George Washington was raised by a single mom (by her own choice)
Dropping this here for the Americans, because it’s always stuck with me.
George Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington, was widowed young and never remarried. She had loads of suitors and was constantly scheming how to stave them off, because remarrying would’ve compromised with her kids’ inheritance under the laws at the time. So she raised them herself. (Okay and let’s be real here, she owned a bunch of enslaved people helping her run shit too.)
The part I love is how much George took after her…resourceful, frugal, self-denying, and stubborn as hell about seeing things through. A lot of that came from her.
Most of what got written about her afterward was unfair though. She usually shows up in the histories as the nagging, controlling mother, the difficult mother-in-law, a thorn in her famous son’s side. It’s only more recently that historians (a lot of them specializing in women’s studies) have bothered to look at her as an actual person, and she comes across as someone who put her kids first, period.
I first heard all this from a guide at Ferry Farm, where he grew up, and afterward I read a book called The Widow Washington by Martha Saxton that gets into her real life.
Anyway, I just think it’s cool and interesting, and kind of striking that nobody really mentions it. One of the founding fathers, raised by a single mom who chose to stay single for her kids.