Mary Washington House

George Washington bought his mother a house in 1772 for 275 pounds. The white frame structure at 1200 Charles Street stood a short walk from her daughter Elizabeth Washington Lewis' home at Kenmore Plantation and from a town home owned by her younger son Charles. Mary Ball Washington spent her last few years here, until her death in 1789.

The location made the house a regular stop for distinguished visitors to Fredericksburg. John Marshall came. George Mason came. Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and members of the Lee family came. In 1780, Charles moved to western Virginia — to what is now Charles Town, West Virginia. At that point, his former residence on the town's main street was converted into a tavern; today it operates as the Rising Sun Tavern, another museum in the city. George Washington visited his mother here frequently in his later years. In April 1789, before traveling to New York for his inauguration, he came to this house to receive her blessing. She died later that year.

In 1891, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities acquired the house, which had been scheduled for disassembly and transport to the Chicago World's Fair. It was their second property acquisition and the site where the Fredericksburg branch was chartered. The APVA restored the building and opened it to the public, recovering eight objects original to the house — including the mirror Mary Washington labeled her "best dressing glass." By 2013, ownership had transferred to Washington Heritage Museums, a Fredericksburg-based group that now operates the site.

The first floor holds Mary Washington's bedroom and a parlor from a later addition. The second floor contains two bedrooms and a small room documenting the preservation history. The gardens are open for self-guided tours. Visitors can enter an 1804 kitchen building — built decades after her death — and view replica structures including a wellhouse and an interpretation of the original eighteenth-century kitchen. The gift shop occupies what is believed to have been a dining room during a period when the house operated as a boys' school in the late 1700s.