Extended Weekend Getaways By Kathleen Walls
American Roads & Global Highways
Do you want to know the Washington family before George Washingon became our first president? There are three homes in Fredericksburg, VA that reflect who our first president and his family were and their lifestyle before he became the most famous man in American history.
Fredericksburg Area Museum
Fredericksburg Area Museum, housed in the restored 1816 Town Hall and Market House has exhibits showing 10,000 years of Fredericksburg history, and its 250th anniversary exhibit, “Witness to a Revolution,” includes George Washington.
Ferry Farm
Artifacts in cleaning room at Ferry Farm museum Photo byKathleen Walls.
Ferry Farm is the reconstructed childhood home of George Washington. The Washingtons moved to that farm in 1738 when George was six years old. George lived at Ferry Farm until he was 22. Then the farm was about 600 acres. They’ve preserved a little over 100 of those acres.
Washington’s boyhood desk at ferry farm Photo by Kathleen Walls
George was 11 when his father, Agustus, died, and his mother, Mary, with the help of her slaves, kept running the farm. She didn’t remarry because if she had, the property would have become her husband’s. She wanted to save it for George, her oldest child. Life after Augustus Washington died was hard. He had two older sons by his first wife who inherited most of his wealth. Their cash crop was tobacco, and Ferry Farm was not large enough to make that profitable.
The home there today is an accurate replica built over the foundations of the house built in 1727. The house is simple but elegant. Mary’s bedroom is what I liked best. Our guide told how George grew up strapped for money. One exhibit is surveyor tools George used to learn surveying as a way to prosper. He became close friends with his stepbrother Lawrence who helped young George advance. Since surveyors visited new lands, by the time Washington was 20, he had purchased around 2,300 acres.
Mary Washington House
Mary Washington House Photo by Kathleen Walls
A modest white house is where Mary Washington spent the last 17 years of her life. George bought his mother this cottage and kitchen in 1772. George had no attachment Ferry Farm since life there was hard, and he wanted to sell it, but Mary didn’t want to move. After a severe illness, she agreed to move, and Washington bought her this house near Kenmore where his sister, Betty, lived. His last visit with Mary was here when he was on his way to New York to be sworn in as president./
mary washingtons bedroom at Mary Washington House Photo by Kathleen Walls
Our guide was Kevin. He showed us through and told us which portions were original and what changes had been made. Most of the furniture is not hers, but it’s nearly identical period furnishing as she would have had. A few pieces were hers including a teapot you can see on a downstairs table, a rinsing bowl used to rinse your glass between servings of wine, and a tin mirror with a thin layer of silver Mary called her dressing mirror Her will is upstairs, and a few other personal items.
There was space between the house and kitchen when Mary moved here. The house was connected to the kitchen when the next family, the Carters, owned the house.
Behind Mary’s house, there’s a garden like she had with flowers, vegetables, herbs, and the sundial Mary told time by.
Historic Kenmore
Kenmore was built in the 1770s as the home of Colonel Fielding Lewis and his wife Betty Washington Lewis, George Washington’s sister. It was a plantation of about 1,300 acres. The house, the only brick structure, is the last original structure. Other buildings such as slave quarters, stable, smokehouse, which were made of wood didn’t survive through the years.
Kenmore is the most elaborately furnished as Lewis was wealthy before the Revolution. However, he donated much of his wealth to finance the war, believing he would be repaid later. He was not repaid and died broke.
Kenmore showing plaster work Photo by Kathleen Walls
The walls inside are painted Prussian Green, made from oxidized tin. It was extremely expensive to make and showed off the family wealth. Three of the rooms on the main level have been elaborately decorated on the ceilings with plasterwork. Some even have plaster in the crown molding, and two of the rooms’ fireplaces have plaster artwork over them. The same man did work here and at Mount Vernon. They don’t know the name of the man who did that intricate work. In letters between Fielding Lewis and George Washington at Mount Vernon, he was referred to as the “Stucco Man.”
Be sure to tour the museum and the re-created kitchen.
The Lewis store in the Historic District is one of the oldest commercial buildings in America. It was built by Lewis’s father in 1749.
Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop
Docent at Hugh Mercer apothacary showing leeches in a jar. Photo by Kathleen Walls
Dr. Hugh Mercer was a political refugee from Scotland. He came to America and settled first in Pennsylvania, but then he met George Washington, who invited him to Fredericksburg, so he came here to live.
The Hugh Mercer Apothecary shop displays what visiting a doctor or having a tooth pulled would have been like in George Washington’s time. Many of the herbs used as medicine are on display, as are instruments used to amputate a limb, pull a tooth, or bleed a sick patient. There’s a glass bowl holding live leeches. Docents in colonial costume explained the uses on the tour.
Hugh Mercer was also a Revolutionary War general. He was killed in the Battle of Princeton in 1777. Interesting side fact, Mercer was a great – great, great grandfather of US Army General George S. Patton, Jr.
Ironclad Inn & Distillery
If you want to dine or stay in an actual colonial-era building, The Ironclad Inn & Distillery is housed in a 1793 building. It’s Fredericksburg’s longest continuously operating inn since 1932. They also own a bourbon distillery and offer meals and tastings to inn guests and visitors in their Stable Block Bourbon Room.
Trolley Tours of Fredericksburg is a way to get a good overview of Fredericksburg. Anyone interested in Washington, colonial history, or later history needs to put Fredericksburg on their bucket list.
This article also appears in our Jan. 2026 flip-page magazine on P. 15
