The mystery of the Washington family's missing mansion and how it was solved
The exact location of the house in southern Stafford County where George Washington grew up was long a mystery. The building itself disappeared nearly two centuries ago. Successive occupiers of the former plantation, known as Ferry Farm, found little evidence of Washington's boyhood home, and many of them muddied the record.
George's mother, Mary Ball Washington, stayed at Ferry Farm until 1772, when she moved across the Rappahannock River to 1200 Charles St. in Fredericksburg, where she died in 1789. The Washington estate buildings vanished, and the land was turned over to crops. Decades of plowing further fragmented artifacts. When the Union army swept over the farm in 1862, during the Civil War battles at Fredericksburg, nothing was visible above ground.
Some 140 years later the extensive dig for the foundation of the boyhood home began. After eight digging seasons the mystery was declared solved in July, with the public unveiling of the foundation. Last week, Stafford County Historical Society members heard from Ferry Farm's chief archaeologist, Dave Muraca, about how the case was cracked.
Read entire article at The Free Lance Star (Fredericksburg)
George's mother, Mary Ball Washington, stayed at Ferry Farm until 1772, when she moved across the Rappahannock River to 1200 Charles St. in Fredericksburg, where she died in 1789. The Washington estate buildings vanished, and the land was turned over to crops. Decades of plowing further fragmented artifacts. When the Union army swept over the farm in 1862, during the Civil War battles at Fredericksburg, nothing was visible above ground.
Some 140 years later the extensive dig for the foundation of the boyhood home began. After eight digging seasons the mystery was declared solved in July, with the public unveiling of the foundation. Last week, Stafford County Historical Society members heard from Ferry Farm's chief archaeologist, Dave Muraca, about how the case was cracked.