John Parke Custis

John Parke Custis (November 27, 1754 – November 5, 1781) was an American planter and politician. Custis was a son of Martha Dandridge Custis (later Washington) and Daniel Parke Custis, and later, the stepson of George Washington.

Early life and education

The only son to survive childhood of Daniel Parke Custis, a wealthy planter with nearly three hundred slaves and thousands of acres of land in five Virginia counties, and the former Martha Dandridge, he was most likely born at White House, his parents' plantation on the Pamunkey River in New Kent County, Virginia. To his family, he was known as "Jacky" as a boy, then "Jack", especially after attaining his inheritance.

Following his father's death in 1757, under Virginia's laws concerning intestacy (dying without a will), almost of land and personal property including about 285 enslaved persons (worth £30,000) were held in trust for Custis until he came of age. The announcement greatly surprised George and Martha because both Jack and Eleanor were so young. Nonetheless, on February 3, 1774, Custis married Eleanor at her family's Mount Airy estate. Its restored mansion is the center of Rosaryville State Park in Prince George's County, Maryland. As discussed below, the couple would have six daughters and a son, of whom four reached adulthood.

Planter After their marriage, the couple settled at his father's White House plantation in rural New Kent County.

Nonetheless, the couple settled there during the winter of 1778–1779. Custis' behavior in this and other matters prompted George Washington to write in 1778: "I am afraid Jack Custis, in spite of all of the admonition and advice I gave him about selling faster than he bought, is making a ruinous hand of his Estate." By 1781, the financial strains of the Abingdon purchase had almost bankrupted Custis. He tried to renegotiate the terms before his death, and afterward David Stuart as guardian of Custis' minor children, reconveyed it to its former owner after paying £2,400 in rent for the period the estate had been in Custis hands.

Politician In 1778, Custis ran for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates from both New Kent County and Fairfax County. Washington at least once chided Custis concerning his habitual late arrival.

Death In September 1781 Custis persuaded Washington to let him serve as a civilian aide-de-camp to Washington during the siege of Yorktown. However, the crowded camps near the battlefield were rife with smallpox and malaria, and Custis contracted "camp fever", which could have been an illness now labelled epidemic typhus, or dysentery while at Yorktown.

Although Custis had become well-established at Abingdon, his financial affairs were in disarray because of his poor business judgement as well as wartime conditions. After Custis died in 1781, administrators of the Custis Estate negotiated for more than a decade to end the Abington transaction. Because Custis died intestate, his estate was not fully liquidated until the 1811 death of his widow. His four children inherited more than 600 slaves.

Part of the Abingdon estate is now on the grounds of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. When he purchased Abingdon, Custis also bought a nearby property that after his death became Arlington Plantation and later, Arlington National Cemetery.