In the mid-1790s, Dutch merchant Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest designed a Chinese porcelain service specifically to present as a gift to First Lady Martha Washington. This cup and saucer is one of the few remaining pieces of the service. …

This saucepan would have been used by Mount Vernon’s kitchen slaves to prepare meals for the Washingtons and their guests. Made of copper, the saucepan is lined with tin to avoid the distinctive metallic taste imparted to food by copper…

Despite accepting the generalship of the Continental Army, George Washington longed to return to Mount Vernon and private life with his wife throughout the Revolutionary War. This is probably one reason that Martha Washington traveled to the…

As First Lady, Martha Washington entered into an important and new public role. Just as with the President, there was debate over what her official title should be. Suggestions included “Lady” and “Marquise.” Early on, Martha herself decided…

First published in England in 1747, Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy was probably the best-known and most widely used cookbook in both England and the American colonies in the eighteenth century. The book went through a…

These ceramic toy figurines of a man holding a gun and a fashionably dressed woman were discovered by archaeologists in the remains of an eighteenth century trash heap at Mount Vernon.  Jacky and Patsy Custis, Martha’s children, may have…

This diamond ring was probably given to Martha Custis by her first husband about 1750. It was among the furnishings and accessories brought to Mount Vernon by Martha after her marriage to George Washington (image courtesy of Mount Vernon Ladies'…