Martha Dandridge Custis Washington was the wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Although the title was not coined until after her death, she served as the inaugural first lady of the United States, defining the role of the president's wife and setting many precedents that future first ladies would observe. During her tenure, she was referred to as "Lady Washington". Washington is consistently ranked in the upper half of first ladies by historians.
19th-century portrait
Dandridge at age eight
Martha Dandridge Custis in 1757: mezzotint by John Folwell (1863) after a portrait by John Wollaston
Republican Court, or, Lady Washington's Reception Day by Daniel Huntington (c. 1861)
George Washington was an American Founding Father, military officer, and politician who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Second Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army in 1775, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War and then served as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which drafted and ratified the Constitution of the United States and established the U.S. federal government. Washington has thus become commonly known as the "Father of his Country".
George Washington
Ferry Farm, the Washington family residence on the Rappahannock River in Stafford County, Virginia, where Washington spent much of his youth
An 1855 engraving of then Lieutenant Colonel Washington holding night council during the Battle of Fort Necessity in Fayette County, Pennsylvania
Washington the Soldier, an 1834 portrait of Washington on horseback during the Battle of the Monongahela