Historic Fredericksburg: The Story of an Old Town

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.

A Song For the Yuletide

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 ’76Our ragged troops with bayonets fixed,For Trenton marched away.The Delaware ice, the boats belowThe 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.

The Owner of “Kenmore”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.

The Greatest OfficeholderJames 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.”

“Old Doctor Mortimer”Dr. Charles Mortimer

In a beautiful old home on lower Main Street, surrounded by a wall, mellowed by time, and ivy-crowned, lived Washington’s dear friend and physician, Dr. Charles Mortimer. He could often be seen, in the days gone by, seated on his comfortable “verandah,” smoking a long pipe, covered with curious devices, and discussing the affairs of the moment with those rare intellects who were drawn there by the interesting atmosphere of blended beauty and mentality. There was, as a background, a garden, sloping to the river, and sturdy trees checquered the sunlight. Old-fashioned flowers nodded in the breeze which blew up from the Rappahannock, and the Doctor’s own tobacco ships, with their returned English cargoes, swung on their anchors at the foot of the terraces.

If one entered the house at the dinner hour, every delicacy of land and water would conspire against a refusal to dine with the host of this hospitable mansion. Highly polished and massive pewter dishes, disputed possession of the long mahogany table, with a mammoth bowl of roses – arrogantly secure of an advantageous position in the center.

There was often the sound of revelry by night, and the rafters echoed gay laughter and the music of violins – high, and sweet and clear.

An historic dinner, following the famous Peace Ball at the old Market House in November, 1784, was given here, and the hostess, little Maria Mortimer, sixteen years old, the Doctor’s only daughter, with her hair “cruped high” for the first time, presided, and her bon mots won the applause of the company, which was quite a social triumph for a sixteen-year-old girl, trying to hold her own with Lafayette, Count d’Estang and the famous Rochambeau. They clicked glasses and drank to her health standing, and little Maria danced with “Betty Lewis’ Uncle George himself,” for Washington did not disdain the stately measures of the minuet.

But there is an obverse here. The old Doctor did not fail in his duty. On horseback, with his saddlebag loaded with medicines, he rode down dark forest paths to the homes of pioneers, traveled the streets of Fredericksburg and came silently along lone trails in the country in the dead of night, when hail or snow or driving rains cut at him bitterly through the trees. He refused no call, and claimed small fees. He was Mary Washington’s physician for years, called on her almost daily, and stood by her bedside mute, when, the struggle over, she quietly passed on to the God in whom she had put her deepest faith.

Of the many people who walk in Hurkamp Park, in the center of the old town, there are few who know that they are passing daily over the grave of the genial and popular Doctor, who was Fredericksburg’s first mayor, and Washington’s dearest friend.

Maury – a Master GeniusMatthew Fontaine Maury

Of all the famous men who went from Fredericksburg to take large parts in the rapidly moving history of America, or in the work of the world, Commodore Maury added most to the progress of science. Not only did he create knowledge, but he created wealth by the immense saving he effected to shipping by charting shorter ocean routes. He is buried in Hollywood Cemetery, in Richmond, under a simple shaft which bears the name, “Matthew Fontaine Maury.” The great “pathfinder of the seas” was born in Spotsylvania County, January, 1806, and died at Lexington in 1873.

A World Famed Scientist

He wore the most prized decorations the monarchs of Europe could give him; he founded the most valuable natural science known, and was reckoned a transcendent genius. Of him, Mellin Chamberlain, Librarian of Congress, said, with calm consideration “I do not suppose there is the least doubt that Maury was the greatest man America ever produced.”

Alexander Humbolt said that Maury created a new science.

He plunged into the unknown; he charted the seas and mapped its currents and winds. He was the first to tell the world that winds and currents were not of chance, but of fixed and immutable laws, and that even cyclones were well governed. He knew why a certain coast was dry and another rainy, and he could, on being informed of the latitude and longitude of a place, tell what was the prevailing weather and winds.

Maury went to sea as a midshipman in the American navy in 1825, and in 1831, at twenty-four years of age, he became master of the sloop Falmouth, with orders to go to the Pacific waters, but, though he sought diligently, he found no chart of a track for his vessel, no record of currents or of winds to guide him. The sea was a trackless wilderness, and the winds were things of vagrant caprice. And he began then to grapple with those problems which were to immortalize him.

He came back from ocean wanderings in a few years and married an old sweetheart, Miss Ann Herndon, of Fredericksburg, and he lived for a time on Charlotte Street, between Princess Anne and Prince Edward, and wrote his first book, “A Treatise on Navigation;” while from his pen came a series of newspaper and magazine articles that startled the world of scientific thought. For the man had discovered new and unsuspected natural laws!

Misfortune – that vastly helped him – came in 1839, when his leg was injured through the overturning of a stage coach. The government put him in charge of a new “Bureau of Charts and Instruments,” at Washington, and out of his work here grew the Naval Observatory, the Signal Service and the first Weather Bureau ever established on earth! Every other science was old. His science was utterly new, a field untouched.

Charting Seas and Winds

He found a mass of log books of American warships. Over these he pondered. He sent hundreds of bottles and buoys to be dropped into the seven seas by fighting craft and merchantmen.

These were picked up now and again and came back to him, and from the information sent to him with them, and soundings in thousands of places, added to what he had gleaned in earlier years, he prepared his greatest work. It took ultimate form in a series of six “charts” and eight large volumes of “sailing directions,” that comprehended all the waters and winds in all climes, and on every sea where white sails bend and steamer smoke drifts.

The charts exhibit, with wonderful accuracy, the winds and currents, their force and direction at different seasons, the calm belts, the trade winds, the rains and storms – the gulf stream, the Japan current – all the great ocean movements; and the sailing directions are treasure chests for seamen. Paths were marked out on the ocean, and a practical result was, that one of the most difficult sea voyages – from New York to San Francisco, around the Horn – was shortened by forty days. It has been estimated that by shortening the time of many sea voyages, Commander Maury has effected a saving of not less than $40,000,000 each year.

Of his own work, Maury wrote:

“So to shape the course on voyages at sea as to make the most of winds and currents, is the perfection of the navigator’s art. How the winds blow or the currents flow along this route or that is no longer a matter of speculation or opinion. The wind and weather, daily encountered by hundreds who sailed before him, have been tabulated for the mariner; nay, the path has been blazed for him on the sea; mile posts have been set upon the waves and time tables furnished for the trackless waste.”

It was this work that, reaching over Europe and Asia, brought on the Brussels conference in 1853, to which Maury, founder of the science of hydrography and meteorology, went as America’s representative, and here he covered himself with honors. He came back to write his “Physical Geography of the Sea and Its Meteorology.”

This, the essence of his life work, the poetry and the romance of his science, passed through twenty editions and was known in every school, but the book’s greatest interest was killed by the removal of the poetic strain that made it beautiful. It has been translated into almost every language. In it is the story of the sea, its tides and winds, its shore lines and its myriads of life; its deep and barren bottoms. For Maury also charted the ocean floors, and it was his work in this line that caused Cyrus Field to say of the laying of the Atlantic cable:

“Maury furnished the brains, England furnished the money, and I did the work.”

Honored by All Europe

No other American ever was honored by Emperors and Kings as was Matthew Fontaine Maury. He was given orders of Knighthood by the Czar of Russia, the King of Denmark, King of Spain, King of Portugal, King of Belgium and Emperor of France, while Russia, Austria, Sweden, Holland, Sardenia, Bremen, Turkey and France struck gold medals in his honor. The pope of Rome sent him a full set of all the medals struck during his pontificate. Maximilian decorated him with “The Cross of the Order of Guadaloupe” while Germany bestowed on him the “Cosmos Medal,” struck in honor of Von Humboldt, and the only duplicate of that medal in existence.

The current of the Civil War swept Maury away from Washington, and he declined offers from France, Germany and Russia, joining his native state in the Confederacy. He introduced the submarine torpedo, and rendered the South other service before the final wreck, which left him stranded and penniless. He went to Mexico now, to join his fortunes with those of the unhappy Maximilian, and when the Emperor met his tragic end he found himself again resourceless – and crippled. In 1868 when general amnesty was given, he came back to become the first professor of meteorology at the Virginia Military Institute. In October, 1872, he became ill and died in February of the next year.

And this man, who had from Kings and Emperors more decorations than any American has ever received, and for whom Europe had ever ready the highest honors and greatest praise, was ignored by his own government, to which he gave his life’s work. No word of thanks, no tribute of esteem, no reward, was ever given him. A bill to erect a monument to him lies now rotting in some pigeonhole in Congress. But an effort to renew this is underway.

Archibald McPherson

Curiously enough, no more memory is left to Fredericksburg of Archibald McPherson than the tombstone under the mock orange tree in St. George’s Church, the tablets to his memory in the old charity school on Hanover Street (now the Christian Science Church) and a few shadowy legends and unmeaning dates.

He was born in Scotland and died in Fredericksburg in 1854. He was a member of St. George’s Church and vestry.

But what manner of man he was, the few recorded acts we know will convey to every one. He established a Male Charity School with his own funds principally, and took a deep interest in it, and, dying, he left the small fortune he had accumulated by Scotch thrift “to the poor of the town,” and provided means of dispensing the interest on this sum for charity throughout the years to come. Most of this fund was wiped out by depreciation of money, etc., during the Civil War.

Men of Modern Times

Soldiers, Adventurers and Sailors, Heroes and Artists, mingle here

A prophet without honor in his own country was Moncure Daniel Conway because, a Fredericksburger and a Southerner, he opposed slavery. But his genius won him world praise, and later, honer in his own country.

Born in 1832, near Falmouth, to which village his people moved later, the child of Walker Peyton Conway and Marguerite Daniel Conway he inherited from a long line of ancestry, a brilliant intellect and fearlessness to tread the paths of freedom.

The difficult studious child was too much for his teacher, Miss Gaskins, of Falmouth, so he was sent, at the age of ten, to Fredericksburg Classical and Mathematical Academy, originally John Marye’s famous school, and made rapid progress.

His hero was his great uncle, Judge R. C. L. Moncure, of Glencairne, and his early memoirs are full of loving gratitude for the great man’s toleration and help. The Methodism of his parents did not hold him, for he several times attended the services at St. George’s Church.

The wrongs of slavery he saw, and after he entered Dickinson College, at Carlisle, in his fifteenth year, he found an anti-slavery professor, McClintock, who influenced him and encouraged his dawning agnosticism. His cousin, John M. Daniel, editor of the Richmond Examiner, became, in 1848, a leading factor in Conway’s life, encouraging his literary efforts and publishing many of his contributions.

All beauty, all art appealed to him. Music was always a passion, and we also find constant and quaint references to beautiful women and girls. It seemed the superlative compliment, though he valued feminine brains and ability.

His great spiritual awakening came with his finding an article by Emerson and at the age of twenty, to the delight of his family, he became a Methodist minister.

His career as such was not a success. After one of his sermons, in which he ignored Heaven and Hell, his father said: “One thing is certain, Monk, should the Devil aim at a Methodist preacher, you’d be safe.”

He moved to Cambridge. The prominence of his Southern family, and his own social and intellectual charms gave him entre to the best homes and chiefest among them, that of his adored Emerson, where he met and knew all the great lights of the day. His slavery opinions, valuable as a Southern slave owner’s son, made him an asset in the anti-slavery propaganda of the time.

Conway’s Famous Friends

Among his friends were the Thoreaus, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Agassiz.

I must hurry over the charm of those college days to Moncure Conway’s first Unitarian Church, in Washington. So pronounced were his sermons on anti-slavery that his father advised him not to come home on a visit. He did come and had the humiliation of being ordered from Falmouth under pain of tar and feathers, an indignity which cut him to his soul. His success in Washington was brilliant, but he found trouble, owing to his abolitionist opinions, and had to resign. In 1856 he accepted a call to a Cincinnati church, whose literary and artistic circles made much of the new preacher. The wealth of that larger population enabled Conway to establish several charitable homes. He married there Ellen Davis Dana, and there published his first book, “Tracts For Today.” He edited a paper, The Dial, to which Emerson contributed.

He went to England to the South Place Chapel, London, an ethical society, and the round peg seemed to have found its proper hole at last. Here he labored for twenty years, and became known through all Europe. His personal recollections of Alfred Tennyson, the Brownings their courtship; of Carlyle, are classics. A very interesting light is thrown on Freud. He was intimate with the whole pre-Raphaelite school and gives account among others of Rossetti and his lovely wife, all friendships he formed in Madam Brown’s charming home.

Burne Jones, Morris, Whistler, Swinburne, Arthur Hughs, DeMaurier (was there ever such a collection of genius in one country) are all described in Conway’s vivid pen pictures. Artemus Warde was his friend, and Conway conducted the funeral services over that world’s joy giver, and in his same South End Chapel, preached memorial addresses on Cobblen, Dickens, Maurice, Mazzanni, Mill, Straus, Livingstone, George Eliot, Stanley, Darwin, Longfellow, Carlyle, the beloved Emerson, Tennyson, Huxley and Abe Lincoln, whom he never admired, though he recognized his brain and personality. He accused him of precipitating the horrible war for the sake of a flag and thus murdering a million men.