Mary Ball was born in 1708 in Lancaster County, Virginia, the only child of Joseph Ball and his second wife, Mary Johnson Ball. Her father was a prosperous planter and attorney, but he died when Mary was about three. Her mother died when she was around twelve. Orphanhood therefore defined her childhood, and guardians and older half-siblings became responsible for her upbringing and inheritance. Mary inherited land, enslaved people, livestock, and personal property from both parents. She was raised within the Ball family’s Anglican and planter culture, probably in the households of relatives in Virginia’s Northern Neck. She received the domestic education customary for a gentry daughter: reading, religion, sewing, household accounts, food preservation, and the supervision of servants and labor. No evidence supports the elaborate formal schooling sometimes assigned to her in later legend. In 1731 Mary married Augustine Washington, a widower with children from his first marriage. She entered a complex household and became stepmother as well as wife. Their first child, George Washington, was born in 1732, followed by Betty, Samuel, John Augustine, Charles, and Mildred. The family moved among properties including Pope’s Creek, Little Hunting Creek, and Ferry Farm. Augustine died in 1743, leaving Mary a widow with five surviving children, the eldest only eleven. His will provided property for the children but required Mary to manage Ferry Farm until George came of age. She never remarried. Her responsibilities included crops, debts, household supplies, education, and the supervision of enslaved laborers. Before George Washington became famous, Mary had already endured the deaths of both parents, inherited property, managed a blended family, lost a husband, and assumed control of a plantation household. These experiences encouraged thrift, religious seriousness, and a strong desire to retain authority over family affairs. Later portrayals have alternately idealized and criticized her, but her early life is most clearly understood as one of repeated bereavement, material responsibility, and survival within the demanding world of the Virginia gentry.