Frances Jones

Frances Jones Dandridge (April 10, 1710April 1785) was the mother of Martha Washington, the first First Lady of the United States. She was born in New Kent County, Virginia. Her father Orlando Jones and maternal grandfather Colonel Gideon Macon served on the House of Burgesses in Colonial Virginia. Her parents were prosperous Virginian landowners. Her mother Martha Macon died when she was six and her father remarried before his death. She was then raised by her stepmother Mary Elizabeth Williams Jones and later her new husband John James Flourney. A few years after having herself emancipated at the age of sixteen, Frances married John Dandridge—a prominent planter, Colonel in the local militia, and Clerk of Courts—on July 22, 1730, in New Kent County, Virginia. They lived at the Chestnut Grove plantation and a house in Williamsburg and had eight children. Early life Frances Jones, nicknamed Fanny, was born in 1710 on a plantation near Williamsburg near the capital on Queen's Creek. Fanny had an older brother, Lane Jones, born in 1707. Fanny's father, Orlando Jones, was a Burgess for New Kent County in 1718 in the House of Burgesses, the leading legislative body in Colonial Virginia. He was also a planter with 21 enslaved people. Her mother, Martha Macon Jones, daughter of Colonel Gideon Macon, died when Fanny was only six years old. Her father soon remarried. His second wife, Mary Elizabeth William Jones, became the sole parent of the two children just three years later when Orlando Jones died. Orlando and Mary had no children together. A year later, Orlando's widow Mary Elizabeth married John James Flourney and her stepchildren lived with them in Williamsburg. The union of Flourneys brought more children into the household. While the Jones children lived with their guardians, the Flourneys had a right to use the income from the Queen's Creek property for their household. Anna Maria Jones Timson, the sister of the late Orlando Jones sued twice for custody of her niece and nephew but was denied. When Lane Jones reached the age of eighteen, he legally emancipated himself and moved in with his aunt in Timson's Neck.