Sally Fairfax
Sarah Cary known as "Sally" Fairfax (* 1730, † 1811) was the first love of George Washington.
Life
Sally Fairfax came from one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Virginia. One of her ancestors was Miles Carey, who came from Bristol mid-seventeenth century to America and established a Virginiaedelmann. Her father, Colonel Wilson Cary, a member of the House of Burgesses, inherited one of Virginia's greatest assets and the family-owned Ceelys on the James. About his wife, Sarah, Sally's mother, little is known. The eldest of the four daughters of Colonel Cary, Sally, was very popular and was the Grande Belle of the Virginia Company. She had many admirers and eventually won George William Fairfax their favor. According to the reports of Wilson Miles Cary, a writer and family historian, the wedding was announced in December 1748 in the Gazette Virginian. After their wedding, Sally and George William attracted to the Belvoir plantation, which had been built by his father, Colonel William Fairfax in the early 1740s.
The Fairfax family set, just like the family Cary, a remnant of European feudalism and the English aristocracy represents the members of the family held the reins of social and political power Virginia in their hands.
George Williams sister Anne Fairfax married Lawrence Washington, shortly after her brother had married. The young George Washington, the half brother of Lawrence, regularly began to visit Belvoir. Lawrence wanted to support his brother and brought George with why George William together. A friendship developed between the two men, despite the fact that George William was much older. A relationship developed between Sally Fairfax and George Washington. Sally had developed under the guidance of the Colonels to a highly educated young woman. As a young man with a limited education and a low position in the social ladder, Washington was impressed by this intelligent, well-known and attractive woman - he believes it is the perfect example of a woman. She was the key to the inspiration of the future President of the United States, even to ascend the social, cultural and intellectual conductors, which also in the increasing sophistication of his letters showed up at her.
Washington wrote some famous letters to Sally, such as 1758 " Tis true, I profess myself a votary to Love ... I feel the force of her amiable beauties in the recollection of a thousand tender passages did I wish to obliterate, till I am bid to revive them - but experience alas! Sadly reminds me how this is Impossible. " In another letter he made an allusion to the literary figure Juba, prince of Numidia, who loves Cato's daughter Marcia, from the play Cato the Younger by Joseph Addison. These ambiguities make it difficult for historians today to interpret the true nature of the relationship between the two and it remains to this day unknown.
Despite the enthusiasm that shared Sally and the young Washington, was wrong the forbidden temptation Sally consistent with the lofty principles that Washington had imposed on itself. Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, the wealthy widow. First, probably with the intention to increase his social status, but the connection seems to have been a happy anyway. Sally and George William were frequent, various indiscretions to ignorien polite to visit in the estate of Washington's Mount Vernon, which is probably Included One tacit consent of the spouse.
The happy Viersamkeit ended in 1773 with the beginning of the unrest before the Revolutionary War. As a Loyalist, that stalwart of the British Crown, George William had intended to return to America after the end of the revolt again, but the success of the revolution held George William and Sally from returning from. He died in 1787 and Sally lived until her death in 1811 alone.
At the end there were signs of regret on the part of Sally's. She wrote in 1788 to her sister: " I know now did the worthy man is to be preferred to the high-born Who Has not merit to recommend him ... when we inquire into the family of synthesis mighty men we find them the very lowest of people. " Washington also admitted in a letter to Sally that she was the passion of his youth and told her: " never been able to eradicate from my mind Those happy moments, the happiest in my life, which I have enjoyed in your company. "
Due to the current analysis of existing documents, the evidence for an affair between Sally Fairfax and George Washington is very thin, there are doubts about how the truth with all the gossip stories that actually looked like. However, the letters indicate a deep relationship between the two, which has certainly exists.