According to _Women's Life & Work in the Southern Colonies_ by Julia
Cherry Spruill, "So great was the hast with which a widower consoled
himself with a new partner that sometimes he was condoled upon the
death of a former wife and congratulated upon his choice of a second
wife at the same time." (p. 156) She concluded that many examples
could be given of marriage within only a few months or even days after
the burial of a deceased partner. Among others she cites George
Washington's brother Samuel who married five times before he was 47.
The Society of Friends taught that sufficient time should elapse and
that remarriage within less than a year was too hasty. (p. 158) When
George Washington married Martha Custis, her deceased husband Daniel
Parke Custis had only been dead seven months.

Marilyn

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