Prof. Emeritus Peter Henriques says it perfectly: Complicated, Very Complicated
GW: The Humiliation
In 1781, General George Washington received a confidential letter from his old friend Benjamin Harrison V, then-Governor of Virginia. The Governor had quietly advised Washington, who at that time was poised to defeat and capture the British Army at Yorktown, that a scandal-in-situ was brewing. It concerned him – and it was very personal.
His aged mother, Mary Ball Washington, had petitioned Congress for a pension, claiming she was in financial straits and had nowhere else to turn.
Naturally her General-son, a wealthy Virginia planter, quickly squelched that potential bombshell, and personally intervened. Quickly and quietly. His mother was not, nor ever had been, in financial straits, although she complained of near poverty regularly.
George’s Mother
Mary Ball definitely had a complicated upbringing, and likely far from happy. She was born into reasonably comfortable circumstances in colonial Virginia circa 1708, but was fatherless by three and motherless at twelve. According to her mother’s will, she was semi-foster-raised by a guardian, George Eskridge, and also spent some time with a half sister. At twenty, she was introduced to Augustine Washington, a friend of Eskridge, and recently widowed.
Whether it was a great romance is questionable, but it was a satisfactory arrangement. Augustine Washington, eighteen years Mary’s senior, already had two teenaged sons by his first wife Jane Butler. Nevertheless their union was fruitful: Five surviving children would be born to them, George being the eldest.
Augustine Washington died when George was eleven, and the seeds of rift between mother and eldest son were sown. Any hopes or dreams for himself were thwarted by the formidable Mary Ball, who, for all intents and purposes, believed her eldest son should devote himself to her care. And always deeply religious, she seemed far more interested in preparing for an afterlife than for the one she lived in.
Augustine’s will left her comfortable, albeit not as comfortable as when he lived. Perhaps that accounted for her frugality and fear of poverty. Nearly half his estate was reserved for his two elder sons. The balance was hers and their children’s. Their plantation “Ferry Farm,” outside Fredericksburg, was left to George – upon his maturity. But Mary Ball lived and worked Ferry Farm until 1772. By that time George was forty, and well past his maturity.
For the rest of her life, the relationship between George Washington (dutiful) and his mother (demanding) would be sparse. Existing documents suggests that Mary found it easier to criticize than to praise, and her eldest son was not up to her expectations. Time would show that she was slovenly, and certainly not up to GW’s snuff, either.
No question about Mary Ball Washington. She was a formidable woman. There is also no question about George Washington either. He didn’t care for formidable women.
A Home for Mary
Shortly before the start of the American Revolution, with all her children grown and married, managing Ferry Farm was becoming too strenuous for Mary. GW, as the eldest son, and rightful owner of the plantation, had arranged to purchase a comfortable house for his mother in Fredericksburg, only a short distance from Ferry Farm, and very close to his sister Betty Lewis and her family. It had a lovely garden, something his mother always treasured.
But once GW was Commander-in-Chief, overseeing his mother’s care and comfort was impossible. Betty and her siblings did what they could for the increasingly petulant Widow Washington.
After the War, it became obvious that Mama Washington should not live alone, especially since she was well past eighty, and had developed breast cancer. The issue was where. Brother John had agreed to take her in. But he died. Samuel had already died, and Charles was in West Virginia.
George Washington’s Letter
In 1787, Mary again was pressing for money, and in a long letter, her eldest son tried to be of assistance and offered sound financial advice. Then, he offered a remarkable backhanded invitation…
“…My House is at your service, & would press… you most devoutly to accept it, but… candour requires me to say it will never answer your purposes… for in truth it may be compared to a well resorted tavern, as scarcely any strangers… do not spend a day or two at it…
This would, were you to be an inhabitant of it, oblige you to do one of 3 things, 1st to be always dressing to appear in company, 2d to come into in a dishabille or 3d to be as it were a prisoner in your own chamber. The first yould [sic]not like, indeed for a person at your time of life it would be too fateiguing [sic]. The 2d I should not like because those who resort here are… people of the first distinction. and the 3d, more than probably, would not be pleasing to either of us—nor indeed could you be retired in any room in my house; for what with the sitting up of Company; the noise and bustle of servants…you would not be able to enjoy that calmness and serenity of mind, which in my opinion you ought now to prefer to every other consideration in life.“
So Mary Washington stayed in her house – close to Betty.
But when GW was en route to his inauguration, he stopped off for a final farewell, his “last act of personal Duty.” And when she died, a few months later, the Washington family and staff wore mourning ribbons for several months.
Sources:
Bourne, Miriam Anne: First Family: George Washington and his Intimate Relations, W.W. Norton, 1982
Craig, Shirley – Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington’s Mother – HarperCollins, 2019
Henriques, Peter, Professor Emeritus, George Mason University – “Complicated, Very Complicated” – Colonial Williamsburg Magazine, Trend & Tradition, winter 2019.
Presidential History Blog 
I think biographers—including Craig Shirley—fell into a trap of judging Mary Ball Washington too harshly and jumping to conclusions about her. I recommend “The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington” by Martha Saxton. I believe it came out the same year as Shirley’s biography, but it gives its subject more benefit of the doubt and considers how much of the criticism levied at Mary Ball Washington is either based on fictions or rumors, or would never be applied to a man of the time doing the same things she did.