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| Chatham House facing the river |
Three
historical sites are maintained by the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania Military
Park: Chatham House, Salem Church, and the Stonewall Jackson Shrine. There is a
100-mile trail which follows the movement of the Union and Confederate armies
from Wilderness to Petersburg, beginning at Germanna Ford.
The four
major battle sites are: Fredericksburg Battlefield (Dec. 11-13, 1862, a
decisive victory for the Confederates), Chancellorsville Battlefield
(April 27-May 6, 1863, a major victory for Gen. Lee with the grievous loss of Gen. Stonewall Jackson who was mortally
wounded in the battle), Wilderness Battlefield (May 5-6, 1864, the first
confrontation between Gen. Lee and Gen. Grant), and Spotsylvania Battlefield
(May8-21, 1864, 30,000 men lose their lives in the desperate fighting for the ‘Bloody
Angle’).
Overlooking the Rappahannock River, the 18th century plantation called Chatham House stands majestically surrounded by huge trees and gardens. During the fierce battles, the house became headquarters and hospital for the Union army in two major campaigns.
During the Chancellorsville campaign, the Salem Church, a house of worship whose name means peace, was at the center of the battle in 1863. In a small building dubbed the Stonewall Jackson Shrine, Gen. Stonewall Jackson died on May 10, 1863, eight days after he was wounded at Chancellorsville.
In 1862, the ambulance that carried the wounded Stonewall Jackson made its way on Guinea Station Road past beautiful antebellum homes which still survive today despite intense fighting nearby.
Weedon’s Tavern was the location in January 1777 where a Committee of Law Revisors composed of Thomas Jefferson and four delegates met to begin the task of revising laws to reflect the independence from Britain. They presented eventually 126 statutes to the Assembly for adoption. George Weeden, the tavern’s owner, had been an ardent supporter of American independence from Britain and commanded Virginia troops in Gen. Washington’s Continental Army.
The Masonic cemetery in old town Fredericksburg dates to 1784 including burials of people who came from England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, Williamsburg, and Boston. Several people buried here have fought in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
George Washington grew up in Fredericksburg and became a member of the local Masonic Lodge the year it was founded as the Fredericksburg Lodge #4, Ancient, Free, and Accepted Masons, in 1752. These Masons established the Masonic Cemetery in 1784 with 270 graves. People buried here are family members of the original lodge, with some re-burials of members of the American Masonic Lodge #63 which had splintered off from Lodge #4 in 1799 but did not survive beyond the Civil War.
Among the buried in this Masonic Cemetery are:
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Colonel Fielding Lewis, an iron forge owner during the American Revolution where
repairs were made to damaged weapons and manufactured new ones as well.
-
William Woodford, commanded Virginia troops in Washington’s army at Brandywine, Great
Bridge, and Monmouth, captured in Charleston in 1780, imprisoned on a ship in
New York harbor where he died;
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Brigadier Gen. George Weedon, a veteran of the French and Indian War and commander of Continental
troops and Virginia militia, blocked the British breakout at Gloucester Point
in the Yorktown campaign;
- Gen. Hugh Mercer, a Scottish soldier for the exiled Charles Stuart (Bonnie Prince
Charlie); Mercer met Washington on the Pennsylvania frontier during the French
and Indian War and joined the American Revolution; he was mortally wounded at
Princeton in 1777.
The Hugh Mercer monument was erected on Washington Avenue in 1906 by the U.S. government. In addition to being a battle-hardened general, Mercer was “a doctor who fled Scotland after the Battle of Culloden, where he had supported the Stuart cause.” After he met Col. George Washington in Pennsylvania, on his advice Mercer moved to Fredericksburg to practice medicine and run an apothecary. The archives claim that Gen. George S. Patton is a great, great, great grandson of Hugh Mercer.
On the same
Washington Avenue is located the Thomas Jefferson Religious Freedom Monument
which represents all 16 religious denominations in the U.S. On January 13, 1777,
Thomas Jefferson met with his committee, George Mason, Edmond Pendleton, George
Wythe, and Thomas Ludwell Lee to draft the Virginia Statute for Religious
Freedom.
According to
the archives, Thomas Jefferson considered the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom,
the Declaration of Independence, and the founding of the University of Virginia
as his three major accomplishments.
On the same Washington Avenue are Kenmore estate, Betty Washington Lewis and Colonel Fielding Lewis home built in 1752. Betty was Gen. George Washington’s sister. Mary Washington lived with her daughter and eventually died in her home. She was buried not far from her favorite spot, the Meditation Rock. There is an obelisk monument dedicated to Mary Washington in the vicinity of historic Kenmore on Washington Avenue.
Marye’s
Heights is now the final resting place of the Union soldiers killed in the surrounding
areas during the Civil War, reinterred in 1865 by the U.S. government in the
Fredericksburg National Cemetery.
The
Confederate soldiers were reinterred in the Fredericksburg City Cemetery
founded in 1844. The Confederates had been unceremoniously buried on all the
battlefields. Five Confederate generals are buried here and one Lucy Ann Cox,
the wife of a Confederate soldier who followed her husband for four years in
battle. She was made an honorary Confederate veteran; her tombstone reads, “A
sharer of the toils, dangers, and privations of the 30th Infantry
C.S.A. from 1861-1865.”
Fredericksburg
stands witness as a historical vortex of the brutal battles between brothers who
shed their innocent blood to maintain the economic interests of the wealthy in
power.
NOTE: Photos by Ileana Johnson taken January 2023
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