Washington's Mom's House

Fredericksburg, Virginia

Mary Ball Washington, the mother of the Father of our County, lived in a number of homes over the years, some quite sumptuous. This was the last one, in downtown Fredericksburg, purchased for her by her famous son George in 1772. Before his inauguration in 1789 in New York, he traveled here to get his mother's blessing. Whether she did or did not doesn't matter; George became President anyway, and mom died not long afterward. The house was slated to be torn apart in 1891 and reassembled as an attraction at the Chicago World's Fair, but a group of local preservationists intervened, and since then have been very slowly restocking it with original items.