Early History

George Washington Parke Custis, builder of Arlington House, was the grandson of Martha Washington and the foster son of George Washington. When Martha Dandridge Custis became the wife of Col. George Washington she was a widow with two children, Martha Parke Custis and John Parke Custis. Martha Parke Custis died in her teens without having been married, but John Parke Custis married Eleanor Calvert of Maryland in 1774, and upon his death at the close of the Revolutionary War left four children. The death of John Parke Custis was a shock, not only to his mother, Mrs. Washington, but to General Washington as well, as he is reported to have remarked to the grieving mother at the deathbed, “I adopt the two youngest children as my own.” Their names were Eleanor Parke Custis (Nellie) and George Washington Parke Custis. They were reared at Mount Vernon and are often referred to as the “Children of Mount Vernon.”

In 1802, the year his grandmother, Mrs. Washington, died, George Washington Parke Custis began building Arlington House on the estate of 1,100 acres which his father had purchased from the Alexander family in 1778. He named the estate “Arlington” and the home “Arlington House” in honor of the ancestral homestead of the Custis family on the Eastern 2 Shore of Virginia. The house was to receive the legacy of his grandmother—furniture and pictures, plate and china from Mount Vernon, and more precious still, personal effects of Washington. Two years later, at the age of 23, he was married to Mary Lee Fitzhugh of Chatham.

Portrait of Robert E. Lee, about 1850 (G. Louvrie)

It is believed that Mr. Custis designed and supervised the original building and that its remodeling about 1820 was under the direction of the architect, George Hadfield. The foundation stone and timber came from the estate. The bricks with which the house was built were burned from native clay by slaves.