Go to Fredericksburg to Discover Washington the Man

For America’s Semiquincentennial, many museums are launching new exhibitions, and what better place to visit first than Fredericksburg, the site of George Washington’s boyhood home, Ferry Farm? The house of Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington, and also the house of his sister, Elizabeth Lewis, are there, too — the latter is famous for its ceiling plasterwork, the grandest in Georgian America. We’ve got to look at Fredericksburg to understand how George became the founding father nonpareil.

Completed in 1775, Lewis’s house, called Kenmore, is in the center of Fredericksburg, which in colonial times was a port hub at the end of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the head of navigation from inland America to the sea, linked by the Rappahannock River. By the start of the American Revolution, a rich, plantation-based elite was well established.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

Featured Tags

Manage following

Art

For America’s Semiquincentennial, many museums are launching new exhibitions, and what better place to visit first than Fredericksburg, the site of George Washington’s boyhood home, Ferry Farm? The house of Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington, and also the house of his sister, Elizabeth Lewis, are there, too — the latter is famous for its ceiling plasterwork, the grandest in Georgian America. We’ve got to look at Fredericksburg to understand how George became the founding father nonpareil.

Completed in 1775, Lewis’s house, called Kenmore, is in the center of Fredericksburg, which in colonial times was a port hub at the end of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the head of navigation from inland America to the sea, linked by the Rappahannock River. By the start of the American Revolution, a rich, plantation-based elite was well established.