Colonel John Custis IV (August 1678 – November 22, 1749) was an American planter, politician, government official and military officer who sat in the House of Burgesses from 1705 to 1706 and 1718 to 1719, representing Northampton County, Virginia and the College of William & Mary.

Born in 1678 into a slaveholding family who resided in Northampton County, Virginia, Custis was sent to London at a young age to study the tobacco trade under Micajah Perry.

[1] After returning to Virginia, once Custis reached the legal age of 21 in 1699, he was sent to his grandfather's slave plantation in Arlington to study the Virginian tobacco trade and how to manage the enslaved population there.

[1][5] Despite living in the same house with his wife from their marriage onwards, the relationship between Custis and Frances soon became strained to the point where both refused to speak with each other, instead communicating through their enslaved servants, including a manservant named Pompey.

[11] Next to the house, Custis arranged for a large 4-acre (16,000 m2) garden to be planted, reflecting an emerging interest in horticulture that saw him correspond with American and English naturalists such as John Bartram, Mark Catesby, and Peter Collinson.

[14] Custis then sent his son Daniel, who was twenty-five years old by that point, to manage the White House and learn how to oversee the daily operations of a slave plantation.

[14] As Custis grew older he started to experience several issues with his health, which led him to correspond with his contacts in the horticultural sphere and seek curative advice.

[17] The pair soon formed a romantic relationship; Custis initially opposed Daniel being together with Martha due to her family's relatively poor financial status, though he ultimately relented.

[5] Over the last decades of his life, Custis grew increasingly sick, to the point where he was removed from the Governor's Council on August 26, 1749, after being too impaired to serve his duties properly.

[2] As he was the sole legitimate heir, Custis willed that his plantations would pass into Daniel's possession; this included the White House, where he and Martha moved to after their marriage.

[14] Custis also instructed Daniel to arrange for the following phrase to be inscribed on his gravestone: "Yet lived but Seven years which was the Space of time he kept a Batchelors House at Arlington on the Eastern Shoar of Virginia."

[18] Though Custis married his wife in part due to her wealth, the extensive debts that her father accrued during his lifetime were transferred to his daughter after he was lynched by a mob in Antigua on December 7, 1710.

[7] In 1723, he wrote a letter to his friend William Byrd II, who was on a visit to London at the time, requesting that he acquire "two pieces of as good painting as you can procure", which Custis intended on placing "in the Summer before my chimneys to hide the fireplace.

"[21][22] Two years later in 1725, Custis commissioned English painter Charles Bridges to paint a portrait of him, which as of 2008 resides in an art collection in the Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.