Diary for 1768.] The care and education of little Martha and her brother, John Parke Custis, Washington undertook with characteristic thoroughness and solicitude.

He had an instinct for training growing creatures.

He liked to experiment in breeding horses and cattle and the farmyard animals.

He watched the growth of his plantations of trees, and he was all the more interested in studying the development of mental and moral capacities in the little children.
In due time a tutor was engaged, and besides the lessons they learned in their schoolbooks, they were taught both music and dancing.

Little Patsy suffered from epilepsy, and after the prescriptions of the regular doctors had done no good, her parents turned to a quack named Evans, who placed on the child's finger an iron ring supposed to have miraculous virtues, but it brought her no relief, and very suddenly little Martha Custis died.