To George Washington from Betty Washington Lewis, 5 July 1796
From Betty Washington Lewis
July 5th, 1796.
My Dear Brother
I receiv’d your Letters of 26th and 29th of June,1 the day after I wrote to you I was attack with the ague and fever which has lasted ever since2 I had never been clear of a fever since, I Expected your comeing threw Baltemore that you would ascertain Mr. Parkes fortune thoe I beleive he would not tell anything fals on the Occation,3 Harriot’s Brother Wrote her a letter from Baltemore and likewise one to Mr. Parks congratulateing them on there Intended Union which he sayes he makes no dout will be a very happy one,4 Lawrence was here at the time that Mr. Parks firs spoke to Harriot on the subject and I beg’d of him to make all the inquire he could but never hard from him untill the letter I have mention’d here and concluded from that he had Inquired and was well Pleas’d, when Mr. Parks ask’d my consent I told him I had nothing to say to it that you ware the Person to be appli’d to,5 I have never concern’d myself with it I think Harriot is Old Enougf now to make choice for her self, and if they are not happy I believe it will be her one6 falt, he bars the Best caracter of any young Person that I know,
I now my Dear Brother have to thank you for your good intention of sending me a mule if you had any to spear, but had no write to Expect you to Disfirnish your self,
I am mutch obliged to you for your invitasion to Mount Vernon but it is utterly out of my Power to get up, I believe I wrote to you last fall that I had but two old Horses and in Tenn [word left out] from that7 my stable was broken open and the best of them carri’d of8 and from that day to this I have not har’d a word of him that was the forth charriot Hors that I lost in Fredericks you may Believe I had no great Parsiallity for the Place, Harriot is Better and is gone to the forth of July in Town but I think she looks badly.
My Love to you and my Sister Washington concludes me your Affectionate sister
Betty Lewis.
P.S.—I fear you will hardly make out this as I have a violent Headake and a horrid caugh—I believe Harriot is distressed to know how she is to be Provided with things for a Weding Dress.9
Scribner’s Monthly, 15 (February 1878): 510. A 1959 transcription from the manuscript described as “a rough copy” is in ViFreGWF. That transcriber improved spelling and punctuation, but the content is largely the same. For significant variations, see notes 5, 6, and 7 below.
1. These letters from GW to Lewis have not been found.
2. See Lewis to GW, 26 June.
3. For GW’s concern about the financial prospects of Andrew Parks, the man engaged to marry his niece Harriot Washington, see GW to George Lewis, 7 April, and George Lewis to GW, 19 April; see also Parks to GW, 1 and 30 April, and GW to Parks, 7 April.
4. The letters from Lawrence Augustine Washington have not been identified.
5. The clause “that you ware the Person to be appli’d to” does not appear in the 1959 transcription.
6. This word is “own” in the 1959 transcription.
7. The 1959 transcription omits the previous two words as well as the preceding one mentioned in the bracketed statement.
8. No such letter from Lewis to GW has been found.