Fredericksburg and Its Many Points of Interest

The visitor to Fredericksburg to-day finds, instead of the easy going town of ante-bellum days, an entirely new place risen from the ruins of war and time, new buildings, up-to-date streets and other improvements making a modern city of the present generation. The object of this little book is to furnish to the traveler, facts in the history of Fredericksburg, its many places of interest as well as an up-to-date guide to the city, and to extend to all a “welcome to Fredericksburg.”

The exact time the site of what is now Fredericksburg was visited by white men is not known, but the general impression is that the first trip was in 1608 (one year after the landing at Jamestown). Capt. John Smith, the true founder and father of Virginia, with a crew of twelve men and an indian of a Potomac tribe for a guide, came to the falls of the Rappahannock just above where Fredericksburg was afterward located, and had a severe fight with the Rappahannocks, whom he described as the most courageous and formidable savages he had yet encountered.