Historic Fredericksburg. John T. Goolrick
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.
Establishment of the Town
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.
Major Lawrence Smith’s Fort
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 and the now-famed “Knights of the Golden Horseshoe,” started from Germanna (some of them came through Fredericksburg en route and stopped with Austin Smith). Assembling at Germanna they left on September 24th and continued across the Blue Ridge mountains to the Valley of Virginia. An interesting account of the trip, which has been made the theme of song and story, and even the basis of a secret society, can be found in the diary of John Fountaine, a member of the party.
For a period nothing seems to have happened to the community of sufficient importance to be recorded, and for the next few years the imagination must supply the story of the settlement. It probably was a village of irregular, straggling streets and indifferent houses, with a population that struggled for a living by trading, trapping and other pursuits of that day. Its stores were likely very good for those times, but across the river it had a rival in its neighbor, Falmouth, which as a place of importance was fast catching up with it, and soon was destined to pass it, for in 1720, seven years earlier than “The Leaseland,” it received its charter from the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg, who vested its government in seven trustees.
Falmouth’s Fast Growth
If not as a political and social center, at least as a trading point, Falmouth had soon superceded Fredericksburg. It was the market for all the grain of the upper country, which by this time was beginning to be settled, and was in direct commercial communication with England, Europe and the West Indies by ocean-going vessels, which, when under 140 tons burden, could come up to its wharves. It was a great milling center and its merchants began to grow prosperous and wealthy, one of them, Mr. Bazil Gordon, accumulating the first million dollars ever made in America, though he was the product of a little later date than that now under consideration.
Grain brought out of Falmouth in boats larger than 140 tons was first put upon barges or flat boats of large capacity, which were conveyed down the river to waiting vessels and transferred by slave labor. The stories heard of large vessels docking at the Falmouth wharves are apocryphal; no boat of great tonnage ever got as far as Falmouth. This may account for Fredericksburg’s final supremacy over Falmouth, which doubtless came about the time the first ferry was started, permitting the planters to cross the river with their grain and load directly to the waiting vessels, thus saving time and work, valuable considerations even in those days of abundant leisure and cheap slave labor.
“Leaseland” Is Chartered
But, while Falmouth was progressing “Leaseland” was also making strides, and in 1727 it became of sufficient importance to receive its charter from the House of Burgesses, and was named in honor of Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of George II. The Prince died before ascending the throne, but his son became George III., and it was thus from the domination of the son of the Prince for whom their town was named that the patriotic people of the little village later plotted to free themselves. The act giving the town a charter names John Robinson, Henry Willis, Augustine Smith, John Taliaferro, Henry Beverly, John Waller and Jeremiah Crowder as trustees, and the streets were named for members of the Royal family, names which fortunately endure today, despite an attempt made some years ago to modernize the town and discard the beautiful and significant old names in favor of the less distinguished and uglier method of numerical and alphabetical designations.
From Mrs. Washington’s Farm
One Sees, Across the River, the Homes of Such Families as the Mercer’s, Weeden’s, Mortimer’s
Settlers now were rapidly coming into the community which was growing in importance. In 1732, Colonel Byrd owner of vast tracts where now stands the magnificent city of Richmond, an important man in the Colonial life of Virginia, came to Fredericksburg, calling on his friend, Colonel Henry Willis, “top man of the town,” as Colonel Byrd refers to him in his very interesting