Faith and Freedom

NARRATOR: Every morning at 9 a.m., Martha Washington walks up the side stairs to her bedroom, closes the door, and begins her prayers. For an hour every day, she meditates, reads the Bible, and prays. According to her granddaughter Nellie, this daily ritual was inviolable. 

George and Martha Washington are both members of the Anglican Church. In the aftermath of independence, it comes as no surprise that the American branch of the Church of England faces an identity crisis. The head of the Anglican Church, after all, is the British monarch, the same king that George Washington and company have fought against. 

The Anglican Book of Common Prayer contains numerous prayers, not only for King George, but Parliament as well. So what are the faithful Anglicans to do? The answer is simple. Make their own American prayer book, of course.

Today, on the Secrets of Washington's Archives, we explore the clues hidden inside the prayer books that belonged to Martha Washington and her granddaughter, Nellie. We'll discuss the role that religion played in the public and private lives of the Washington family, as well as Washington's commitment to religious freedom in the new nation. 

And now your host, Dr. Anne Fertig.

ANNE FERTIG: Joining me today is Jennifer SEITER. Jennifer SEITER is the Classroom Resource Specialist at Mount Vernon in the Education Department. And this is really cool because we've been talking a lot about the library in this series. And the library is an institution. It is a department here at Mount Vernon, but it's also a space and it's a space where many different departments work together here. Jennifer is in the education department. Can you explain to everyone what it is that you do here? 

JENNIFER SEITER: Yeah, so technically I'm a part of the education and guest services department because we believe that education starts as soon as you either step foot on the mansion or go to our website. And within that, a little subdivision, I'm part of the learning department and the K-12 team. And so the K-12 team focuses on teachers and students and their needs and what we can best create for them and we do programming resources and that sort of thing in order to make sure that teachers today have the best resources from us available. And so that's where my position comes in and so I'm responsible for creating those online resources that we have here at Mount Vernon and I'm also in charge of our Teachers Fellows program and that program allows for teachers to come to Mount Vernon and utilize our archives and our experts and create these teacher resources for other people to use. And we know that they're good because they're created by the teachers that we have chosen and they have a lot of experience in that. So it's a really awesome position and I'm really excited to be here. 

FERTIG: Jennifer is such a great expert to talk about today because what we're talking about today is the Book of Common Prayer, a book that was used by Martha. We have Martha's own Book of Common Prayer and we also have the Book of Common Prayer belonging to some of her granddaughters and it is particularly Nellie's, I think is the most interesting. And Jennifer came to us with a master's in history where she wrote and did research on the religion of the founding fathers. So can you talk briefly about your master's work on this area? 

SEITER: Yeah, so I graduated from the George Washington University and I studied under Denver Brunsman, who is all things expert on George Washington. And so my master's thesis focused on the different founding fathers. So I focused on John Jay and Benjamin Rush, and of course, George Washington, and their contributions to the Anglican church. Because after the American Revolution, the Anglican church was separated from Great Britain just as the country was separated from Great Britain. And so there was a lot of confusion about what was going to become of the church and what happened to church leaders. And so I really investigated their own decisions and proposals within that conversation. 

FERTIG: Yeah, it's a very interesting subject looking at the Anglican Church in the wake of the Revolution and Independence because the head of the Anglican Church is the King or Queen of England. Exactly. And how does the Church navigate this national separation from the monarch while at the same time keeping their religious affiliation? 

SEITER: Exactly. And it's a political and a religious problem too because now you have England not wanting to step on the toes of newly independent America. They just fought this huge war. They don't want to send over more bishops and more ministers from the Church of England. But then you have the Anglican Church over in America trying to figure out what to do with this institution, because now they're left without a governing body and a governing figure. So it's a really fascinating conversation that I think not a lot of people are aware of or look into. 

FERTIG: And this is something that's deeply embedded into the story of the books that we're looking at today. So let's start off with a simple question. What is the Book of Common Prayer? 

SEITER: The Book of Common Prayer is this uniform book that dictates worship, it dictates hymns, it dictates what Psalms are gonna be read, and the idea behind it is that it cannot be changed or altered. The Great British Empire was so huge and so vast, and they had all of these different Anglican churches throughout it, they really can't ensure that all of the preaching is gonna be uniform, that all of the hymns are gonna be uniform, and they're really scared of people going off committing heresies, doing all of this bad stuff. And so the Book of Common Prayer insures that ministers have to follow it. They know that ministers are gonna do specific sermons on specific days, and so if you're in the British Empire and you go to an Anglican church, you know exactly what to expect. And this book can't be changed or altered by common ministers or reverend or anything. You have to be altered in England by bishops. And so it's just this book that regulates everything within the Anglican Church, and it's also a way of control, pretty much. 

FERTIG: And just to give you an idea in this day and age, today, of course, in the United States, we call the Anglican Church the Episcopalian Church, and the Book of Common Prayer is still used in these Episcopalian churches today as it is. 

SEITER: It is. 

FERTIG: Everywhere in the Anglican communion. Like you said, it's a very uniform text. It's meant to create unity within the church. So you said though that ministers can't change it, right? 

SEITER: Exactly, yes.

FERTIG: What's really interesting about the book that we have from Martha, there's a lot of really interesting things about it that I'm really hoping we can unpack today. One, this is one of the few books we have that belongs to Martha, which I think we'll talk about a little bit later. But two, this one was published in 1789. And it's published here in the United States. It's the first American edition after independence. What does that mean? 

SEITER: It's really significant, because before this was published, the last Book of Common Prayer revision was 1662 in England. So it had been over 100 years since they had revised this book, and they were still using it. But also, it was the first book that the Americans actually got together and jointly decided to revise. And the old Book of Common Prayer has a ton of creeds and psalters and everything that they kind of agreed with until you get to the oath to King and Parliament. And of course, if you're a patriot in the American Revolution going to an Anglican church, you really don't want to be repeating those oaths to Parliament and the King and the prayers to them. And so that was a huge issue for them. But the problem is you can't change this Book of Common Prayer, you have to use it. And the only way you can change it is if a bishop approves it. And there wasn't a bishop in America, not during the revolution or any time before that. The only bishops were located in England. And so this created a huge problem for the Americans because especially after they separated from Great Britain, they had no means of getting any changes approved, of getting any ministers ordained, because that was a bishop's role was to ordain ministers.

And so everything was going downhill pretty rapidly. And there was a lot of back and forth until finally you have Mason Weems and Samuel Sayberry. One's a loyalist and one's a patriot. And they finally get approved to be the first bishops of the United States. And that was in 1784. So they come back, and what do they immediately start doing? They start revising the Book of Common Prayer because this is a huge issue. They need to get fixed. And so you have a bunch of different versions. You have a proposed Book of Common Prayer that literally nixes half of it.

Of course, that's not gonna be approved by anybody, but you eventually get the 1789 edition, which brings us to Martha's Book of Common Prayer, which is really awesome that she picked up this edition, and it's the American edition that she owns and prays from. 

FERTIG: It's really interesting too, because, one, we don't have a lot of Martha's books. Martha did not sign a lot of her books. We know some of her books are hers, not because she signed them, but because her grandchildren signed them and told us they belonged to her, or if we have other sources that say. But the Book of Common Prayer is one of the few books that she actually signs with her own signature. So she's not like George. If you look at a lot of George's books, he doesn't sign all of his books. He signs most of them, or he has a bookplate, or sometimes he has both a book plate and a signature. The Book of Common Prayer is one of the few, few books we have where Martha is signing it which is just so significant, right? 

SEITER: Her signature is right there on the front cover too. It's like she opened the book and then she said, okay, this is mine. I'm gonna use this and I'm gonna make it known that it's mine. And I love that about it. And I love it too because if you look at what she's buying over the years and if you look at what letters of hers survive, you see a lot of records of her buying prayer books and a lot of prayer books, sometimes multiple prayer books at a time. There is some time in the 1790s, I forget the date, she's writing to one of Washington's secretaries and she goes, oh, will you order me two of these prayer books? And then she writes them again and goes, add a third to that order. So she's buying quite a few of them. She's investing in them, which at that time, especially the ones she was buying, they weren't cheap. She had to be really invested in this church if she was gonna continuously buy these prayer books and buy new editions too, because.

The 1789 edition wasn't the only American book of prayer that was out there. Sure, it was the first one, but you soon have a second edition, and a third edition, and a fourth edition, as these conversations continue to happen. And she keeps buying them. She buys them for her family, for her grandsons and granddaughters, and she uses them too. We have records of her praying with her granddaughter every day, if not twice a day, which I think is really cool, that she's actually utilizing these things she's buying.

FERTIG: Yeah, I believe her granddaughter Nellie said it was from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. every morning she would retire to her bedroom to pray, meditate, and read. 

SEITER: Yes. 

FERTIG: And once again, with the one that is in our collection in particular, it is from 1789. It is the first American edition. So you can imagine that Martha Washington, as a practicing Anglican woman, was probably really looking forward to having an American edition, especially as the wife of the president.

SEITER: It's a first edition, so she gets it as soon as it comes out. So either she's informed about this, and she's told, oh, there's a new edition, you should really consider buying it. Or she's staying up to date herself. She attended church very regularly. Even when George didn't, she'd go to church. And so we know she was involved in this church atmosphere. She must have been invested if she bought the first edition right when it came out. So I think that really shows her dedication towards the Anglican Church, especially during a time when the Anglican Church was diminishing in America.

FERTIG: And going back to her buying these books for her family members, we also have in our collections a prayer book from 1793, which is one of my favorite books in the collection. So as a book historian, when we look at books, we not only look at like the text of the books, but we also look at how the book is used. Is there writing in it, what we call marginalia? Do we see any hints of how this book has been used? And we can get so many from Nellie's copy of the Book of Common Prayer.

SEITER: So to describe this book, it is a beautiful bright red prayer book. It's bound in something called Red Morocco. Morocco leather is known for taking in lots of color, and so it's very vivid. And when you open it up, the first thing you see is on one cover, she is pasted in an extra prayer. So she's found a prayer from the Alexandria Gazette, it's pasted it in the front. And then she has written on the front of it, right next to her signature.

“For M.E.A. Lewis,” this is Nellie's daughter she's given it to, “this prayer book was read by her great-grandmother, Mrs. M. Washington, twice a day, from 1789 to the year 1802.” Now this prayer book is from 1793, but that date 1789 is the date that we have of Martha's Book of Common Prayer. So it shows that it was used, especially, not only the first edition, but the second edition, and that somebody cared enough to write that inscription in it. 

FERTIG: Yeah Nelly did that in a lot of her books, and that's one of the best clues we have to Martha Washington's reading habits. And this one in particular, because librarians used to think 1789 was a mistake, because that isn't the date that Nellie's prayer book is from, but it actually matches perfectly with the date of Martha's copy of the prayer book. 

SEITER: Exactly. 

FERTIG: And then if you go to the end of this, There's also a marvelous little surprise at the end of the prayer book. She has taken another prayer from another source, we suspect a magazine, and she's sewn it into the back of the prayer book. 

SEITER: That's one of my favorite parts, I think. She cared enough that she found this prayer, she must have used it every day if she sewed it in. And you can still see the hand stitches and the ribbon that she used as well, which is so cool to look at. 

FERTIG: And it's really nice to think about how she passed it on to her daughter as well. She inscribed this book for M.E.A Lewis, that's Mary Eliza Angela Lewis. And if you turn to the part of the prayer book that is about the consecration of marriages, in pencil she's written in the name once again of M.E.A. Lewis and Charles McGill, Charles McGill Conrad being the man she married. So it's very likely that she passed that down to her daughter at her marriage. So just this wonderful little transmission from Martha To Nelly to Mary Eliza. 

SEITER: It's like a family book in a way. It's passed down through her family and it shows that her family valued it but also utilized it and also stayed active in the Anglican Church or the Protestant Episcopal Church at that point. 

FERTIG: So talking about the family, we've talked so much about Martha and her practices. What about George Washington? We know at one seems so much and so little at the same time about his personal beliefs. 

SEITER: Yes, George is very infuriating. I love George Washington, but he doesn't write a ton of things down. He will write that he attended church or what church he attended. He doesn't record his thoughts about it or who he talked to. We know that George was Anglican. He went to either Poec Church or Christ Church, and that was in Alexandria or about seven or eight miles away from Mount Vernon. So that was a long horseback ride. And he also served on the vestry. And now the vestry was this governing body of the church, and he was in Churro Parish, which means.

He was in charge of a couple of churches within the immediate area. And so vestry men were usually members of the gentry, and once they were appointed, they usually served a lifetime. So as a member of the vestry, Washington was responsible for the financial upkeep of the church, for the day-to-day upkeep of the church, and for just making sure the church functioned. On top of that, he was also church warden, which means he was responsible for making sure the church really functioned the day-to-day.

He served this position until about 1784, and he resigns from the position in a letter, and he just writes, "'Use this letter as evidence as my resignation.'" He doesn't explain why. We don't know why, though I can make a few guesses. He just fought a war, and he's about to become president of the United States, so caring for his own little hometown church probably isn't his first priority.

But still, it's a little unusual that he does resign, considering he was a member of the gentry class, and it was normal for him to at least be expected to serve out that lifetime. So he continues to attend church, though, in Philadelphia and in New York when he is serving as president. Although a few things change. He stops taking communion, and initially he'll just get out of the church service and walk out when communion is served, and communion is only served about four times every year, so it's not that common, but it's also a really important sacrament in the Anglican church.

And there's a story, and I say story because I've only read it from one account and it was somewhat hearsay. You know, I heard from the Bishop of Philadelphia who talked to this person that this happened. But according to the story, Washington got up one Sunday to leave before communion and he was called out for it and said, sit back down, you need to take communion. And he continued to walk out. And then after that, he never attended church on communion Sunday again.

Which I think is kind of funny. And Martha would go and she would continue to take communion and she would enjoy the services and he would just send a carriage after her. So we can see a lot of his actions and how he was first involved in the church and then he became less involved, but he doesn't elaborate on any of it. So it's a lot of speculation that occurs and a lot of people have made guesses as to why his actions have changed, but. We really don't know for sure in writing why he did the things he did.  

FERTIG: And it's interesting too, because he obviously had some sort of strong thoughts about his own personal beliefs. Many, as you said, many scholars have tried to read into his various speeches and letters and these actions to try to figure them out. But he was a very big proponent of religious freedom at the same time. 

SEITER: He was, definitely. Well, and there are countless letters to the Quakers, to the Episcopals, to the Jewish population within America, reassuring them that they had the freedom to practice whatever religion they wanted, which is a really bold statement at a time. He's attending a church that used to be state-sponsored, and the question is, what church will take over as the state church in America? And the answer is, of course, nothing. We have religious freedom, and not one church is going to dominate over everything else.

And so by sending these letters, he's really sending a message, the era of church domination is over. Feel free, practice whatever you want. And he does reference divine providence and deity within a lot of his letters and speeches, although he doesn't, again, elaborate on that. And it was also common to reference a deity in speeches, especially if you were a public figure. You wanted to be seen as pious because then the people would look to you as not only a national figure, but a religious figure too. And you have some people questioning his beliefs. Benjamin Rush in particular wrote that he wondered if Washington even was a member of the “true Christian Church”. But you have other people that are also taking these references and saying that Washington was this super devout, pious, Christian who spread the faith. And I think he falls in the middle of that. If I'm speculating, if I'm being honest, I think he was a Christian. I think he was pious. Do I think he was a spokesman for the Anglican Church? No. But again, speculation, don't quite know out of the documents we do have. But I think it's fun to think about. 

FERTIG: And I think this plays into Washington being at once a very private and very public figure. Yes. Who is very aware of his public identity, but definitely wanted to keep some things to himself. 

SEITER: Exactly. And you know what? I don't blame him for that, right? I kind of want my own personal thoughts to be not immortalized in history and I'd want to be remembered as a good person. So I relate to that a lot. 

FERTIG: So because he was such a public figure, do you think that played into his reticence to perhaps take a strong stand of expressing an Anglican identity? As you pointed out, this was a former state-sponsored religion. He doesn't want it to become a new state-sponsored religion. Or how do you think that might play into it? 

SEITER: Washington, I think, was a leader that was mainly looked up to by a lot of different religious denominations. And we talked about religious freedom earlier. And I think that if Washington had been really strong about his Anglican faith, about who he supported or who he didn't support, or what churches he went to, and all of that, I think it would have come across as disingenuous when he was writing to all of these different religious congregations. If he's writing to the Hebrew congregation and he's saying, I support you, you're gonna have religious freedom, and then he comes back around and says, oh, but I'm a huge Anglican, this is what I believe, and this is the right way to believe it. I think it would've been a lot harder for America to achieve religious freedom and pass that in the Bill of Rights. And also, he donated to a variety of churches, and not just his home church during his presidency, which makes me think he supports a lot of different, either Christian denominations or religion in general.

He's moving his money towards these different organizations and showing his support towards them. And so I think that's another reason for his private manner in these things. Instead of stepping up and proudly proclaiming his faith, he's staying quiet and letting people practice the way they want to practice in order for America to become what it needs to be. 

FERTIG: Really putting his money where his mouth is, right? 

SEITER: Exactly. 

FERTIG: Showing his support in a physical way, which especially in the 18th century would have been a very important thing to do.

SEITER: Yes. Yes. 

FERTIG: So we're talking about religious freedom here and Washington's support of various different religious beliefs. What about the other founding fathers? Were they also members of the Anglican Church or did they have other belief systems? 

SEITER: So the Anglican Church was primarily consisted of loyalists. You have all of these Anglican ministers and Anglican church goers who have to flee the revolution because they are loyalists. And a lot of Anglican church buildings burned to the ground and it's this huge mess. But out of the Anglican church, the Anglican church actually contributes the most amount of founding fathers to America. And so you have a lot of patriots and a lot of founding fathers that will attend churches such as Christ Church in Philadelphia, where you have John Jay, for example, who's very loyal to his church in New York, so much so that he contributes to them financially and his name is inscribed on the cornerstone of the church building.

But then you have another founding father like Benjamin Rush, who was Presbyterian for a while, and someone made him mad there, and so he switched over to the Anglican Church, and he was a practicing Anglican until they changed the sacraments of communion and in baptism actually in the 1789 Book of Common Prayer. And he was so enraged by that, that he left and formed the Unitarian Church. And then you have Thomas Jefferson, who everyone knows he formed his famous Thomas Jefferson Bible, where it just copied and pasted different things together, excluded the miracles, and called it a day. And so I think you have these founding fathers starting in an Anglican tradition primarily, and then you have some that stay, like George Washington, but you have some that stray away and create their own version of Christianity and their own version of the faith. 

FERTIG: And it's really interesting here too, because one, the Book of Common Prayer, which we have, that we know became such a treasured Washington family heirloom. Also seems to be what drove Benjamin Rush away, that American edition. But too, some of the things you've mentioned, the cornerstone, the pews, these books, the books that we have that belonged to them, these are all other ways that we can read history through and that we can learn about the founding fathers and these early Americans and their experiences in what was a very brand new country at the time. 

SEITER: Exactly, books are powerful. Especially in the Book of Common Prayer that we own, but has a schedule of all the prayers. And we know that Martha prayed from it twice a day. So essentially we can look at the prayers, look at the dates, and assume what prayer she prayed on certain dates, which I think is really cool. It's a unique glimpse into her prayer life that we ordinarily wouldn't get. 

FERTIG: That is an amazing point, Jennifer. Thank you so much for joining us today. 

SEITER: Awesome, thank you so much for having me. 

FERTIG: And we mentioned two books in our collections here today, with the first being Martha's Book of Common Prayer with her signature in it, and also the one belonging to her granddaughter Nellie. That's the bright red one with the prayers that are sewn into it. If you would like to see those for yourself, Jennifer has joined me on the video companion to this podcast series available on YouTube, also called The Secrets of Washington's Archives. So be sure to check that out yourself to see some of these amazing artifacts. 

NARRATOR: The books featured in today's podcast are the Book of Common Prayer. Both Martha and Nellie's copies of the Book of Common Prayer are held at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. The book that belonged to Eleanor Park Custis Lewis was a gift to Mount Vernon from George Thomas of Philadelphia through the Vice President for Pennsylvania, Mrs. Charles C. Harrison in 1908. The Secrets of Washington's Archives is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association and CD Squared, hosted by Dr. Ann Fertig, researched by Jennifer Seiter and Dr. Fertig, narration and audio production by Kurt Dahl at CD Squared. The music featured in this podcast is from the album No Kissing Allowed in School, produced by the Colonial Music Institute. You can listen to more from this album and other productions of the Colonial Music Institute on Spotify.