Historic Fredericksburg Part 8

The letter ends with a blessing bestowed on the young lady to whom is given such sensible advice. That this letter is characterized by an admirable poise, cannot be denied.

George Washington died at Mt. Vernon, December 4, 1799. He upheld the organization of the American state during the first eight years of its existence, amid the storms of interstate controversy, and gave it time to consolidate.

No other American but himself could have done this--for of all the American leaders he was the only one whom men felt differed from themselves. The rest were soldiers, civilians, Federalists or Democrats, but he--was Washington.

[Sidenote: _Evidence of Citizenship_]

Almost immediately after appearing before the public session of Congress, at which he resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental armies, an act of which Thackeray speaks as sheathing his sword after "a life of spotless honor, a purity unreproached, a courage indomitable and a consummate victory," Washington came to Fredericksburg to visit his mother. He was the great hero of the age, the uncrowned King of America and from all over the section crowds flocked to do him honor.

The occasion was of such importance that the city did not trust the words of welcome to a single individual, but called a meeting of the City Council at which a short address was adopted and presented to Washington upon his arrival by William McWilliams, then mayor.

While beautifully worded to show the appreciation of his services and respect for his character and courage, the address of welcome contains nothing of historical significance except the line "And it affords us great joy to see you once more at a place which claims the honor of your growing infancy, the seat of your amiable parent and worthy relatives,"

which establishes Washington's connection with Fredericksburg.

In reply, General Washington said:

Gentlemen:

With the greatest pleasure I receive in the character of a private citizen the honor of your address. To a benevolent providence and the fort.i.tude of a brave and virtuous army, supported by the general exertion of our common country, I stand indebted for the plaudits you now bestow. The reflection, however, of having met the congratulating smiles and approbation of my fellow citizens for the part I have acted in the cause of Liberty and Independence cannot fail of adding pleasure to the other sweets of domestic life; and my sense of them is heightened by their coming from the respectable inhabitants of the place of my growing infancy and the honorable mention which is made of my revered mother, by whose maternal hand, (early deprived of a father) I was led to manhood. For the expression of personal affection and attachment, and for your kind wishes for my future welfare, I offer grateful thanks and my sincere prayers for the happiness and prosperity of the corporate town of Fredericksburg.

Signed: GEORGE WASHINGTON.

This address is recorded in the books of the town council and is signed in a handwriting that looks like that of Washington.

As it is known that Washington lived at Fredericksburg from the time he was about six years of age until early manhood, the expression "growing infancy" is unfortunate, but later, when Mayor Robert Lewis, a nephew of Washington, delivered the welcome address to General Lafayette when he visited Fredericksburg in 1824 the real case was made more plain when he said:

"The presence of the friend of Washington excites the tenderest emotions and a.s.sociations among a people whose town enjoys the distinguished honor of having been the residence of the Father of his Country during the days of his childhood and youth," and in reply General Lafayette said:

"At this place, Sir, which calls to our recollections several among the most honored names of the Revolutionary War, I did, many years ago, salute the first residence of our paternal chief, receiving the blessings of his venerated mother and of his dear sister, your own respected mother." Later the same day, at a banquet in the evening, given in his honor, Lafayette offered the following sentiment, "The City of Fredericksburg--first residence of Washington--may she more and more attain all the prosperity which independence, republicanism and industry cannot fail to secure."

JOHN PAUL JONES.

Of all the men whose homes were in Fredericksburg, none went forth to greater honor nor greater ignominy than John Paul Jones, who raised the first American flag on the masthead of his ship, died in Paris and was buried and slept for 113 years beneath a filthy stable yard, forgotten by the country he valiantly served.

He came to Fredericksburg early in 1760 on "The Friendship," as a boy of thirteen years. Born in a lowly home, he was a mere apprentice seaman, and without doubt he deserted his ship in those days, when sea life was a horror, to come to Fredericksburg and join his brother, William Paul, whose home was here, and who is buried here. There is some record of his having been befriended by a man in Carolina, and traditions that he left his ship in a port on the Rappahannock after killing a sailor, and walked through the wilderness to Fredericksburg. Neither tradition is of importance; the fact is that he came here and remained four years during the developing period of his life.

[Sidenote: _Jones' American Home Here_]

William Paul had immigrated to Fredericksburg from the Parish of Kirkbeam, Scotland, (where he and his brother, John, were born), about 1760, had come to Fredericksburg and conducted a grocery store and tailor shop on the corner of Caroline and Prussia streets. William died here in 1773, and is buried in St. George's Church Yard. In his will he left his property to sisters in the Parish of Kirkbeam, Scotland.

Alexander McKenzie, in his life of John Paul Jones, says, after referring to the fact that William Paul is buried in Fredericksburg: "In 1773 he went back to Fredericksburg to arrange the affairs of his brother, William Paul," and John Paul Jones himself wrote of Fredericksburg: "It was the home of my fond election since first I saw it." The Legislature of Virginia decided in settling William Paul's estate that John Paul Jones was a legal resident of Fredericksburg.

Obviously, then, Fredericksburg was the great Admiral's home, for, though not born here, he chose it when he came to America.

When he first reached the little town on the Rappahannock he went to work for his brother, William Paul and one can surmise that he clerked and carried groceries and messages to the gentry regarding their smart clothes for his brother.

The Rising Sun Tavern was then a gathering place for the gentry and without doubt he saw them there. He may well have learned good manners from their ways, good language from hearing their conversation and "sedition" from the great who gathered there. We may picture the lowly boy, lingering in the background while the gentlemen talked and drank punch around Mine Host Weedon's great fire, or listening eagerly at the counter where the tavern-keeper, who was to be a Major-General, delivered the mail.

Certainly John Paul Jones was a lowly and uneducated boy at 13. He left Fredericksburg after four years to go to sea again, and in 1773 came back to settle his brother's estate, and remained here until December 22, 1775, when he received at Fredericksburg his commission in the Navy.

[Sidenote: _From Cabin Boy to Courtier_]

John Paul Jones' story is more like romance than history. Beginning an uncouth lad, he became a sea fighter whose temerity outranks all. We see him aboard the Bonhomme Richard, a poor thing for seafaring, fighting the Serapis just off British sh.o.r.es, half of his motley crew of French and Americans dying or dead about him, the scruppers running blood, mad carnage raging, and when he is asked if he is ready to surrender he says: "I've just begun to fight," and by his will forcing victory out of defeat.

He was the only American who fought the English on English soil. He never walked a decent quarter deck, but with the feeble instruments he had, he captured sixty superior vessels. His ideal of manliness was courage.

What of this Fredericksburg gave him no one may say, but it is sure that the chivalry, grace and courtliness which admitted him in later years to almost every court in Europe was absorbed from the gentry in Virginia. He did not learn it on merchantmen or in his humble Scotch home, and so he learned it here. Of him the d.u.c.h.ess de Chartres wrote:

"Not Bayard, nor Charles le Temeaire could have laid his helmet at a lady's feet with such knightly grace."

He won his country's high acclaim, but it gave him no substantial evidence. He was an Admiral in the Russian Navy, and after a time he went to Paris to live a few years in poverty, neglect, and bitterness. He died and was buried in Paris in 1792, at 45 years of age.

He was a dandy, this John Paul Jones, who walked the streets of Fredericksburg in rich dress. Lafayette, Jefferson, and, closest of all, the Scotch physician, Hugh Mercer, were his friends. Slender and not tall, black-eyed and swarthy, with sensitive eyes, and perfect mouth and chin, he won the love or friendship of women quicker than that of men.

He was buried in an old graveyard in Paris and forgotten until the author of this book wrote for newspapers a series of letters about him. Interest awoke and Amba.s.sador Porter was directed to search for his body. How utterly into oblivion had slipped the youth who ventured far, and conquered always, is plain when it is known that it took the Amba.s.sador six years to find the body of Commodore John Paul Jones. He found it in an old cemetery where bodies were heaped three deep under the courtyard of a stable and a laundry.

[Sidenote: _Admiral Jones' Surgeon_]

SURGEON LAURENS BROOKE

Surgeon Laurens Brooke, was born in Fredericksburg, in 1720, and was one of those who accompanied Governor Spottswood as a Knight of the Golden Horseshoe. He afterwards lived in Fredericksburg, entered the U. S. Navy as a surgeon and sailed with John Paul Jones on the "Ranger" and on the "Bon Homme Richard." At the famous battle of Scarborough, between the latter vessel and the "Serapis," Surgeon Brooke alone had the care of one hundred and twenty wounded sailors; and later with Surgeon Edgerly, of the English navy, from the Tempis, performed valiant work and saved many lives. The surgeons were honored by Captain Paul Jones with a place at his mess, and the literature of the period refers to Surgeon Brooke as the "good old Doctor Laurens Brooke." He was with Jones until the end of the war and spent some time at his home here when a very old man, some years after the Revolution. His family had a distinguished part in the War Between the States, being represented in the army and in the C. S.

Congress during that period.

GENERAL HUGH MERCER

We wonder if any one ever declined to take the advice of George Washington.

Certain it is that General Hugh Mercer did not, for, at the suggestion of Washington, Mercer came to Fredericksburg. Many Scotchmen have found the town to their liking. It makes them feel a sort of kinship with the country of hill-shadows, and strange romance.

Mercer was born in Aberdeen in the year 1725. His father was a clergyman; his mother, a daughter of Sir Robert Munro, who, after distinguishing himself at Fontenoy and elsewhere, was killed at the battle of Falkirk, while opposing the young "Pretender." Hugh Mercer did not follow in the footsteps of his father, but linked his fortunes with Charles Edward's army, as a.s.sistant surgeon, fought with him at Culloden and shared the gloom of his defeat--a defeat which was not less bitter because his ears were ringing with the victorious shouts of the army of the Duke of c.u.mberland.

To change a scene that brought sad memories, Dr. Hugh Mercer, in the fall of 1746, embarked for America. There, on the frontiers of civilization, in Western Pennsylvania, he spent arduous, unselfish years. He was welcomed and loved in this unsettled region of scattered homes.

A rough school it was in which the doctor learned the lessons of life.

In the year 1755, Mercer made his appearance in the ill-fated army of Braddock, which met humiliating disaster at Fort Duquesne. Washington's splendid career began here and here Mercer was wounded. Of this memorable day of July 9, 1755, it has been said that "The Continentals gave the only glory to that humiliating disaster."

In 1756, while an officer in a military a.s.sociation, which was founded to resist the aggression of the French and Indians, he was wounded and forced to undergo terrible privations. While pursued by savage foes he sought refuge in the trunk of a tree, around which the Indians gathered and discussed the prospect of scalping him in the near future. When they left he escaped in the opposite direction and completely outwitted them. Then began a lonely march through an unbroken forest, where he was compelled to live on roots and herbs, and where the carca.s.s of a rattlesnake proved his most nourishing meal. He finally succeeded in rejoining his command at Fort c.u.mberland. In recognition of his sacrifices and services in these Indian wars, the Corporation of Philadelphia presented him with a note of thanks and a splendid memorial medal. In the year 1758 he met George Washington and then it was that Pennsylvania lost a citizen. In Fredericksburg, at the time that Mercer came, lived John Paul Jones, and we do not doubt that they often met and talked of their beloved Scotland.

During his first years in Fredericksburg, Mercer occupied a small two-story house on the southwest corner of Princess Anne and Amelia Streets. There he had his office and apothecary shop. The building is still standing.

An Englishman, writing at this time of a visit to Fredericksburg, calls Mercer "a man of great eminence and possessed of almost every virtue and accomplishment," truly a sweeping appreciation.

[Sidenote: _Mercer Joins Masonic Lodge_]

He belonged to Lodge No. 4, of which George Washington was also a member, and he occasionally paid a visit to Mount Vernon.