Thus a Spottswood lives today on the tract where the great Virginia Governor built his mansion and where he founded the famous Spottswood mines and furnace almost two hundred years ago.
Patti Once Lived Here
An incident brought the great singer Patti to Fredericksburg, to remain for some time. When she was a girl of sixteen, just beginning to train for her great career in Grand Opera, her brother Carlo Patti expected to institute a school of music and was here for that purpose when he was taken suddenly ill. She came with her sister Madam Strackosh to see her brother. He remained ill for months and his sisters were with him during the entire time. They boarded at the Old Exchange Hotel on Main Street, now the Hotel Maury, and gave more than one concert at what was known then as “The Citizens Hall.” If there are few here now who remember her, there is still among us one woman, a little child at the time, whom the singer often held in her arms and caressed. The parents of the child were boarding at the Hotel temporarily and the mother and Adelina became great friends and remained so for many years. Madam Strackosh and her famous sister said they enjoyed “real life” in our little Southern town. Carlo after regaining his health went farther South, joined a Confederate Company, and again as one of the boys in gray under the stars and bars, was in Fredericksburg and was well known to the writer. He entertained the weary boys in camp when the hard days were over, with his beautiful songs.
John Forsythe referred to in the above order was born in 1781 in a frame house, now standing at the corner of Prince Edward and Fauquier Streets. He graduated from the Princeton Academy early in life, moving later with his family to Georgia where he studied law, practiced and in 1808 he was elected Attorney General, and in 1812 was chosen Congressman and served until 1818.
In 1819 he was appointed Minister to Spain and while acting as Minister, he was instrumental in the ratification of the treaty with the Country for the cession of Florida to the United States.
In 1827 he was elected Governor of Georgia and in 1829 became a member of the Senate and was in that body when he accepted the office of Secretary of State, which position he occupied to the end of Van Buren’s administration. He died in the City of Washington, October 21, 1841, and is buried in the Congressional Cemetery.
National Cemetery
And Monument to the Fifth Corps.
Here Sleep Thousands Who Died in the Battles About Fredericksburg
Joe Hooker Comes Again
Fighting “Joe” Hooker, as his troops called him and as he was, came here shortly after the war to gather evidence to refute the charges his enemies at the North were disseminating against him in a campaign of scandal. He attempted while here, and he was here for a long period, to show that his failure was not entirely his own fault, and the evidence which he procured, together with his own statements proved sufficiently that Gen. Hooker’s plan for the campaign at Chancellorsville far surpassed any conception of any other Northern general. They left the inference also (Lincoln had warned him in a letter that his insubordination to Burnside and other superior officers would one day result in his inferiors failing to co-operate with him), that Sedgwick had not put his full heart into the battle, for, important factor in the movement that he was, he started one day late and allowed 4,000 men at Salem Church to hold back the advance of his 30,000 men. Had he won this fight, he could have been at Chancellorsville and turned the tide of battle long before Jackson’s genius had ruined Hooker’s army.