Historic Fredericksburg: The Story of an Old Town

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:

Gentlemen:

With the greatest pleasure I receive in the character of a private citizen the honor of your address. To a benevolent providence and the fortitude of a brave and virtuous army, supported by the general exertion of our common country, I stand indebted for the plaudits you now bestow. The reflection, however, of having met the congratulating smiles and approbation of my fellow citizens for the part I have acted in the cause of Liberty and Independence cannot fail of adding pleasure to the other sweets of domestic life; and my sense of them is heightened by their coming from the respectable inhabitants of the place of my growing infancy and the honorable mention which is made of my revered mother, by whose maternal hand, (early deprived of a father) I was led to manhood. For the expression of personal affection and attachment, and for your kind wishes for my future welfare, I offer grateful thanks and my sincere prayers for the happiness and prosperity of the corporate town of Fredericksburg.

Signed: George Washington.

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:

“The presence of the friend of Washington excites the tenderest emotions and associations among a people whose town enjoys the distinguished honor of having been the residence of the Father of his Country during the days of his childhood and youth,” and in reply General Lafayette said:

“At this place, Sir, which calls to our recollections several among the most honored names of the Revolutionary War, I did, many years ago, salute the first residence of our paternal chief, receiving the blessings of his venerated mother and of his dear sister, your own respected mother.” Later the same day, at a banquet in the evening, given in his honor, Lafayette offered the following sentiment, “The City of Fredericksburg – first residence of Washington – may she more and more attain all the prosperity which independence, republicanism and industry cannot fail to secure.”

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.

Jones’ American Home Here

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.

From Cabin Boy to Courtier

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:

“Not Bayard, nor Charles le Téméaire could have laid his helmet at a lady’s feet with such knightly grace.”

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.

Admiral Jones’ SurgeonSurgeon 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.

Mercer Joins Masonic Lodge

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.

Mercer Quells a Mutiny

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.

Death on The Battlefield

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.”

The Poet Takes The Sword

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.

When Poland’s Star Flamed

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.

Ah, But he Had His Memories

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!