Of all the men whose homes were in Fredericksburg, none went forth to
greater honor nor greater ignominy than John Paul Jones, who raised the
first American flag on the masthead of his ship, died in Paris and was
buried and slept for 113 years beneath a filthy stable yard, forgotten by
the country he valiantly served.
He came to Fredericksburg early in 1760 on "The Friendship," as a boy of
thirteen years. Born in a lowly home, he was a mere apprentice seaman, and
without doubt he deserted his ship in those days, when sea life was a
horror, to come to Fredericksburg and join his brother, William Paul,
whose home was here, and who is buried here. There is some record of his
having been befriended by a man in Carolina, and traditions that he left
his ship in a port on the Rappahannock after killing a sailor, and walked
through the wilderness to Fredericksburg. Neither tradition is of
importance; the fact is that he came here and remained four years during
the developing period of his life.
[Sidenote: _Jones' American Home Here_]
William Paul had immigrated to Fredericksburg from the Parish of Kirkbeam,
Scotland, (where he and his brother, John, were born), about 1760, had
come to Fredericksburg and conducted a grocery store and tailor shop on
the corner of Caroline and Prussia streets. William died here in 1773, and
is buried in St. George's Church Yard. In his will he left his property to
sisters in the Parish of Kirkbeam, Scotland.
Alexander McKenzie, in his life of John Paul Jones, says, after referring
to the fact that William Paul is buried in Fredericksburg: "In 1773 he
went back to Fredericksburg to arrange the affairs of his brother, William
Paul," and John Paul Jones himself wrote of Fredericksburg: "It was the
home of my fond election since first I saw it." The Legislature of
Virginia decided in settling William Paul's estate that John Paul Jones
was a legal resident of Fredericksburg.
Obviously, then, Fredericksburg was the great Admiral's home, for, though
not born here, he chose it when he came to America.
When he first reached the little town on the Rappahannock he went to work
for his brother, William Paul and one can surmise that he clerked and
carried groceries and messages to the gentry regarding their smart clothes
for his brother.
The Rising Sun Tavern was then a gathering place for the gentry and
without doubt he saw them there. He may well have learned good manners
from their ways, good language from hearing their conversation and
"sedition" from the great who gathered there. We may picture the lowly
boy, lingering in the background while the gentlemen talked and drank
punch around Mine Host Weedon's great fire, or listening eagerly at the
counter where the tavern-keeper, who was to be a Major-General, delivered
the mail.
Certainly John Paul Jones was a lowly and uneducated boy at 13. He left
Fredericksburg after four years to go to sea again, and in 1773 came back
to settle his brother's estate, and remained here until December 22, 1775,
when he received at Fredericksburg his commission in the Navy.
[Sidenote: _From Cabin Boy to Courtier_]
John Paul Jones' story is more like romance than history. Beginning an
uncouth lad, he became a sea fighter whose temerity outranks all. We see
him aboard the Bonhomme Richard, a poor thing for seafaring, fighting the
Serapis just off British shores, half of his motley crew of French and
Americans dying or dead about him, the scruppers running blood, mad
carnage raging, and when he is asked if he is ready to surrender he says:
"I've just begun to fight," and by his will forcing victory out of defeat.
He was the only American who fought the English on English soil. He never
walked a decent quarter deck, but with the feeble instruments he had, he
captured sixty superior vessels. His ideal of manliness was courage.
What of this Fredericksburg gave him no one may say, but it is sure that
the chivalry, grace and courtliness which admitted him in later years to
almost every court in Europe was absorbed from the gentry in Virginia. He
did not learn it on merchantmen or in his humble Scotch home, and so he
learned it here. Of him the Duchess de Chartres wrote:
"Not Bayard, nor Charles le Temeaire could have laid his helmet at a
lady's feet with such knightly grace."
He won his country's high acclaim, but it gave him no substantial
evidence. He was an Admiral in the Russian Navy, and after a time he went
to Paris to live a few years in poverty, neglect, and bitterness. He died
and was buried in Paris in 1792, at 45 years of age.
He was a dandy, this John Paul Jones, who walked the streets of
Fredericksburg in rich dress. Lafayette, Jefferson, and, closest of all,
the Scotch physician, Hugh Mercer, were his friends. Slender and not tall,
black-eyed and swarthy, with sensitive eyes, and perfect mouth and chin,
he won the love or friendship of women quicker than that of men.
He was buried in an old graveyard in Paris and forgotten until the author
of this book wrote for newspapers a series of letters about him. Interest
awoke and Ambassador Porter was directed to search for his body. How
utterly into oblivion had slipped the youth who ventured far, and
conquered always, is plain when it is known that it took the Ambassador
six years to find the body of Commodore John Paul Jones. He found it in an
old cemetery where bodies were heaped three deep under the courtyard of a
stable and a laundry.
[Sidenote: _Admiral Jones' Surgeon_]