George Washington Parke Custis sibling Elizabeth Parke Custis Law
Early life and education
Custis was born on April 30, 1781, at his mother's family home, Mount Airy, which survives in Rosaryville State Park in Prince George's County, Maryland. He initially lived with his parents John Parke Custis and Eleanor Calvert Custis, and his sisters Elizabeth Parke Custis, Martha Parke Custis and Nelly Custis, at Abingdon Plantation (part of which is now Ronald Reagan National Airport, in Arlington County), which his father had purchased in 1778.  However, six months after Custis's birth, his father died of "camp fever" at Yorktown, Virginia, shortly after the British army surrendered there.
Custis's grandmother, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, had been widowed in 1757, and married George Washington in January 1759. His father had grown up at Mount Vernon. Following John Parke Custis's death, George Washington never formally adopted the Custis grandchildren; GWP Custis and his sister, Nelly, however, grew up at Mount Vernon and Washington treated them as his adopted grandchildren. Custis's two oldest sisters, Elizabeth and Martha, remained at Abingdon with their widowed mother, who in 1783 married Dr. David Stuart, an Alexandria physician and associate of George Washington.The Washingtons brought Custis and Nelly, 8 and 10 years old, respectively, to New York City in 1789 to live in the first and second presidential mansions. Following the transfer of the national capital to Philadelphia, the original "First Family" occupied the President's House from 1790 to 1797.Custis (nicknamed "Washy") attended—but did not graduate from—Philadelphia Academy (the preparatory school of what is now the University of Pennsylvania); the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University); and St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. George Washington repeatedly expressed frustration with young Custis and his inability to improve the youth's attitude. Upon young Custis's return to Mount Vernon after only one term at St. John's, George Washington sent him to his mother and stepfather (Dr. David Stuart) at Hope Park, writing, "He appears to me to be moped and Stupid, says nothing, and is always in some hole or corner excluded from the Company."
brother or sister kin