Historic Fredericksburg: The Story of an Old Town. Goolrick John Tackett
to the site, it is a fact of record in the diary of “Chirurgeon” Bagnall, a member of the party, that Captain Smith reached the spot in 1608, one year after the establishment of Jamestown, and after successfully disputing possession of the land with a tribe of Indians, disembarked and planted a cross, later prospecting for gold and other precious metals. The diary of Smith’s companions, still in existence, tells of the trip in accurate detail and from it is proven that even if the Spanish missionaries did not come as far as claimed for them, at least the Indians had recognized the natural advantages of the place by the establishment there of towns, which might have been in existence for hundreds of years.
Captain Smith made two attempts to explore the Rappahannock. The first, in June, 1608, ended when the hardy adventurer in plunging his sword into “a singular fish, like a thornback with a long tail, and from it a poison sting,” ran afoul of the water monster and because of his sufferings was obliged to turn back. The second trip was started on July 24th, 1608, and was continued until the falls were reached.
Dr. Bagnall says in his diary that when near the mouth of the river, the party encountered “our old friend, Mosco, a lusty savage of Wighconscio, upon the Patawomeck,” who accompanied them as guide and interpreter, and upon reaching the falls did splendid service against the unfriendly Indians, “making them pause upon the matter, thinking by his bruit and skipping there were many savages.” In the fighting Captain Smith’s party captured a wounded Indian and much to the disgust of the cheerful Mosco, who wished to dispatch him forthwith, spared his life and bound his wounds. This work of mercy resulted in a truce with the Redmen, which made possible the final undisturbed settlement of the land by the whites, the prisoner interceding for Smith and his party.
Captain Smith’s first landing on the upper river probably was directly opposite what now is the heart of Fredericksburg. Dr. Bagnall’s diary says:
“Between Secobeck and Massawteck is a small isle or two, which causes the river to be broader than ordinary; there it pleased God to take one of our company, called Master Featherstone, that all the time he had been in this country had behaved himself honestly, valiently and industriously, where in a little bay, called Featherstone’s bay, we buried him with a volley of shot * * *
“The next day we sailed so high as our boat would float, there setting up crosses and graving our names on trees.”
Captain Quinn, in his excellent History of Fredericksburg, says that Featherstone’s bay “is in Stafford, opposite the upper end of Hunter’s island,” but it is probable he did not closely examine facts before making this statement, as his own location of other places mentioned in Dr. Bagnall’s diary serves to disprove his contention as to the whereabouts of the bay.
“Seacobeck,” Captain Quinn says, “was just west of the city almshouse.” The almshouse was then situated where the residence of the President of the State Normal School now stands. Massawteck, Captain Quinn locates as “just back of Chatham.” If his location of these two places is correct, it is clear that the “small isle or two,” which the diary says was located between them, must have been at a point where a line drawn from the President’s residence, at the Normal School, to “just back of Chatham” would intersect the river, which would be just a little above the present location of Scott’s island, and that Featherstone’s bay occupied what now are the Stafford flats, extending along the river bank from nearly opposite the silk mill to the high bank just above the railroad bridge and followed the course of Claibourne’s Run inland, to where the land again rises. The contours of the land, if followed, here show a natural depression that might easily have accommodated a body of water, forming a bay.
There are other evidences to bear out this conclusion. Dr. Bagnall’s diary says: “The next day we sailed so high as our boat would float.” It would have been an impossibility to proceed “high” (meaning up) the river from Hunter’s island in boats, even had it been possible to go as high as that point. Notwithstanding contradictory legend, the falls of the Rappahannock have been where they are today for from five to one hundred thousand years, and there is no evidence whatever to indicate that Hunter’s Island ever extended into tidewater, the formation of the banks of the river about that point giving almost absolute proof that it did not.
No authentic data can be found to prove the continued use of the site as a settlement from Smith’s visit forward, though the gravestone of a Dr. Edmond Hedler, bearing the date 1617, which was found near Potomac run in Stafford county, a few miles from the town, would indicate that there were white settlers in the section early in the 17th century, and if this is true there is every reason to believe the falls of the Rappahannock were not without their share, as the natural advantages of the place for community settlement would have been appealing and attractive to the colonists, who would have been quick to recognize them.
In 1622, according to Howe’s history, Captain Smith proposed to the London Company to provide measures “to protect all their planters from the James to the Potowmac rivers,” a territory that included the Rappahannock section, which can be taken as another indication of the presence of settlers in the latter.
The first legal record of the place as a community is had in 1671 – strangely enough just one hundred years after the reported coming of the Spaniards – when Thomas Royston and John Buckner were granted, from Sir William Berkley, a certain tract of land at “the falls of the Rappahannock.” This was on May 2d, and shortly afterward, together with forty colonists, they were established on what is now the heart of Fredericksburg, but known in those remote times as “Leaseland.” This is the date that Fredericksburg officially takes as its birthday, though additional evidence that colonists already were in that vicinity is had in the fact that the boundaries of the land described in the grant from Governor Berkley to the two early settlers, ended where the lands of one Captain Lawrence Smith began.
Three or four years after the grant was made to Buckner and Royston the “Grande Assemblie at James Cittie” took official cognizance of the Colony by ordering Major Lawrence Smith and one hundred and eleven men to the Falls of the Rappahannock for the purpose of protecting the colonists. Records in regard to this say, “At a Grande Assemblie at James Cittie, between the 20th of September, 1674, and the 17th of March, 1675, it was ordered that one hundred and eleven men out of Gloucester be garrisoned at one ffort or place of defense, at or near the falls of the Rappahannock river, of which ffort Major Lawrence Smith is to be captain or chief commander.” It was also ordered that “the ffort be furnished with four hundred and eight pounds of powder and fourteen hundred pounds of shott.”
A few years later, in 1679, Major Smith was authorized by the Jamestown government to mark out, below the falls of the Rappahannock, a strip of land one mile long and one-fourth of a mile wide, to be used as a colony and, together with eight commissioners, he was empowered to hold court and administer justice. Within this confine he was instructed to build habitations for two hundred and fifty men, fifty of whom were to be kept well armed and ready to respond to the tap of a drum. It would appear that the “ffort” mentioned in the earlier meeting of the “Grande Assemblie” was not built until this year. The contention that it was erected on the Stafford side of the river seems to be without any foundation of fact.
That the community was now growing seems to be proven by the fact that the same act, defining the limits mentioned above, also mentioned a larger district, defined as extending three miles above the fort and two miles below it for a distance of four miles back, over which Major Smith and his commissioners were to have jurisdiction. Two years later, in 1681, the little town received a great impetus when two hundred families came to join the colony. From this time forward, the community began to take an important part in the life of the Colonies.
In 1710, upon the invitation of Baron de Graffenried, a friend of Governor Spotswood, twelve German families came to America and settled on the Rapidan river, eighteen miles above Fredericksburg, opening the first iron mines and establishing the first iron works in America. They named the place Germanna, and, according to an account left by one of the party, “packed all their provisions from Fredericksburg,” then the principal trading point of the section.
In 1715, Governor Spotswood