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FREDERICKSBURG'S ORIGINS
and a History of Its Neighborhoods
Chapter 8
1770-1775: THE ROAD TO WAR
By Paula S. Felder
In Fredericksburg at the beginning of the 1770s, there were increasing material comforts and more social amenities. The spring and fall fairs were now the foundation for a very active social season, enhanced by the excitement of the races and the variety of cultural events and entertainments at the Town House.
In May 1771, The American Company of Comedians from Williamsburg announced in the Virginia Gazette a full summer season in Fredericksburg, with performances every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Jonathan Clark, the young deputy clerk of the court and an avid theatergoer, attended the plays twice in June and July and once in August. On one of his customary stopovers enroute from Mount Vernon to Williamsburg, George Washington attended a performance on a rainy Thursday in July. The company’s presentations, which Clark noted in his diary, were impressive. He saw several farces, but he also saw Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and Julius Caesar. George Washington saw the company
again in Williamsburg a month later.
New Manor Houses on the Rappahannock
In the decade just prior to the War for Independence, the indenture term for imported servants was lowered from seven to five years by the Virginia Assembly. Since times were very hard in England, the opportunity to immigrate to Virginia was seized upon by thousands of artisans and laborers. Many of them signed over their articles to ships’ captains in exchange for their passage.
Farmers and country laborers were listed last in the advertisements of Thomas Hodge of Leeds Town, an ambitious entrepreneur who personally imported at least thirteen shiploads (probably as many as 2,000 persons). These indentured servants may have been the source of the extra skills and labor needed in the building of some of the important manor houses of the period— Chatham, Belvedere, and Mannsfield to cite some local structures. They may also have added to Virginia’s military manpower during the war and later to the middle class in some of Virginia’s towns.
The Last Colonial Plantation
In the fall of 1769 and spring of 1770, Col. Fielding Lewis imported at his own expense 60 indentured servants. Although their trades were not identified, the timing suggests that they were intended as labor to construct a manor house on his 1,200 acre plantation.
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The timbers for the mansion were cut in 1772. In 1773, Lewis sent his brig to Liverpool, probably to purchase fittings and hardware that could not be manufactured in the colonies. The plastering and painting of the great rooms was just being completed in the spring of 1775. He and his brother-in-law, George Washington, arranged an exchange of skilled workmen. (Washington then went on to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and took command of the Continental Army in Cambridge in June.).
The Lewis family moved into their new home some time in the fall of 1775. By that time, Fielding Lewis had already shouldered major responsibilities for the defense effort.
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 The Jockey Club (1773-182?)
In January 1773, William Fitzhugh of Chatham, with George Weedon as manager, launched the Fredericksburg Jockey Club. Within a year, the club had 44 members who subscribed for a term of five or more years.
For a race field, George Weedon and the Jockey Club pre-empted a flat section of land that was part of Roger Dixon’s insolvent estate. (Today it is the site of Mayfield adjoining Summit Street.) There were three and sometimes four days of racing at the spring and fall fairs, and sometimes additional match races, all with large purses and prizes. Ironically, little is known about the jockeys themselves; they were apparently young lads in dress stipulated as neat waistcoats, caps, and half boots, probably slaves or indentured servants.
The races were phenomenally popular. In October 1774, the tutor at Nomini Hall in Westmoreland County noted in his journal that "a visitor brings no news of the [Continental] Congress, but much of the great race lately in Fredericksburg."
“Sports of the Turf”
“Derby (British pronunciation: darby). Any of several annual horse races, especially for three year olds.”
American Heritage Dictionary
From the institutions and customs of the mother country, Virginia—the most English of all the colonies —derived its government, its religion, and its class system. Virginia also inherited its passion for horses from the mother country.
In the early 18th century, a new breed of racing horse, called the "quarter horse," flourished in the Rappahannock Valley. As early as 1740, Henry Willis had provided for a race course on the back line of Fredericksburg. And his executors named a new ordinary built on his instructions, The Race Horse Tavern (later known as the Long Ordinary).
Meanwhile, the sons of many of Virginia's gentry, in England for an education, were investing much of their time and money in their passion for the new Arabians and distance racing. Most prominent among the devotees was John Baylor of Caroline County (1705-1772). Baylor created racing history for Fredericksburg. He imported and bred the finest Arabians. He even named his plantation "Newmarket" after the racing center in England, where the Jockey Club was the arbiter of all the rules governing racing.
The Arabian Fearnought, acquired by Baylor in 1764, began Fredericksburg’s golden age of racing. Among his local progeny were William Fitzhugh's Regulus; Presley Thornton's Shakespeare; Alexander Spotswood's Apollo; and Mann Page's Damon. Edward Carter moved from his Albemarle plantation to Fredericksburg so that he could enter Buffcoat in the local racing scene.
The Fredericksburg area was in the throes of a racing craze. There was prime horseflesh, a sufficient number of wealthy gentry, excellent accommodations, and semi-annual fairs that regularly attracted large crowds. Also, the tavern keepers made excellent managers.
In 1775, the Jockey Club reluctantly folded for the duration. But at the end of the Revolutionary War, racing resumed, at "the place of ground on the hill above Dixons Old Mill Run, formerly used as a race field." Lewis Willis, the new owner, agreed to enclose the race course, which he later claimed required 100,000 rails. Carriages were instructed to enter opposite Mr. Ferneyhough's ("Sligo" on Dixon Street) on today's Summit Street, a very old road. Pedestrians were to reach the race ground on a footpath from the Gunnery Spring and then over a bridge across Hazel Run. This historic link has been lost to our modern consciousness, but it probably accounts for the colloquial reference to the neighborhood late in the 19th century as “Darbytown.” (Or is it possible that in racing’s 18th century heyday, Fredericksburg itself was called “Darbytown”?)
For many decades, the race field, now a forgotten landmark, was the most important gathering place for miles around. But "sports of the turf" began petering out locally and eventually throughout most of Virginia, and they moved west to Kentucky. (For more on this story, see “Off to the Races! The Story of the Fredericksburg Jockey Club” at www/HistoryPoint.org.)
Rising Tensions
Patriotism and love of pleasure were increasingly in conflict, however, as tensions mounted in the early 1770s. The first wave of sentiment against British controls resulted in a spontaneous movement throughout the colony called the Associators. The Associators called for a voluntary boycott of many English goods. In October 1770, Spotsylvanians elected Fielding Lewis chairman of their local committee.
Tensions rose as relations deteriorated. In 1773, the House of Burgesses adopted an idea introduced by the Massachusetts Assembly—to establish a standing Committee of Correspondence to communicate with the other colonies. For the first time, a network linking the colonies was in place.
In June 1774, in retaliation for the defiant tea dumping of the Sons of Liberty, the British closed the port of Boston. In protest, the Virginia Assembly had already declared June 1 to be a day of resolution and prayer throughout the colony. By coincidence, the appeal of the citizens of Boston for help being relayed down the coast had just reached Fredericksburg. (Paul Revere was the first courier; he had carried it as far as Philadelphia.)
Citizens convened at the Town House on Caroline Street and formed a Fredericksburg committee, with Fielding Lewis elected chairman. The formation of Fredericksburg’s committee was reported in some detail in the Virginia Gazette printed in Williamsburg. The ladies were commended for sealing their stocks of tea. (But the effect was somewhat diminished by a concluding paragraph giving the results of the Jockey Club races run at the recent fair.)
The town committee was quickly absorbed into a Spotsylvania committee. Over the next months, patriotic meetings were held at the courthouse on Princess Anne Street or at the Town House. Fielding Lewis was the elected head of all the protest activities. He was also the highest-ranking member of the court and the senior member of the parish vestry. To these duties he would add major responsibilities in the defense effort.
Preparing for a Continental Congress
In August 1774, a convention was held in Williamsburg, attended by representatives elected from each county. Spotsylvania’s delegates were its two burgesses, Mann Page Jr. and George Stubblefield. The convention elected delegates to attend a continental congress called for September in Philadelphia. Chosen were Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund Pendleton.
The Virginia convention also passed resolutions pledging to ban imports and exports if British taxes were not lifted in a year. In Philadelphia in September, the new congress passed similar sanctions and called for new committees in each county and town. These committees would become de facto agents of the Continental Congress charged with enforcing the non-importation agreements. Spotsylvania’s committee was elected on December 14. Fielding Lewis was again chosen as leader.
Helping the Citizens of Boston
Early in 1775, a large quantity of staples was shipped from Fredericksburg to Boston on a relief ship, much of it the surrendered stock of Tory merchants. Spotsylvania’s contribution, after the merchant costs had been reimbursed, was larger than any other county participating in the non-importation ban. Samuel Adams sent a letter of appreciation on behalf of “the suffering poor of Boston.”
Patriotic Activities Accelerate
It was at a second Virginia convention in March 1775 that Patrick Henry made his impassioned speech for liberty or death. In April 1775, shortly after the convention adjourned, having called for volunteer companies to be raised in each county, news of the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts reached Virginia.
In Williamsburg, Governor Dunmore, now made anxious by the call for independent companies, ordered the gunpowder removed from the public magazine in Williamsburg. The resulting uproar made great waves in Fredericksburg, where 600 men, many from the surrounding counties, quickly assembled, intending to march on the capitol. They dispersed at the urging of the colony's leaders.
By August, they were minutemen organized into a military district, and their training camp was established at Belvedere. Compulsory monthly militia musters began in each county. Fredericksburg, as the county seat, was the mandated - if unpopular - site for all of Spotsylvania.
George Washington was already in Cambridge, Massachusetts to take command of the Continental Army. And King George III officially proclaimed the colonies to be in rebellion.
A Gun Factory Assigned to Fredericksburg
Also in that fateful August of 1775, a third Virginia convention appropriated powers of the House of Burgesses, voted two regiments to serve one year tours, and created an executive council called the Committee of Safety, with a counterpart to be elected in each county.
Although Hugh Mercer, with his military experience in the French and Indian War, was a logical candidate to command a regiment, he was passed over in favor of the charismatic Patrick Henry. The appointment for command of the second regiment went to William Woodford of Caroline County, a selection which had an unintended effect on Fredericksburg's war effort.
Until his appointment, Woodford had operated a brewery on lower Caroline Street where he owned three lots (now 301 Caroline Street running to the river). It was he, some months earlier, who had proposed building a public gun manufactory at Fredericksburg. Presumably, his brewery would have been his choice of a site for the operation. Though Woodford then departed for his military command, his idea had found favor with the convention. When the ordinance was finally voted in August, the burden of execution fell on the two most patriotic and overworked leaders in the county— Fielding Lewis and Charles Dick. They began immediate preparations, advertising for workmen in September. Fredericksburg was thus plunged into the war effort even before there was a war.
The Gunnery Neighborhood (1775-1783)
Hastily, Lewis and Dick purchased ten acres next to the lower end of town and began immediate preparations for facilities and workmen. For waterpower, they leased from Roger Dixon’s widow two acres (four town lots) containing one of Roger Dixon's mills. There they also built an overseer's cottage and kitchen. On town lots across Ferdinand Street, they built dormitories. Charles Dick functioned as the operations manager while Fielding Lewis struggled with the finances. They performed heroic service in the face of nearly insurmountable odds, including neglect by the state government and crippling inflation and shortages. Both men sacrificed their personal wealth and persevered in spite of serious health problems—Dick with asthma and Lewis with a congestive disorder which confined him to his home. Lewis died in December 1781 and Dick in January 1783.
[In May of that year, the Assembly designated the factory land as the site for an academy, which, though it had an excellent reputation, lasted only until the turn of the century. The main building subsequently was used as a residence, and then as the town poorhouse. It disappeared from the tax rolls during the Civil War.]
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