Then pull them down, and rear on high
New-fangled, painted things,
For these but mock the modern eye,
The past around them brings.
Then pull them down, and upward rear
A pile which suits who worships here."
Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
I crossed the Rappahannock* upon a long toll-bridge, and entered Fredericksburg at noon. The city is old in fact, and antique in appearance. A century and a quarter ago the settlers who had begun to cultivate extensively the rich lands upon the Rappahannock, applied for a town charter. It was granted; (a) and in honor of Prince Frederick, the father of George III., and then heir-apparent to the British throne, it was called Fredericksburg. At that time there was only a tobacco warehouse on the site of the present, city with its four thousand five hundred inhabitants. The town is regularly laid out. Many of the houses are of brick, but few are in modern style, or of apparently recent construction.
Fredericksburg is interesting, as connected with our subject, chiefly from the fact that Washington passed his youthful days in its vicinity, and that near the city, beneath an unfinished monument, repose the remains of his beloved mother. The place of Washington's birth was about half a mile from the junction of Pope's Creek with the Potomac, in Westmoreland county, the "Athens of Virginia." ** It is upon the "Wakefield estate," now owned by John E. Wilson, Esq. The house in which he was born was destroyed before the Revolution.
Upon its site, George W. P. Custis, Esq., placed a slab of free-stone, (b) b June, 1815.represented in the engraving on the following page, on which is the simple inscription, "Here, the 11th of February [O. S.], 1732, George Washington was born." ***