Fredericksburg claims George Washington, who although born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, February 22, 1732, spent most of his boyhood on the “Ferry Farm,” the home of his father, Augustine Washington, situated on a hill directly opposite the wharf which juts out from the Fredericksburg side of the river. Here it is that Parson Weems alleged he threw a stone across the river.

He was educated in Fredericksburg and Falmouth, a village of gray mists and traditions, which lords it over Fredericksburg in the matter of quaintness and antiquity, but obligingly joins its fortunes to those of the town by a long and picturesque bridge.

His tutor in Falmouth was a “Master Hobbie,” and while this domine was “strapping the unthinking end of boys,” George was evading punishment by being studious and obedient. He also attended the school of Mr. Marye, at St. George’s Church. It was in this church that the Washingtons worshipped.

Shy in boyhood and eclectic in the matter of associates, he had the genius for real friendships.

The cherry tree which proclaimed him a disciple of truth has still a few flourishing descendants on the old farm, and often one sees a tourist cherishing a twig as a precious souvenir of the ground hallowed by the tread of America’s most famous son. It was on this farm that George was badly hurt while riding (without permission) his father’s chestnut colt.

We take Washington’s career almost for granted, as we watch the stars without marveling at the forces that drive them on, but when we do stop to think, we are sure to wonder at the substantial greatness, the harnessed strength of will, the sagacity and perception, which made him the man he was.

He left school at sixteen, after having mastered geometry and trigonometry, and having learned to use logarithms.

He became a surveyor. His brother, Lawrence, who at that time owned Mt. Vernon, recognized this; in fact, got him, in 1740, to survey those wild lands in the valley of the Alleghany belonging to Lord Fairfax.

He was given a commission as public surveyor after this. It is hard to realize that he was only sixteen! We will not attempt to dwell upon his life in detail. We know that at nineteen he was given a military district, with the rank of major, in order to meet the dangers of Indian depredations and French encroachments. His salary was only 150 pounds a year.

On November 4, 1752, he was made a Mason in Fredericksburg Lodge, No. 4. The Bible used in these interesting ceremonies, is still in possession of the lodge, and is in a fine state of preservation. Washington continued a member of this lodge until he died, and Lafayette was an honorary member.

At twenty-one, as a man of “discretion, accustomed to travel, and familiar with the manners of the Indians,” he was sent by Governor Dinwiddie on a delicate mission which involved encroachments by the French on property claimed by the English. During all these years he came at close intervals to visit his mother, now living in her own house in Fredericksburg, which was still his home.

After his distinguished campaign against the French army under M. De Jumonville in the region of Ohio, where he exposed himself with the most reckless bravery, he came to Mt. Vernon which he inherited from his brother, Augustus, married Martha Custis, a young widow with two children and large landed estates, and became a member of the House of Burgesses, punctually attending all the sessions.

Indeed, one finds oneself eagerly looking for an occasional lapse in this epic of punctuality. It would humanize him. Anyway, one is glad to see that he was a patron of the arts and the theatre, and his industry in keeping day-books, letter-books, contracts and deeds is somewhat offset by the fact that he played the flute.

He seldom spoke in the House of Burgesses, but his opinion was eagerly sought and followed. We will pass over the time when Dunmore prorogued the “House,” and of the events which ended in Washington’s being made Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.

We are, perhaps, more interested in another visit to Fredericksburg to see his mother, after he had resigned his commission. From town and country, his friends gathered to give him welcome and do him honor. The military turned out, civic societies paraded, and cannon boomed.

In between his career as statesmen and as soldier, we strain our eyes for a thread of color, and we discover that he was once brought before a justice of the peace and fined for trading horses on Sunday. And again, that he was summoned before the grand jury and “George William Fairfax, George Washington, George Mason,” and half dozen others were indicted for “not reporting their wheeled vehicles, according to law.”

It is worth noting, too, that while her son, George, was leading the American army, Mary, his mother, was a partisan of the King; a tory most openly. “I am sure I shall hear some day,” She told some one, calmly, in her garden, “that they have hung George.”

Nevertheless, his first two messages, after he crossed the Delaware and won signal victories, were to Congress and his mother. And after the hard-riding courier had handed her the note, and the gathering people had waited until she laid down her trowel, and wiped the garden earth from her hands, she turned to them and said: “Well, George has crossed the Delaware and defeated the King’s troops at Trenton.”

The stern fact of the Revolution, which cast upon George Washington immortal fame and which was followed by his election to the Presidency of the United States, is softened somewhat by a letter on love written to his daughter, Nellie Custis. A few excerpts are as follows:

“When the fire is beginning to kindle, and the heart growing warm, propound these questions to it. Who is this invader? Is he a man of character; a man of sense? For be assured, a sensible woman can never be happy with a fool. Is his fortune sufficient to maintain me in the manner I have been accustomed to live? And is he one to whom my friends can have no reasonable objection?”

And again, “It would be no great departure from the truth to say that it rarely happens otherwise than that a thorough paced coquette dies in celibacy, as a punishment for her attempts to mislead others by encouraging looks, words and actions, given for no other purpose than to draw men on to make overtures that they may be rejected.”

The letter ends with a blessing bestowed on the young lady to whom is given such sensible advice. That this letter is characterized by an admirable poise, cannot be denied.

George Washington died at Mt. Vernon, December 4, 1799. He upheld the organization of the American state during the first eight years of its existence, amid the storms of interstate controversy, and gave it time to consolidate.

No other American but himself could have done this—for of all the American leaders he was the only one whom men felt differed from themselves. The rest were soldiers, civilians, Federalists or Democrats, but he—was Washington.

Almost immediately after appearing before the public session of Congress, at which he resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental armies, an act of which Thackeray speaks as sheathing his sword after “a life of spotless honor, a purity unreproached, a courage indomitable and a consummate victory,” Washington came to Fredericksburg to visit his mother. He was the great hero of the age, the uncrowned King of America and from all over the section crowds flocked to do him honor. The occasion was of such importance that the city did not trust the words of welcome to a single individual, but called a meeting of the City Council at which a short address was adopted and presented to Washington upon his arrival by William McWilliams, then mayor.

While beautifully worded to show the appreciation of his services and respect for his character and courage, the address of welcome contains nothing of historical significance except the line “And it affords us great joy to see you once more at a place which claims the honor of your growing infancy, the seat of your amiable parent and worthy relatives,” which establishes Washington’s connection with Fredericksburg.

In reply, General Washington said:

This address is recorded in the books of the town council and is signed in a handwriting that looks like that of Washington.

As it is known that Washington lived at Fredericksburg from the time he was about six years of age until early manhood, the expression “growing infancy” is unfortunate, but later, when Mayor Robert Lewis, a nephew of Washington, delivered the welcome address to General Lafayette when he visited Fredericksburg in 1824 the real case was made more plain when he said:

John Paul Jones.

Of all the men whose homes were in Fredericksburg, none went forth to greater honor nor greater ignominy than John Paul Jones, who raised the first American flag on the masthead of his ship, died in Paris and was buried and slept for 113 years beneath a filthy stable yard, forgotten by the country he valiantly served.

He came to Fredericksburg early in 1760 on “The Friendship,” as a boy of thirteen years. Born in a lowly home, he was a mere apprentice seaman, and without doubt he deserted his ship in those days, when sea life was a horror, to come to Fredericksburg and join his brother, William Paul, whose home was here, and who is buried here. There is some record of his having been befriended by a man in Carolina, and traditions that he left his ship in a port on the Rappahannock after killing a sailor, and walked through the wilderness to Fredericksburg. Neither tradition is of importance; the fact is that he came here and remained four years during the developing period of his life.

William Paul had immigrated to Fredericksburg from the Parish of Kirkbeam, Scotland, (where he and his brother, John, were born), about 1760, had come to Fredericksburg and conducted a grocery store and tailor shop on the corner of Caroline and Prussia streets. William died here in 1773, and is buried in St. George’s Church Yard. In his will he left his property to sisters in the Parish of Kirkbeam, Scotland.

Alexander McKenzie, in his life of John Paul Jones, says, after referring to the fact that William Paul is buried in Fredericksburg: “In 1773 he went back to Fredericksburg to arrange the affairs of his brother, William Paul,” and John Paul Jones himself wrote of Fredericksburg: “It was the home of my fond election since first I saw it.” The Legislature of Virginia decided in settling William Paul’s estate that John Paul Jones was a legal resident of Fredericksburg.

Obviously, then, Fredericksburg was the great Admiral’s home, for, though not born here, he chose it when he came to America.

When he first reached the little town on the Rappahannock he went to work for his brother, William Paul and one can surmise that he clerked and carried groceries and messages to the gentry regarding their smart clothes for his brother.

The Rising Sun Tavern was then a gathering place for the gentry and without doubt he saw them there. He may well have learned good manners from their ways, good language from hearing their conversation and “sedition” from the great who gathered there. We may picture the lowly boy, lingering in the background while the gentlemen talked and drank punch around Mine Host Weedon’s great fire, or listening eagerly at the counter where the tavern-keeper, who was to be a Major-General, delivered the mail.

Certainly John Paul Jones was a lowly and uneducated boy at 13. He left Fredericksburg after four years to go to sea again, and in 1773 came back to settle his brother’s estate, and remained here until December 22, 1775, when he received at Fredericksburg his commission in the Navy.

John Paul Jones’ story is more like romance than history. Beginning an uncouth lad, he became a sea fighter whose temerity outranks all. We see him aboard the Bonhomme Richard, a poor thing for seafaring, fighting the Serapis just off British shores, half of his motley crew of French and Americans dying or dead about him, the scruppers running blood, mad carnage raging, and when he is asked if he is ready to surrender he says: “I’ve just begun to fight,” and by his will forcing victory out of defeat. He was the only American who fought the English on English soil. He never walked a decent quarter deck, but with the feeble instruments he had, he captured sixty superior vessels. His ideal of manliness was courage.

What of this Fredericksburg gave him no one may say, but it is sure that the chivalry, grace and courtliness which admitted him in later years to almost every court in Europe was absorbed from the gentry in Virginia. He did not learn it on merchantmen or in his humble Scotch home, and so he learned it here. Of him the Duchess de Chartres wrote:

He won his country’s high acclaim, but it gave him no substantial evidence. He was an Admiral in the Russian Navy, and after a time he went to Paris to live a few years in poverty, neglect, and bitterness. He died and was buried in Paris in 1792, at 45 years of age.

He was a dandy, this John Paul Jones, who walked the streets of Fredericksburg in rich dress. Lafayette, Jefferson, and, closest of all, the Scotch physician, Hugh Mercer, were his friends. Slender and not tall, black-eyed and swarthy, with sensitive eyes, and perfect mouth and chin, he won the love or friendship of women quicker than that of men.

He was buried in an old graveyard in Paris and forgotten until the author of this book wrote for newspapers a series of letters about him. Interest awoke and Ambassador Porter was directed to search for his body. How utterly into oblivion had slipped the youth who ventured far, and conquered always, is plain when it is known that it took the Ambassador six years to find the body of Commodore John Paul Jones. He found it in an old cemetery where bodies were heaped three deep under the courtyard of a stable and a laundry.

Surgeon Laurens Brooke

Surgeon Laurens Brooke, was born in Fredericksburg, in 1720, and was one of those who accompanied Governor Spottswood as a Knight of the Golden Horseshoe. He afterwards lived in Fredericksburg, entered the U. S. Navy as a surgeon and sailed with John Paul Jones on the “Ranger” and on the “Bon Homme Richard.” At the famous battle of Scarborough, between the latter vessel and the “Serapis,” Surgeon Brooke alone had the care of one hundred and twenty wounded sailors; and later with Surgeon Edgerly, of the English navy, from the Tempis, performed valiant work and saved many lives. The surgeons were honored by Captain Paul Jones with a place at his mess, and the literature of the period refers to Surgeon Brooke as the “good old Doctor Laurens Brooke.” He was with Jones until the end of the war and spent some time at his home here when a very old man, some years after the Revolution. His family had a distinguished part in the War Between the States, being represented in the army and in the C. S. Congress during that period.

General Hugh Mercer

We wonder if any one ever declined to take the advice of George Washington.

Certain it is that General Hugh Mercer did not, for, at the suggestion of Washington, Mercer came to Fredericksburg. Many Scotchmen have found the town to their liking. It makes them feel a sort of kinship with the country of hill-shadows, and strange romance.

Mercer was born in Aberdeen in the year 1725. His father was a clergyman; his mother, a daughter of Sir Robert Munro, who, after distinguishing himself at Fontenoy and elsewhere, was killed at the battle of Falkirk, while opposing the young “Pretender.” Hugh Mercer did not follow in the footsteps of his father, but linked his fortunes with Charles Edward’s army, as assistant surgeon, fought with him at Culloden and shared the gloom of his defeat—a defeat which was not less bitter because his ears were ringing with the victorious shouts of the army of the Duke of Cumberland.

To change a scene that brought sad memories, Dr. Hugh Mercer, in the fall of 1746, embarked for America. There, on the frontiers of civilization, in Western Pennsylvania, he spent arduous, unselfish years. He was welcomed and loved in this unsettled region of scattered homes.

A rough school it was in which the doctor learned the lessons of life.

In the year 1755, Mercer made his appearance in the ill-fated army of Braddock, which met humiliating disaster at Fort Duquesne. Washington’s splendid career began here and here Mercer was wounded. Of this memorable day of July 9, 1755, it has been said that “The Continentals gave the only glory to that humiliating disaster.”

In 1756, while an officer in a military association, which was founded to resist the aggression of the French and Indians, he was wounded and forced to undergo terrible privations. While pursued by savage foes he sought refuge in the trunk of a tree, around which the Indians gathered and discussed the prospect of scalping him in the near future. When they left he escaped in the opposite direction and completely outwitted them. Then began a lonely march through an unbroken forest, where he was compelled to live on roots and herbs, and where the carcass of a rattlesnake proved his most nourishing meal. He finally succeeded in rejoining his command at Fort Cumberland. In recognition of his sacrifices and services in these Indian wars, the Corporation of Philadelphia presented him with a note of thanks and a splendid memorial medal. In the year 1758 he met George Washington and then it was that Pennsylvania lost a citizen. In Fredericksburg, at the time that Mercer came, lived John Paul Jones, and we do not doubt that they often met and talked of their beloved Scotland.

During his first years in Fredericksburg, Mercer occupied a small two-story house on the southwest corner of Princess Anne and Amelia Streets. There he had his office and apothecary shop. The building is still standing.

An Englishman, writing at this time of a visit to Fredericksburg, calls Mercer “a man of great eminence and possessed of almost every virtue and accomplishment,” truly a sweeping appreciation.

He belonged to Lodge No. 4, of which George Washington was also a member, and he occasionally paid a visit to Mount Vernon.

In September, 1774, the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. The war cloud was lowering, it broke, and when the Revolution swept the country, Mercer was elected Colonel of the Third Virginia Regiment.

An approbation of the choice of Mercer was prepared by the county committee, which set forth the importance of the appointment and was an acknowledgment of his public spirit and willingness to sacrifice his life.

Colonel Mercer with his men and fifes and drums marched away from his home, bidding good-bye to his wife (Isabella Gordon), whom he never saw again.

There is an interesting story of Mercer at Williamsburg. Among the troops which were sent there at that time, was a Company of riflemen from beyond the mountains, commanded by a Captain Gibson. A reckless and violent opposition to military restraint had gained for this corps the name of “Gibson’s Lambs.” After a short time in camp, a mutiny arose among them, causing much excitement in the army, and alarming the inhabitants of the city. Free from all restraint, they roamed through the camp, threatening with instant death any officer who would presume to exercise any authority over them.

At the height of the mutiny an officer was dispatched with the alarming tidings to the quarters of Colonel Mercer. The citizens of the town vainly implored him not to risk his life in this infuriated mob.

Reckless of personal safety, he instantly repaired to the barracks of the mutinous band and directing a general parade of the troops, he ordered Gibson’s company to be drawn up as offenders and violators of the law, and to be disarmed in his presence.

The ringleaders were placed under a strong guard and in the presence of the whole army he addressed the offenders in an eloquent manner, impressing on them their duties as citizens and soldiers, and the certainty of death if they continued to remain in that mutinous spirit equally disgraceful to them and hazardous to the sacred interests they had marched to defend. Disorder was instantly checked and the whole company was ever afterward as efficient in deportment as any troop in the army.

On June 5, 1776, Mercer was made Brigadier-General in the Continental Army. It was Mercer who suggested to Washington the crossing of the Delaware. Major Armstrong, Mercer’s Aide-de-Camp, who was present at a council of officers, and who was with Mercer on that fateful night, is authority for this statement.

We, somehow, see the army of the colonists poorly clad, many of them barefoot, without tents, with few blankets, and badly fed. In front of them is Cornwallis, with his glittering hosts, and we can almost hear the boast of General Howe, that Philadelphia would fall when the Delaware froze. He did not know Washington; and Mercer’s daring was not reckoned with. We wonder if ever a Christmas night was so filled with history as that on which Washington, with the intrepid Mercer at his side, pushing through that blinding storm of snow and fighting his way through the floating ice, crossed the Deleware with the rallying cry of “victory or death,” and executed the brilliant move which won for him the Battle of Trenton.

Near Princeton, Washington’s army was hemmed in by Cornwallis in front and the Delaware in the rear. After a consultation at Mercer’s headquarters it was determined to withdraw the Continental forces from the front of the enemy near Trenton, and attack the detachment then at Princeton. The pickets of the two armies were within two hundred yards of each other. In order to deceive the enemy, campfires were left burning on Washington’s front line and thus deceived, the enemy slept.

A woman guided the Continental army on that night march. A detachment of two hundred men, under Mercer, was sent to seize a bridge at Worth’s Mill. The night had been dreary; the morning was severely cold. Mercer’s presence was revealed at daybreak. General Mahood counter-marched his regiment and crossed the bridge at Worth’s Mill before Mercer could reach it. The British troops charged. The Colonials were driven back. General Mercer dismounted and tried vainly to rally his men. While he was doing this, he was attacked by a group of British troops, who, with the butts of muskets, beat him down and demanded that he surrender. He refused. He was then bayoneted and left for dead on the battlefield. Stabbed in seven different places, he did not expire until January 12, 1777.

Washington finally won the Battle of Princeton, but Mercer was a part of the price he paid. The battles of Trenton and Princeton were the most brilliant victories in the War of the Revolution.

At Fredericksburg a monument perpetuates Mercer’s fame. At the funeral in Philadelphia 30,000 people were present, and there his remains rest in Laurel Hill Cemetery.

The St. Andrew’s Society, which he joined in 1757, erected a monument to his memory and in the historical painting of the Battle of Princeton, by Peale Mercer is given a prominent place. The states of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia and New Jersey have, by an act of Legislature, named a county “Mercer,” and on October 1, 1897, a bronze tablet to his memory was unveiled at Princeton, N. J. We have not the space to relate all of his illustrious life, but somewhere there is a poem, the last lines of which voice the sentiment of his countrymen.

“But he, himself, is canonized,
If saintly deeds such fame can give;
As long as liberty is prized,
Hugh Mercer’s name shall surely live.”

Sir Lewis Littlepage

In the possession of a well-known man of Richmond, Va., is a large gold key.

It is vastly different from the keys one sees these days, and inquiry develops that it was once the property of one of the most picturesque characters in America—a man who began his life in the cornfields of Hanover County, Va., in 1753, and was swept by the wave of circumstance into the palace of a King.

The atmosphere of old William and Mary College, where Lewis Littlepage was graduated, after the death of his father, gave a mysteriously romantic note to the beckoning song of adventure, which finally became a definite urge, when the youth, after residing in Fredericksburg, listened to the advice of his guardian, Benjamin Lewis, of Spotsylvania County, who placed him with John Jay, the American Minister at Madrid.

Six months later, Jay, in a letter to Benjamin Lewis, said of the seventeen-year-old lad:

“I am much pleased with your nephew, Lewis Littlepage, whom I regard as a man of undoubted genius, and a person of unusual culture.”

And a few months after this we discover that the well-known traveler, Mr. Elekiah Watson, has an entry in his diary which reads:

“At Nantes I became acquainted with Lewis Littlepage, and although he is but eighteen years of age, I believe him to be the most remarkable character of the age. I esteem him a prodigy of genius.”

In Madrid, Littlepage got into financial straits, owing to the fact that his allowance did not reach him, and the next glimpse we get of him is through the smoke of battle at Fort Mahon, where in 1781, as a member of the force under the Duke de Crillion, he was painfully wounded while charging the Turks.

In 1872, en route to Madrid to join Mr. Jay, he heard that de Crillion was preparing to storm Gibraltar, and, believing himself in honor bound to follow the fortunes of his chief, he wrote Mr. Jay that he must turn again to arms.

From that day forward he was a soldier, a diplomat, a courtier—the elected friend of Kings and Princes.

He aided in storming Gibraltar and left his ship only when it had burned to the water’s edge. He was highly recommended to the King for his gallantry, and went back to Paris with de Crillion to become a brilliant figure at court and in the salons.

Europe knew him, but America refused him even a small commission, though Kings wrote to our Congress in his behalf.

He met Lafayette at Gibraltar; in fact, accompanied him to Spain. Then, after considerable travel in European countries, he again encountered Prince Nassau, who was his brother at arms in de Crillion’s forces, became his aide-de-camp and, together they found happiness in travel. They sought the bright lights of gay capitals and followed mysterious moon tracks on the Danube river.

At the Diet of Grodno, in 1784, where he went with Nassau, he met Stanislaus Augustus, King of Poland. He captivated the King; and in a brilliant ball room, Stanislaus offered him a permanent service at his court.

Within a year he was chamberlain and secretary to the cabinet of His Majesty, and for years he was practically the ruler of the empire.

In 1787, at Kiva, he made a treaty with Catherine, Empress of Russia, and became her intimate friend.

He was a special and secret envoy from Poland to the sessions of the grand quadruple alliance in France. Later we see him leading a division of the army of Prince Potempkin across the snow-clad steppes of Russia, and a few months after, he was marching at the head of the Prince’s army through the wild reaches of Tartary. Again, under Prince Nassau, we find him commanding a fleet against the Turks at Oczacon.

Shortly after, he was a special high commissioner to Madrid. His mission completed, he was ordered to return to Russia for the revolution of 1791, and now he served as aide-de-camp and Major-General.

In 1794, when the Polish patriot, Kosciusco, headed a revolution, Littlepage answered his summons and fought through to the storming of Prague.

Stanislaus held him the greatest of his generals and his aides and when the King was captured by the Russians, Littlepage, tired of the broils of European politics, came home to America.

When Littlepage was first in Poland, the place was gay and laughter-loving. An atmosphere of high culture and literary achievements made a satisfactory entourage for the ill-fated people. He lived happily there and loved a princess of North Poland. There were starlight meetings and woodland strolls, vows of faith and the pain of renunciation, when for diplomatic reasons she was forced to endure another alliance. Littlepage’s reputation and splendid appearance; her beauty and the love they bore each other and, finally, her death, made a background of red romance, against which he is silhouetted in one’s memory.

That Lewis Littlepage was a poet of no mean ability was a fact too well known to be disputed. The last verse of a poem written by him and inspired by the death of the woman he loved reads:

“Over there, where you bide—past the sunset’s gold glory,
With eyes that are shining, and red lips apart,
Are you waiting to tell me the wonderful story,
That death cannot part us—White Rose of my Heart.”

It is said that Littlepage had more honors and decorations showered upon him than any other American in history.

Go to the old Masonic cemetery in Fredericksburg, and in a far corner, where the wild vines and the hardy grass struggle for mastery, you may see a legend inscribed upon a large flat stone: This is the tomb of Lewis Littlepage. For the multitude, it is simply an unpleasant finale to the life of a well known man.

To the imaginative, it starts a train of thought—a play of fancy. One sees the rise of the star of Poland. Gay youths and maids pass and repass to the sound of music and laughter. The clank of a sword sounds above the measured foot fall on a polished floor. A soldier passes in all the bravery of uniform. It is General Littlepage silently going to an audience with the King. The massive doors open without a challenge, for as a passport to the palace, on the uniform of this soldier glitters a large gold key—the gift of Stanislaus.

Suddenly the scene changes. Amid the surging hosts and in the thick of the bloody clash at Prague, when the anguish of uncertainty was crumbling the courage of a kingdom, a man is seen, riding with reckless abandon. Tearing through the lines and holding aloft the tattered standard of Poland, comes Littlepage of Virginia. With the rallying cry of his adopted land, he gathers up his troops and gloriously defends the flag he loves. Our eyes again stray to the legend on the tomb: Disillusionment!

His return to his old home! His death! We see this also, but with this is the knowledge that he lived greatly, and in his ears, while dying, sounded again, the shout of victory, while his heart held the dream of the old romance.

Gen. George Weedon

Among the first men in America to “fan the flames of sedition,” as an English traveler said of him long before the war, was Mine Host George Weedon, keeper of the Rising Sun Tavern, Postmaster, and an Irish immigrant. At his place gathered all the great of his day, spending hours dicing and drinking punch.

Over and over among these men—Washington, Mason, Henry, the Lees, Jefferson and every Virginia gentleman of that section, George Weedon heard discussion of the Colonies’ problems, and he forcibly gave vent to his opinions.

Time and again he expressed the idea of freedom before others had thought of more than protest. His wild Irish talk in the old Rising Sun Tavern helped to light the torch of liberty in America.

When war came, Weedon was elected Lieutenant-Colonel of the First Virginia, of which Hugh Mercer was chosen Colonel. August 17, 1776, he became its Colonel, and on February 24, 1777, he was made a Brigadier-General.

In the Battle of Brandywine, General Weedon’s division rendered conspicuous service, when they checked the pursuit of the British and saved our army from rout. He commanded brilliantly at Germantown. Wherever he fought, his great figure and stentorian voice were prominent in the conflict.

He admired Washington and his fellow-generals. It was not because of these, but because he thought Congress to have treated him unfairly about rank, that he left the Army at Valley Forge. He re-entered in 1780, and in 1781 was given command of the Virginia troops, which he held until the surrender of Yorktown, where he played an important part.

George Weedon was the first President of the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternity of Revolutionary officers which General Washington helped to organize, and this was, indeed, a singular honor. He was a member of the Fredericksburg Masonic Lodge, of which Washington was also a member. After the war, he lived at “The Sentry Box,” the former home of his gallant brother-in-law, General Mercer.

General Weedon was a man of exuberant spirits, loud of voice and full of Irish humor. He wrote a song called “Christmas Day in ’76,” and on each Yuletide he assembled at his board his old comrades and friends, and, while two negro boys stood sentinel at the door, drank punch and roared out the verses:

“On Christmas Day in ’76
Our ragged troops with bayonets fixed,
For Trenton marched away.
The Delaware ice, the boats below
The lights obscured by hail and snow,
But no signs of dismay.”

Beginning thus, the brave Irishman who verbally and fought among the foremost for America for over physically thirty years, told the story of Washington’s crossing the Delaware, vividly enough, and every Christmas his guests stood with him and sang the ballad.[2]

Mason of Gunston

Of George Mason, whom Garland Hunt says is “more than any other man entitled to be called the Father of the Declaration of Independence,” whom Judge Garland says, “Is the greatest political philosopher the Western Hemisphere ever produced,” of whose Bill of Rights, Gladstone said, “It is the greatest document that ever emanated from the brain of man,” little can be said here. His home was at Gunston Hall, on the Potomac, but the Rising Sun knew him well, and his feet often trod Mary Washington’s garden walks, or the floors of Kenmore, Chatham and the other residences of Old Fredericksburg.

Mason was intimate here, and here much of his trading and shipping was done. When he left Gunston, it was usually to come to Fredericksburg and meet his younger conferees, who were looking up to him as the greatest leader in America. He died and is buried at Gunston Hall. It was in Fredericksburg that he first met young Washington, who ever afterward looked upon “The Sage of Gunston” as his adviser and friend, and as America’s greatest man.

General William Woodford

Although he came from Caroline, General William Woodford was a frequenter of and often resident in Fredericksburg, and it was from this city he went to Caroline upon the assembling of troops when Lord Dunmore became hostile. In subsequent military operations he was made Colonel of the Second Regiment and distinguished himself in the campaign that followed, and he was honorably mentioned for his valiant conduct at the battle of Gread Bridge, December 9, 1775, upon which occasion he had the chief command and gained a brilliant victory. He was later made General of the First Virginia Brigade. His command was in various actions throughout the war, in one of which, the Battle of Brandywine, he was severely wounded. He was made prisoner by the British in 1778 at Charleston, and taken to New York, where he died.

Col. Fielding Lewis

The mansion stands in a park, which in autumn is an explosion of color. An old wall, covered with Virginia creeper, adds a touch of glamour to the Colonial house, and a willow tree commanding a conspicuous corner of the grounds lends a melancholy aspect which makes up the interesting atmosphere of Kenmore, part of the estate of Colonel Fielding Lewis, who brought to this home his bride, “Betty,” a sister of George Washington, and where they lived as befitted people of wealth and learning, his wife giving an added meaning to the social life of the old town, and Colonel Lewis himself taking an active and prominent part in the civic affairs, as most people of wealth and culture deemed it their duty to do in the days gone by.

Colonel Lewis was an officer in the Patriot Army and commanded a division at the siege of Yorktown. He was an ardent patriot and when the Revolution started his activities ran to the manufacture of firearms, which were made at “The Gunnery” from iron wrought at the foundry, traces of which may still be seen on the Rappahannock river, just above the village of Falmouth.

Colonel Lewis was a magistrate in the town after the war, a member of the City Council and represented the county in the Legislature.

His son, Captain Robert Lewis, was one of President Washington’s private secretaries and mayor of Fredericksburg from 1821 to the day of his death. When LaFayette visited the town in 1824, Colonel Lewis was selected to deliver the address of welcome.

However, we are apt to forget the elegancies and excellencies of the courtly man whose life was dedicated to useful service in a note that is struck by the home in which he lived. Kenmore, in the light of its past, sounds an overtone of romance. We cannot escape it, and it persistently reverberates above the people it sheltered.

James Monroe

James Monroe was among the most important citizens that ever lived in Fredericksburg.

Monroe was born in Westmoreland County, not far from what is now Colonial Beach. When a young man he was attracted by the larger opportunities afforded by the town and moved to Fredericksburg, where he began the practice of law, having an office in the row of old brick buildings on the west side of Charles Street, just south of Commerce. Records still in the courthouse show that he bought property on lower Princess Anne Street, which still is preserved and known as “The Home of James Monroe.” Monroe occupied the house when it was located at Bradley’s corner, and it was afterwards moved to its present site, though some contend that he lived in the house on its present site.

Shortly after his arrival he became affiliated with St. George’s Church, soon being elected a vestryman, and when he had been here the proper length of time he got into politics, and was chosen as one of the Town Councilmen. From this humble political preferment at the hands of the Fredericksburg people, he began a career that seemed ever afterward to have included nothing but officeholding. Later he became Continental Congressman from the district including Fredericksburg, and was, in turn, from that time on, Representative in the Virginia convention, Governor of Virginia, United States Congressman, Envoy Extraordinary to France, again Governor, Minister to England, Secretary of War, once more Minister to England, Minister to Madrid, Secretary of State and twice President—if not a world’s record at least one that is not often overmatched. Previous to his political career, Monroe had served in the Revolutionary Army as a Captain, having been commissioned while a resident of Fredericksburg.

Monroe gave to America one of its greatest documents—known to history as the Monroe Doctrine. It was directed essentially against the purposes of the Holy Alliance, formed in 1815 by the principal European powers with the fundamental object of putting down democratic movements on the part of the people, whether they arose abroad or on this side of the world. After consultation with English statesmen and with Jefferson, Adams, John Quincy Adams and Calhoun, Monroe announced his new principle which declared that the United States of America would resent any attempt of the Alliance to “extend their system to this part of the Hemisphere.”