George Washington Birthday
Help us kick off America's 250th Birthday and join us for a special service honoring George Washington's birthday including morning prayer from The Book of Common Prayer, 1662, as well as Organ voluntaries, congregational Patriotic Hymns & Canticles.
Following the service there will be a breakfast hosted by The Brotherhood of St. Andrew and featuring a talk by Caroline Sharp, the Special Collections Curator at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, titled "Sacred Texts and Family Records: The Custis Bible and Devotional Life of the Washingtons."
George Washington’s library at Mount Vernon contained multiple Bibles, prayer books, and religious texts. These items were central to life at Mount Vernon and were used by the Washingtons as objects for daily devotional practice, tools for educational instruction, and repositories of family records. One such item in Washington’s library was a Bible inherited by Martha Washington through her first marriage. Known as the Custis Bible, it was used to record the births, marriages, and deaths of the family at Mount Vernon and was permanently returned to the Mount Vernon collections in 2025. Caroline Sharp will discuss the Custis Bible and other devotional texts owned by George Washington and his family, analyzing aspects of their material and contextual history such as binding, provenance, and evidence of use by the Washington family.