her own living room drinking hot chocolate. She helped her stoic husband provide a more human side to his adoring fans. George Washington would not have had the rich, loving life that he had without his wife of forty years. *Sigh… we heart you, Martha.

In order to provide more resources on Martha Washington’s fascinating life and material culture, we have launched a brand new website, Martha Washington: A Life. The site provides biographical information, three fabulous teaching modules that correlate to national standards, a searchable archive of all objects and documents that relate to Martha Washington, and research resources. So go check it out and let us know what you think! After playing around on the website for thirty minutes, we guarantee you will appreciate Martha Washington as much as we do.

The full title of this book sums up its history pretty well: “Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats being a Family Manuscript curiously copied by an unknown Hand sometime in the seventeenth century, which was in her Keeping from 1749, the time of her Marriage to Daniel Custis, to 1799, at which time she gave it to Eleanor Parke Custis, her granddaughter, on the occasion of her Marriage to Lawrence Lewis.” Learning about the foodways of a particular time and place, such as 18th century Virginia perhaps, is a surprisingly revealing way of learning history. Recipes such as “candied marrygolds in the Spanish fashion,” “sheep’s tongue pie,” or “pickled lettis (lettuce) stalks” are sure to either pique the interest or gross out a child- perfect history lesson material. While many of the recipes in the book, such as a recipe that begins with deboning an entire turkey, may be a little too difficult to make in the classroom or home, some recipes such as apple puffs or almond cakes could be easily made today. Each recipe is annotated by author Karen Hess with interesting information about the ingredients, process, cost at the time, historical tidbits, etc. If you can’t make it to Mount Vernon to see our Foodways interpreters flipping up some hoe-cakes in person, this may just be the next best thing. Yum!

Martha Washington has had quite the year so far- she was featured in newspapers, television shows, several GWW posts, and even People magazine recently named her the sexiest historical figure! Huzzah! June 2nd (1731) is the birth date of Martha Washington, and if you have the same birthday or your name is “Martha,” you get free admission to Mount Vernon. It’s a little late to legally change your name to Martha, but you have 364 days to get on that in time for next year!