Virginia was the site of the first US settlement known as Jamestown. It was one of the original thirteen colonies and home to four of the first five US Presidents.
One day I took the youngest Williams family member to the park to swing and have some fun. He and I climbed a hill at the park. There was a large rock on the side of the hill. We decided to explore the rock. The rock had a plaque. The plaque explained that this rock is where Mary Washington would go to pray for her son George Washington when he was in war.
Yeah, that George Washington.
I've never happened upon something with that kind of historic significance before. We live near George Washington's childhood home - which is still a local landmark. If you remember, Kenyon and I did a tour of his adult home a few years back (a short drive down the highway). Click here to read that story.
This post isn't about George Washington or the colonization of America. No, this is about a time a bit later in our history. The civil war.
The city we currently live in has a historic downtown with many old buildings. When I say "old" I mean old, old (by American standards), dating back to the late 1600 to early 1700's. There are historic trolley tours offered by the visitors center. We took a guided tour on a recent Saturday.
The topic was slavery and slave places in Fredericksburg. Wow, it was eye opening! Through the years of visiting and in recent months I have been down these streets many times. The tour brought a whole new perspective. For instance on a familiar corner is this odd stone piece.
I wondered once why that stone was sticking out there? Then I moved along my merry way. I was told on the tour that this was the former site for city slave auctions. They would put a chained man on the top of the stone so the crowd could see him, then sell him off to the highest bidder. I will never look at that corner the same again...never.
The story of Roots was based in Spotsylvania county, which is our neighbor. In fact it is so close that we eat there often. Just last night we had dinner at a restaurant in the area.
Other interesting tidbits is that one of the local banks located downtown was also a bank during civil war days, and is the only building in our town that Abraham Lincoln is known to have visited. Yes, that Abraham Lincoln.
The most powerful part of the tour was the end standing on the edge of the Rappahannock River. As we looked at the water flowing past us we were told the story of freedom. The Union soldiers called out to the slaves to cross the river...and they did...by the hundreds. Two of them later wrote autobiographies of their life, the most famous is called A Slave No More by John Washington. We visited his childhood home and many stories on the tour were told through his experience.
just Sheri, awed by the story of freedom in my neighborhood
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