He and his bride established themselves at Abingdon on the Potomac, not far from Mount Vernon, and with their little ones were often visitors, especially when the General was away to the war and Mrs.Washington was alone.
Toward the close of the war Jack himself entered the army, rose to the rank of colonel and died of fever contracted in the siege of Yorktown.
Thus again was the mother's heart made sorrowful, nor did the General himself accept the loss unmoved.

He at once adopted the two youngest children, Eleanor and George Washington Parke, and brought them up in his own family.
Eleanor Custis, or "Nelly," as she was affectionately called, grew up a joyous, beautiful cultured girl, who won the hearts of all who saw her.
The Polish poet, Julian Niemcewicz, who visited Mount Vernon in 1798, wrote of her as "the divine Miss Custis....

She was one of those celestial beings so rarely produced by nature, sometimes dreamt of by poets and painters, which one cannot see without a feeling of ecstacy." As already stated, she married the General's nephew, Lawrence Lewis.

In September, 1799, Washington told the pair that they might build a house on Grey's Heights on the Dogue Run Farm and rent the farm, "by all odds the best and most productive I possess," promising that on his death the place should go to them.

Death came before the house was built, but later the pair erected on the Heights "Woodlawn," one of the most beautiful and pretentious places in Fairfax County.
George Washington Parke Custis grew up much such a boy as his father was.