To the southward of the Potomac a short distance, and flowing almost
parallel, is another noted river of Virginia, the Rappahannock, rising
in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, and broadening into a wide estuary
in its lower course. Its chief tributary is the stream which the
colonists named after the "good Queen Anne," the Rapid Ann, since
condensed into the Rapidan. The Indians recognized the tidal estuary
of the Rappahannock, for the name means "the current has returned and
flowed again," referring to the tidal ebb and flow. Upon this stream,
southward from Washington, is the quaint old city of Fredericksburg,
which has about five thousand inhabitants, and five times as many
graves in the great National Cemetery on Marye's Heights and in the
Confederate Cemetery, mournful relics of the sanguinary battles fought
there in 1862-63. The town dates from 1727, when it was founded at the
head of tidewater on the Rappahannock, where a considerable fall
furnishes good water-power, about one hundred and ten miles from the
Chesapeake. But its chief early memory is of Mary Ball, the mother of
Washington, here having been his boyhood home. A monument has been
erected to her, which it took the country more than a century to
complete. She was born in 1706 on the lower Rappahannock, at Epping
Forest, and Sparks and Irving speak of her as "the belle of the
Northern Neck" and "the rose of Epping Forest." In early life she
visited England, and the story is told that one day while at her
brother's house in Berkshire a gentleman's coach was overturned nearby
and its occupant seriously injured. He was brought into the house and
carefully nursed by Mary Ball until he fully recovered. This gentleman
was Colonel Augustine Washington, of Virginia, a widower with three
sons, and it is recorded in the family Bible that "Augustine
Washington and Mary Ball were married the 6th of March, 1730-31." He
brought her to his home in Westmoreland County, where George was born
the next year. His house there was accidentally burnt and they removed
to Fredericksburg, where Augustine died in 1740; but she lived to a
ripe old age, dying there in 1789. When her death was announced a
national movement began to erect a monument, but it was permitted to
lapse until the Washington Centenary in 1832, when it was revived, and
in May, 1833, President Jackson laid the corner-stone with impressive
ceremonies in the presence of a large assemblage of distinguished
people. The monument was started and partially completed, only again
to lapse into desuetude. In 1890 the project was revived, funds were
collected by an association of ladies, and in May, 1894, a handsome
white marble obelisk, fifty feet high, was created and dedicated. It
bears the simple inscription, "Mary, the Mother of Washington."