Martha “Markie” Custis Williams, a cousin of Mary Custis Lee, lived at Arlington House throughout the 1850s. She was born at Tudor Place in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C in 1827. Her mother was America Pinckney Peter, the granddaughter of Georgetown’s first mayor and great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. Her father was William George Williams, a West Point graduate and topographical engineer in the U. S. Army.
Tragedy marked much of Markie’s life, causing her to experience frequent bouts of sadness. Her mother died when Markie was just fifteen. Her father was often away, stationed at distant Army posts like Mackinac Island and Buffalo. The two maintained their relationship by writing letters. Markie’s half of the correspondence has not survived, but her father’s letters reveal that the two were very close. On several occasions, he playfully chided Markie for her numerous spelling errors and uncertain grasp of French grammar, suggesting she was not paying enough attention to her studies. Yet, he apologized for his criticism. “Do not feel hurt for it is the interest I feel in you that urges me to speak,” he wrote on December 21, 1842. “I am willing to sacrifice any thing to your education whilst I believe there is a feeling in you to appreciate it.”
At the age of sixteen, Markie began keeping a diary which provides valuable insight into the life of a upper class white woman in the mid-1800s. Her early entries reveal that her experiences were very similar to those of teenagers today. She went on walks with her friends, took tests in school, and reveled in sharing secrets. Her first diary also records another tragedy in her early life. During a demonstration of the new Peacemaker gun aboard the U.S.S. Princeton on February 28, 1844, the cannon exploded and instantly killed several nearby dignitaries, including Markie’s uncle, Captain Beverly Kennon. Markie and her aunt Britannia Kennon were on board at the time but did not witness the accident. In a letter written afterward, one of Markie’s other relatives, Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis, credited her with keeping her aunt calm until they safely returned home.
Sketch of Arlington House by Markie Williams, 1843.
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Two years later, the United States went to war with Mexico. Dissatisfied with his work as a topographic engineer, William G. Williams joined Zachary Taylor’s invading army. Only a month into the campaign, he was mortally wounded while leading troops at the Battle of Monterrey. According to one officer, Williams’s final words were, “Tell them I fell in the front of the column.” The loss of her remaining parent devastated Markie. She wrote to her lifelong friend Blanche Berard, “May you never know how dreadfully desolate it is, to be an Orphan.”
During this dark time, an unexpected source of comfort came from Robert E. Lee, her cousin by marriage. Following a visit Markie made to the Lee home at Fort Hamilton in 1844, she and Robert began a correspondence that spanned three decades. The letters they exchanged were affectionate, flirtatious, and exceptionally candid. In all, the letters attest to a deep friendship that existed between the two. More than a year after the death of Markie’s father, Robert, also serving with the army in Mexico, found the sword belt Williams was wearing when he died and sent it to Markie. Learning that Markie recognized it, he hoped it would “be a prized relic to you, of one who loved you so dearly.”
Beginning in the fall of 1852, Markie went on an extended voyage through England and France. She enjoyed visiting such famous sights as Westminster Abbey and the Place de la Concorde, where she was thrilled to see Napoleon III. While overseas, Markie’s beloved aunt Mary Fitzhugh Custis, wife of George Washington Parke Custis, died at Arlington House. Markie returned to America in fall 1853 just as the Lees were departing for West Point, where Robert E. Lee had been appointed superintendent. Fearing that her uncle, GWP Custis, would be left to grieve for his wife alone, Markie moved into Arlington House. For almost four years, Markie spent the bulk of her time as a resident of Arlington House. She shared a bedroom with Mary, the Lee’s eldest daughter. Her friend Blanche declared that the room “commands a beautiful view of the river & of Washington.” To pass the time, Markie often asked her uncle to tell her stories about George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and other Revolutionary War figures. She recorded these stories in her journal. “My Journal at Arlington is principally to put down the sayings & doings of my much loved & admired Uncle,” she once wrote, “wh[ich] in after days when he is gone, may be referred to with pleasure.” Among her most memorable experiences, she recorded meeting President Franklin Pierce when he came to visit Arlington House and hearing Edward Everett deliver his famous oration on Washington at the Smithsonian. She also carried on the Lee women’s tradition of teaching enslaved children how to read. Selina Gray, Arlington House’s enslaved housekeeper, asked Markie to teach her daughter Emma.
Portrait of Markie Williams by her father, 1839.
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Much like her uncle, Markie had a keen interest in art. Her father painted her portrait when she was twelve, which now hangs on the wall in her bedroom at Arlington House. In 1843, she produced a sketch of Arlington House for her brother Orton. An artist in her own right, she frequently commented on the disproportionate human figures in G.W.P. Custis’s Revolutionary War paintings. A few years after her uncle’s 1857 death, she decided to seriously study art at the Cooper Union in New York City. By a twist of fate, this meant that she would be in the north as the Lees’ home state of Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861.
When the Civil War broke out, Markie found her family split in two. Her cousin Robert E. Lee wrote her on January 22 to communicate his shock that “our people will destroy a government inaugurated by the blood & wisdom of our patriot fathers.” Yet after Virginia seceded, he chose to join the Confederacy. Markie’s brother Orton also resigned his commission in the US Army and spent a week in prison after General Winfield Scott learned of his sympathies. Her brother Lawrence and her sister Kate’s husband, however, remained loyal to the Union. Markie found herself caught in the middle. Although she opposed abolition, she did not endorse secession. “My country, my home & my friends, all so warmly loved & so dearly cherished are torn from me & my breast is mutilated by conflicting feelings & interests,” she wrote her friend Blanche Berard in September 1861. “It is needless to say, my sympathies are, in this great contest, with the South, but I have no home there now, and so I feel it my duty to remain near poor Kate, who with her little family of four children, the last only a month old, are now boarding in Germantown.”
As a southerner behind northern lines, Markie was able to visit Arlington House well after the Union Army seized it. She wrote her cousin Mary Custis Lee, “The poor House looked so desolate, I went to my room & when the d[oo]r was shut, gave way to the most bitter lamentations. I thought so much of you all & of what your sorrow would be, to see things as they now are.” Other wartime hardships would follow. Both of her brothers’ military careers ended tragically. Lawrence served with distinction as a cavalry officer but was dismissed after a prolonged battle with Typhoid fever left him unfit for duty. Despite years of lobbying to be reinstated, he never revived his military career. Worse still, Orton was arrested behind Union lines and executed as a spy. Having practically raised Orton after her father’s death, Markie wrote that she did not believe she could “live through such a sorrow.”
More than a decade after the war’s end, Markie reconnected with Samuel Powhatan Carter, a Union naval officer who claimed to have fallen in love with her the first time they met in 1844. They were married in 1877. The years they were married turned out to be the happiest of Markie’s life. Writing to Blanche a year after her wedding, she declared, “It is not often that such happiness comes to those of our age. At no age could I have been more beloved – more petted and indeed more entirely lived for, than I am now.” She died in 1899 at the age of 72 and is buried next to her husband at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
