Frances Bassett
F, b. 1767, d. March 1796
Frances Bassett was born in 1767. She was also known as Fanny. She was Martha Washington’s favorite niece. In 1784, several years after Fanny’s mother (Martha’s sister) died, Fanny moved to Mount Vernon to make it her permanent home. Martha Washington wrote that Fanny “is as a child to me, and I am very lone some when she is absent.”
Another frequent and long-term visitor to Mount Vernon was George Washington’s nephew, George Augustine Washington (1758-1793). During the Revolution, Major George Augustine Washington was aide-de-camp to General Lafayette.
Frances married George Augustine WASHINGTON, son of Charles WASHINGTON and Mildred THORNTON, on 15 October 1785 in Mt. Vernon, Virginia. They continued to live at Mount Vernon after the wedding. A few months later, George Washington made George Augustine Washington manager of Mount Vernon. He remained in that position through the first several years of George Washington’s Presidency. However, poor health forced him to give up the job. Eventually, Fanny and George Augustine purchased a house in Alexandria.
George died circa 1793 in Virginia leaving Frances WASHINGTON as a widow.
When George Augustine died in February 1793, George Washington invited Fanny and her three small children to make their home at Mount Vernon, but she elected to remain in Alexandria, living in Washington’s town house (reconstructed at 508 Cameron Street) for a little over a year in 1794-95. Their two sons, George Fayette Washington (1790-1867) (named after Lafayette) and Lawrence Augustine Washington (b. 1791), inherited 2,000 acres in George Washington’s will – they were “double nephews,” being blood grandnephews of both George and Martha Washington.
Fanny married Tobias Lear (1762-1816) in 1795, and President George Washington dined here with the Lears in September 1795 shortly after the wedding. Lear was elected president of the Potomac Company in 1795, also. Fanny was Lear’s second wife, but she died less than a year after their wedding. When Fanny died, George Washington invited Lear to rejoin the Washington household. Lear’s third wife was Fanny’s cousin, Francis (Fanny) Henley (b. 1779), another of Martha Washington’s nieces.
Frances married Tobias Lear Esq. in August 1795 in Mount Vernon, Virginia. In The Columbian Mirror and Alexandria Gazette, Thursday, 6 Aug 1795, page 3, column 2: "Married - Tobias Lear, Esq., of Georgetown, to Mrs. Fanny Washington, of Mount Vernon."
Frances Bassett died in March 1796 in Virginia.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~opus/p3679.htm
