Showing posts with label trip to Fredericksburg 2018. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trip to Fredericksburg 2018. Show all posts

Saturday, June 23, 2018

April Trip to Fredericksburg VA....Part Two

The next stop on our museum tour was The Rising Sun Tavern.



This museum is touted as having been owned by George Washington's younger brother, Charles Washington(also my 11th cousin 8 x removed).

Charles had this house built in 1760 but sold it and had moved away long before it became a tavern/lodging house in 1792.
Intersting tidbit--Charles Town, West Virginia was named by and for Geo. little brother Charles Washington.  That was in 1787 so it was Charles Town, Virginia, not West Virginia.

Interesting information given by the docents here about traveling in the Colonial era but no photos were allowed to be taken inside.  Let's just say that travel, even short distances, was arduous and uncomfortable and you had to be careful which lodging house you frequented.

When we left the building I spied this A. Smith Bowman whiskey barrel.......


We toured the nearby A. Smith Bowman distillery a couple of times(once with Hubs in August 2015 and once with the two oldest kids in July 2016).


A Bowman visiting a Bowman's distillery.
My direct line of Bowman's are in America by way of Ireland(and before that, England).
The distillery Bowmans line was orginally from Germany.


But it turns out as I dig deeper into my genealogy I am related to Abraham Smith Bowman Jr.(pictured above with his father, A Smith Bowman Sr.).

Abraham Smith Bowman Jr. married Mary Walker Lee, who it turns out is my 10th cousin 4 x removed, through my mother's FOSTER line(I also have a paternal Foster line but that one is Irish/English.)


And yes, this LEE family is That  FFV or "First Families of Virginia" Lee family.

 It's funny that my brother remembers that our father had fantasized out loud about being of German descent when we were younger and he was still alive.  This was long before any of us were into genealogy or DNA testing and had done any research.
But I digress.......


So it was off to our third stop of the day........

George's mom's house.
Mary Ball Washington(the wife of my 10th cousin 9 x removed)lived at "Ferry Farm"(called this after the fact)across the Rappahannock River from F'burg, which was only accessible to town at that time by a ferry.
After her husband Augustine Washington died in 1743, George tried to get Mary to move into town but she refused until the winter of 1771 when she became seriously ill and her daughter, Betty Washington Lewis, who lived in town had just given birth and couldn't travel to the farm to nurse her mother.  Mary moved into the town home George bought her the Spring of 1772.


"Bettie" Washington,Mary Ball Washington's daughter, married Fielding Lewis(of the Warner Hall Plantation Lewis')and he is also my 11th cousin 8 x removed


 Mary Ball Washington was, as Little Edie Beale would say a "staunch character".............


Mary Ball Washington died 25 Aug 1789 in her bed in Fredericksburg Virginia after a long battle with breast cancer.


Hubs and I pose in Mary's garden which she dearly loved, by her sundial.  Mary brought the sundial over from Ferry Farm when she moved into town.


There is one surviving outbuilding at Mary Washington's house, that of the kitchen.



In most Southern homes the kitchen was a separate building next to the main house.  Cooking back then was dirty and hot work and the last place you'd want to have a kitchen was in your main living area, especially in the Summer.


Even in areas of the country where it wasn't so hot for a good piece of the year, homes would often have a "Summer" kitchen.  These were either in a basement of a home or a separate building on the property.  My in-laws had a "Summer" kitchen of sorts in the lower level of their split level home in NJ.

We checked out the gift shop in the back of Mary Ball Washington's home and I did buy a couple of postcards.....

Eldest was getting hungry and tired of waiting on us out in the car(he had already toured these little museums)so we didn't get to "Kenmore"(Bettie Washington and Fldieing Lewis' home 2 blocks away)this trip.  Perhaps another time.


We passed this monument over on the next street across from "Kenmore" and darned if it's not Hugh Mercer again!  I had to get a photo.


This was a nice looking house near the monument with a mansard roof feature.  Notice the horse tie off and the stone block for stepping down from your mount or from a carriage on the street.


We grabbed a cheap and quick lunch at Hardee's then it was a stop at the nearby Ollie's and a grocery store to pick up a birthday cake since it was Hubs' birthday and then back to the apartment to hang out for awhile.

As soon as Eldest's GF arrived from work and changed we were off for a late dinner.......

Of course, to a brew pub, Spencer Devon Brewing.

A round of drinks and then the trivia started..
We had to decide on a team name and went with "The Carpetbaggers".
It should have been "1 Scalawag and 3 Carpetbaggers" since the 3 of my dining/drinking companion are all Yankees. ;-)

So we ate a bit(the Red Goat burger was great!)and drank a big(well Eldest and Hubs did most of the drinking)and we played some bar trivia.  Between our varied interests, sexes and ages we pretty much covered every category of trivia and we ended up coming in second place for the night!


Then it was back to the apartment and time for cake..........
But Eldest didn't have any candles to blow out so we improvized using the Candle app on the GF's phone........lol........



Hubs and I left the next morning to come home.  It was a quick but fun little trip to see our son and soak in some local history.


Sluggy
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Tuesday, June 19, 2018

April Trip to Fredericksburg Virginia....Part One

So during my eldest son's school break in April, Hubs and I made a quick trip down to Fredericksburg Virginia to see him.
He'd been home for Christmas so it had been 3.5 months since we spent time with him.

On the way down we hit the Lindt Chocolate Outlet.
Since Easter had just passed all the holiday related items were 50% off.


We picked up 4 bunnies(only 2 made it home since 2 were given to Eldest and his GF)plus a pound of assorted truffle "seconds".  Hubs has since eaten all the truffles, Daughter took one of the bunnies so there is only 1 bunny left.

We got to meet Eldest's new girlfriend while we were there.  She works as a guide at Montpelier and was waiting to hear about a new job she applied for as a guide at Mt. Vernon.(She got it!)

The first night Eldest picked the place to eat dinner.
Fredericksburg's version of an English pub....a mighty upscale version if you ask me, attached to the local shopping mall.

 Hubs had Shepherd's pie with lamb I think.....

 I have fish and chips........


And eldest had Corned Beef, Cabbage, Carrots and Mashed Potatoes.

I spied something I wanted to take home with me but alas!, I doubt it would have fit into my little purple car................


A throne grand enough for the "Queen of the Freaking Universe"!
All I needed was a crown and someone to behead...........

On the way back to Eldest's apartment we hit up the local Total Wine and More to use a gift certificate we had.


I always get a chuckle out of the quirky names of craft beers. lolz

The next day Eldest drove Hubs and I around so we could check out three of the Washington Heritage Museums in fFburg.
First on the itinerary was the Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop.......


This is Hugh Mercer.......



Mercer was a good friend of George Washington(my 11th cousin 8 x removed)and was an American Revolutionary hero.
Originally from Scotland, Hugh was a surgeon in the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie(my 10th cousin 9 x removed)and was present at their defeat at the Battle of Culloden.


Hugh fled and went into hiding before hopping a ship to the New World where he settled in what was then the frontier of Pennsylvania and practiced medicine there for 8 years(now Mercersburg PA).
He served as a soldier in the Seven Years War(known in the New World as the French and Indian War) fighting the French and Indians, commissioned a Captain and promoted to Colonel after the attack at Kittanning.
Mercer served under General John Forbes with fellow Colonel, Geo. Washington.

In 1760 Mercer moved to Fredericksburg, where there was a large Scottish community, after befriending several Virginians and he set up a medical practice and apothecary there.  Mercer was physick to George's mother's, Mary Ball Washington, and Mercer bought George's childhood home(now called Ferry Farm)from George in 1774 after he inherited it from his older brother.
But Hugh Mercer wouldn't live to enjoy his retirement years on the farm because of the American Revolution.  He was with George at the Battle of Trenton, surprising the Hessian forces on Christmas night by crossing the Delaware River.  A few days later as Washington was engaging Major Cornwallis at the second Battle of Trenton, Mercer and his men was ambushed by British forces en route to Princeton NJ(this battle became known as the Battle of Trenton).


Here's the famous John Trumbull painting of the event.


One of Hugh Mercer's son's, William Robert Mercer, an artist who was also deaf, painted this rendition of the event of Mercer's death.
Hugh Mercer and his wife, Isabella Gordon, had 5 children.  Their only daughter was Ann Gordon Mercer(known as "Mary").  Ann married Robert William Patton and one of their 2 x Great Grandsons would be General George Smith Patton(John Mercer Patton, George Smith Patton, George Smith Patton Jr., Gen George S. Patton III).
Ann Mercer's brother, Hugh Tennant Weedon Mercer also has a famous descendant. One of Hugh T.W. Mercer's 2 x Great Grandson's was songwriter/composer Johnny Mercer(Hugh, Hugh TW, Hugh Weedon, George Anderson, George Anderson II, John Herndon "Johnny").



When I saw that George S. Patton was a descendant on that board in the Apothecary I knew I had a relationship to Hugh Mercer, et al., too.
Hugh Tennant Weedon Mercer, besides Hugh Weedon, had another son, John Cyrus Mercer.
John's daughter, Eliza Christina Mercer married Dr. Beverly St. George Tucker. Beverly Tucker is my 6th cousin 4 x removed back through my STITH family line.


So Hugh Mercer, Patriot and Martyr of the Revolution is specifically the Great Grandfather of the Wife of my 6th cousin 4 x removed.
Got that?

Also upstairs in the building was this hole in a wall.  If you looked through the hole you could read about the origination of the part of a house called a "Powder Room".......


Gentleman of that era who wore wigs could put their head through the hole in the wall and a servant on the other side in the room would powder their wig to refresh it's look.  Flour and starches scented with floral and fruit essences could also be added to the powder concoction to mask the smell of men who didn't bathe except in July and August and wore wigs when out in public.

We toured the downstairs apothecary shop and the costumed/in character guides took us through all the items that the good doctor used to cure the ills of his patients.


They even had a small still to make spirits.....only for medicinal purposes mind you.  ;-)


Then it was into the doctor's study and surgery room where Dr. Mercer saw his most ill patients.


The doctor was not in at the moment so we chatted with his assistant.
She showed us his latest arrivals from the Continental, Hirudo Medicinalis.


Yep, a big old fat, living LEECH!




We chose not to wait around for the bloodletting, bid the staff good day....



 and ventured onto the next stop on the museum trail.


Part 2 coming soon and I'll leave you with this lovely tune from Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer.......


Sluggy

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