No one who studies the peculiar characteristics of Virginians of this period can doubt that both these young widows were sought by many suitors. The zeal with which men made haste to fill the places of departed wives was something marvellous! Samuel Washington was married five times, and one instance is recorded of a colonial dame in the best society who had six husbands! The early marriage of widows was the more desirable because of the outlying estates which required management. Martha Custis gave this as excuse for her prompt acceptance of Colonel Washington. But Ann Mason and Mary Washington never married again. Each possessed great executive ability, as well as unusual personal and intellectual gifts. Each elected to devote those gifts to her children. Each was the mother of a great patriot. And it is altogether probable that each one was the devoted friend of the other, and that the close friendship between the two Georges was inherited from their parents. Another Ann Mason left letters and records which give us a hint of the belongings of a Virginia housewife of her day. She enumerates among her daughter's expenses prices paid for shoes with wooden heels, hoop petticoats, and linen. George Mason of "Gunston Hall," the greatest, perhaps, of all the statesmen in an age of great statesmen, remembered the furniture of his mother's bedroom. In it was a large chest of drawers--a veritable high-boy![6] Three long drawers at the bottom contained children's garments, in which the children might rummage. Above these and the whole length of the case were the gown-drawer, the cap-drawer, the shirt-drawer, the jacket-drawer; above these a series of drawers always kept locked, containing gauzes, laces, and jewels of value--ten or twelve drawers in all! Then there were two large, deep closets, one on each side of the recess afforded by a spacious stack of chimneys, one for household linen, the other "the mistress's closet," which last contained a well-remembered article, a small green horsewhip, so often successfully applied to unruly children that they dubbed it "the green Doctor." George Mason remembered other things in connection with this splendid woman. She gathered her children around her knees morning and evening to "say their prayers." She was a lovely woman, true to her friends, pious to her Maker, humane, prudent, tender, charming:-- "Free from her sex's smallest faults, And fair as womankind can be." [6] "Life of George Mason," by Kate Mason Rowland. Both these Ann Masons--the wife of the statesman and her mother-in-law--lived and died near Mary Washington's home before 1773. Both were brilliant women, with personal charm and amiable dispositions.