Patsy and Portia - Our Nation's Two First Ladies

 Join us for a lively discussion focusing on our nation’s first two First Ladies. Historians Patricia Brady and Woody Holton will provide insights into the roles, personalities, and legacies of Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. Then meet these remarkable women as they discuss the events surrounding the founding of a nation.

The Education Department cordially invites Mount Vernon staff, volunteers, and Neighborhood Friends to join our residential teacher institute participants for this free lecture. Please rsvp by Friday, June 8 to Yvonne Jones at yjones@mountvernon.org.

About the Speakers:
Patricia Brady former director of publications at the Historic New Orleans Collection, is a social and cultural historian who has published extensively on First Ladies, women writers, free people of color, and the arts in the South. Her Martha Washington: An American Life, the first scholarly biography of the first First Lady, appeared in 2005. Other books include Nelly Custis Lewis’s Housekeeping Book and George Washington’s Beautiful Nelly. Past president and a fellow of the Louisiana Historical Association, she is president of the board of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Association. Her doctorate is from Tulane University.

Woody Holton is the author of Abigail Adams (New York: Free Press, 2009), a winner of the Bancroft Prize, and of Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize and the National Book Award. Holton, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, has taught Early American history at the University of Richmond since the fall of 2000. Among the classes he has taught are the American Revolution, Early American Women, Creating the Constitution, and Early African Americans. In 2000, the Organization of American Historians awarded his first book, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia, its prestigious Merle Curti award. Forced Founders is required reading on more than 150 campuses across the country. Holton holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in American History from Duke.

Featuring:
Martha Washington: MaryWiseman, George Washington's Mount Vernon
Abigail Adams: Kim Hanley, American Historical Theatre