Washington's Advice
On Love & Marriage
George Washington to Sally Ball Haynie,
11 February 1798
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Washington's advice to another young relative focused on a different
aspect of courtship and marriage. Sally Ball Haynie, described as
a "beautiful young girl," was an impoverished niece of Washington's
mother. Both she and her mother, Elizabeth Haynie, who was probably
the daughter of Mary Ball Washington's half sister Elizabeth Johnson,
received financial support from George Washington. Thus, in his letter
of 11 February 1798 to Sally, of which a signed letterpress copy is
in the Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington emphasized
personal attributes, which would attract an appropriate marriage partner,
that were slightly different from those he extolled to his granddaughters:
| But as you have no fortune to support you, Industry, economy, and
a virtuous conduct are your surest resort, and best dependance. In
every station of life, these are commendable but in the one in which
it has pleased Providence to place you, it is indispensably necessary
that they should mark all your footsteps. It is no disparagement to
the first lady in the Land to be constantly employed, at some work
or another; to you, it would prove, in addition to a chaste & unsullied
reputation the surest means of attracting the notice of some man with
whom your future fortune will be united in Matrimonial bond and without
which it would be vain to expect a person of worth. |
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