Talk:John Custis

more work needed
I improved the article a while ago and am glad (but puzzled) it reached good article status a year ago, apparently through the efforts of people more familiar with British terminology than American. I had planned to add a simple mention in the "death and legacy" section about one of his plantations now being within York River State Park, but, frankly couldn't, given the article's current state, which only mentions his property holdings in Northampton County, the town/city of Williamsburg (which BTW is near York County) and Antigua. I took out some passive constructions as well as references to "constituencies" as I have never heard that term used in an American context, colonial nor modern. However, I don't have time to check all the intervening changes, most of which are only for a few bytes. Today I noticed his legislative service was under "early life" and the heading "political career" started with a discussion of the odd relationship with his first wife, and ended with a discussion of his gardening, so I changed the first header to "early life and education" and the latter to "career". Nonetheless, the article still now seems chronologically challenged, not only because the Antigua messy inheritance by his first wife was not resolved in his lifetime. This man's acknowledgement of his son by an enslaved woman is mentioned in the article under the "later life and death" heading, while his marriages are mentioned sideways in the next section "personal life, family and legacy". To me that makes little sense, so I write here urging fewer passive constructions and more logic (such as he had two marriages and also acknowledged fathering a child by an enslaved woman, but the boy died before his father). I also changed the misleading infobox which appeared to have him born in Arlington, Virginia, which is several hundred miles away from his actual birthplace, Arlington plantation in Northampton County (on Virginia's Eastern Shore). The current Arlington, Virginia was named in part to honor the old Custis plantation, as well as the powerful British Lord Arlington who lived many decades before the American Revolutionary War.Jweaver28 (talk) 00:23, 4 January 2024 (UTC)