She is first mentioned as a rustic beauty and belle at the British Governor’s residence, and was there married, when very young, to Colonel Custis. After her marriage her home was not far distant from her father’s plantation, and these fleeting years were so fraught with every conceivable blessing that her young heart asked no other boon. Endeared to each other by the warmest affection, her time spent in dispensing that hospitality which was deemed a duty and a virtue, it seemed as if no trouble could ever mar her happiness. Colonel Custis was a gifted and refined man, of eminently polished and agreeable manners, and the possessor of a generous nature, which rendered him widely popular. The congenial couple lived in happy contentment in the enjoyment of their own and their children’s society, surrounded by friends, and the possessors of all those creature comforts which add so essentially to the pleasures of existence. They had three children, the eldest of whom was a son, unusually endowed with mental gifts, and giving promise of a bright future. His health was not good, and though watched over with continuous care and forethought he died, and his untimely death hastened the disease already manifest in his father’s system. Colonel Custis died of consumption a short time afterward, and thus was the wife and mother deprived of her companion, whose affection was in keeping with his many virtues and elevated mind, and the boy whose existence had first called into being all the deathless love of a mother. Time soothed the wounds naught else could heal, and the young widow discharged the duties that belonged to her position. The trust her husband reposed in her—in leaving their large property in her own hands to control—she amply vindicated, and her estate was one of the best managed in the county. When she met Colonel Washington she was twenty-six years of age, and was remarkably youthful in appearance and very handsome. She had ever been the object of warm and disinterested affection, and from her first entrance into the society of Williamsburg, down to the last hour of her life, it was eminently illustrated. Few had been her sorrows, and for each and every one endured she could count a twofold blessing. There was nothing in her life to foster the faults incident to human nature, for the rank weeds of poverty and lack of opportunity, which cramp and deform so many earth-lives, were unfelt and unknown to her.