Long before the first shots of rebellion echoed across Massachusetts, the small tobacco port of Fredericksburg, Virginia, was quietly shaping the men and networks that would carry the American Revolution to its improbable conclusion. Perched on the fall line of the Rappahannock River, roughly halfway between the colonial capital at Williamsburg and the frontier beyond the Blue Ridge, Fredericksburg occupied a geographic and social crossroads that made it far more consequential to the Revolutionary cause than its modest size might suggest. It was not a battlefield, nor a seat of colonial government, but something perhaps more essential: a crucible in which friendships were forged, resources were marshaled, personal fortunes were sacrificed, and the human costs of independence were borne with extraordinary intensity. To understand the American Revolution as something more than a series of famous battles and constitutional abstractions, one must reckon with places like Fredericksburg—places where the war was sustained, day after grueling day, by the commitments of particular people who had everything to lose.
PEOPLE
Hugh Mercer
Continental Army Brigadier General, Fredericksburg Physician, Scottish Jacobite Veteran
Betty Washington Lewis
Washington's Sister, Kenmore Plantation Mistress, Patriot Supporter
Fielding Lewis
Virginia Planter, Gunnery Manufactory Operator, Washington Brother-in-Law
Mary Ball Washington
George Washington's Mother, Fredericksburg Resident
KEY EVENTS
Hugh Mercer Killed at Battle of Princeton
Jan 1777
Fielding Lewis Opens Gunnery Manufactory
Oct 1775
Fielding Lewis Dies in Financial Ruin
Dec 1781
Hugh Mercer Organizes Virginia Militia
Jun 1775
Washington Bids Farewell to His Mother Before Yorktown Campaign
Sep 1781
Rappahannock Forge Produces Military Hardware
Jan 1776
STORIES
HISTORICAL VOICE
The Man Who Spent His Fortune on a War
Fielding Lewis was not a soldier. He was a planter, a merchant, and George Washington's brother-in-law, and when the Revolution came he contributed in the way that wealthy men who were not soldiers co...
HISTORICAL VOICE
The Death of Hugh Mercer
Hugh Mercer had survived Culloden. He had survived Braddock's Monongahela disaster, riding away with two wounds while the army collapsed around him. He had survived twenty years of frontier medicine i...