Central Rappahannock Regional Library

Braehead is a historic house located in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The 6,000 square foot house was built in 1858-1859 by George Mullen for John Howison, born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1809. John Howison's sister was the now-famous Civil War diarist, Jane Briggs (née Howison) Beale. John Howison's father, Samuel Howison, was born in Prince William, Virginia, in 1779. He and his wife, Helen Rose Moore, purchased the house at 1300 Charles Street, Fredericksburg, in 1828. Samuel Howison's father, Stephen Howison, was born in 1735/36 in St. Mary's, Maryland. Stephen Howison's father, John Howison, was born in Braehead, Scotland, in 1682.In 1843, Howison married Anne Richards Lee, a distant cousin of Robert E. Lee through the Hancock Lees, also known as “the Ditchley Lees.” Named in memory of the Lee home where she grew up, the house now known as "Braehead" was a house and farm originally known as "Greenview." When he took breakfast at Greenview (Braehead) before the first Battle of Fredericksburg, General Lee was spending time with distant relations, although Anne Lee Howison had died earlier in the year.John Howison's oldest sons both perished in the Civil War. After the war, John Howison could no longer afford to keep Greenview, including the farm and dairy, and he sold it to his younger brother, Robert Reid Howison, a sometime lawyer and, later, a Presbyterian minister, who wrote and published a major history of Virginia in 1846, and renamed the house "Braehead." It was a descendant of Robert Reid Howison who owned the house when it was sold in 2006. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in May 2000. It is noted for its distinctive characteristics of design and construction and for its historical significance.Braehead is a two-story brick building that is nine bays wide. The main part of the house is square with a two-story kitchen connected by a hyphen. The house has a double-pile (two rooms between the front and rear walls), sidepassage plan with hipped roofed entrance porticos on the east and west façades.Also on the property are two sites contributing to its historical significance: the ruins of a worked stone icehouse and the chimney base of an antebellum house. The house is within the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.During the Battle of Fredericksburg, General Robert E. Lee's headquarters were located near the home. On the morning of December 13, 1862 Lee had breakfast at Braehead.

Lansdowne, also known as Retreat Farm and Backus House, is a historic home located near Fredericksburg, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. The property is very near the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The original section was built about 1755, and enlarged in the early-19th century and in 1950. It is a 1+1⁄2-story, three-bay, side gable-roofed, double-pile, wood-framed dwelling. It features tall exterior chimneys. Also on the property are the contributing board-and-batten, side-gabled frame bank barn (1920s), a cinderblock spring house and cinderblock pumphouse with an early pump (c. 1950), the remnants of a mid-19th century historic formal landscape including terracing, and an historic road trace.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Artillery Ridge is an unincorporated community in Spotsylvania County, in the U.S. state of Virginia.

Fredericksburg Academy, or FA, is a co-educational independent school in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Created in 1992, FA enrolls 550 students in grades pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.

Four Mile Fork is an unincorporated community in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, United States, south of the city limits of Fredericksburg. Its name derives from the junction of State Route 208, U.S. Route 1, and U.S. Route 1 Business, which is located approximately four miles south of downtown Fredericksburg. Four Mile Fork was also known as Thomas' Store.The community began developing as a suburb of Fredericksburg in the mid-20th century, with tract housing spreading out from the city along U.S. Route 1 Business (or Lafayette Boulevard). Commercial development remained predominantly small-scale and scattered until after the completion of Interstate 95 through the area in 1964. The completion of a highway interchange with U.S. Route 1 just south of Four Mile Fork spurred new development, including lodging, restaurants, and service stations. Commercial development diversified from the late 1960s through the 1980s, with the addition of multiple automotive sales businesses, a shopping center, furniture stores, a multi-screen movie theater, and other local businesses. The completion in 1980 of a regional shopping mall, Spotsylvania Mall (now Spotsylvania Towne Center) on Virginia Route 3 west of Fredericksburg, shifted the focus of commercial development from the Route 1 corridor to the west of the city, resulting in some decline in business activity and the closure or relocation of several prominent businesses. Since the 1990s, however, new development to the south along Routes 1 and 208 and the redevelopment of older commercial properties around Four Mile Fork has renewed business interest in the community. Although most of the subdivision development between Four Mile Fork and the city limits of Fredericksburg had been completed by the 1990s, in-fill residential development continues throughout the area.

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park is a unit of the National Park Service in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and elsewhere in Spotsylvania County, commemorating four major battles in the American Civil War: Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, and Spotsylvania.

St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church is located in Fredericksburg, Virginia and is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington. Its grade school is Holy Cross Academy.

Brompton, originally known as Marye House, is an historic house located on heights overlooking the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The house was built in 1838 by John Lawrence Marye. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in July 1979.The house sits atop an area of Fredericksburg known as 'Marye's Heights'. The town was about 400 yards from Brompton and was a Confederate stronghold against repeated Union Army assaults on the slope during the Battle of Fredericksburg (1862–1863). Confederate General James Longstreet maintained his headquarters at Brompton.Brompton currently serves as the residence of the President of the University of Mary Washington.

The Second Battle of Fredericksburg, also known as the Second Battle of Marye's Heights, took place on May 3, 1863, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, as part of the Chancellorsville Campaign of the American Civil War.

The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. The combat, between the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under Gen. Robert E. Lee, included futile frontal attacks by the Union army on December 13 against entrenched Confederate defenders along the Sunken Wall on the heights behind the city. It is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the war, with Union casualties more than twice as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates. A visitor to the battlefield described the battle as a "butchery" to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Burnside's plan was to cross the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg in mid-November and race to the Confederate capital of Richmond before Lee's army could stop him. Bureaucratic delays prevented Burnside from receiving the necessary pontoon bridges in time and Lee moved his army to block the crossings. When the Union army was finally able to build its bridges and cross under fire, direct combat within the city resulted on December 11–12. Union troops prepared to assault Confederate defensive positions south of the city and on a strongly fortified ridge just west of the city known as Marye's Heights. On December 13, the Left Grand Division of Maj. Gen. William B. Franklin was able to pierce the first defensive line of Confederate Lt. Gen. Stonewall Jackson to the south, but was finally repulsed. Burnside ordered the Right and Center Grand Divisions of major generals Edwin V. Sumner and Joseph Hooker to launch multiple frontal assaults against Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's position on Marye's Heights – all were repulsed with heavy losses. On December 15, Burnside withdrew his army, ending another failed Union campaign in the Eastern Theater.

Hugh Mercer Apothecary was an apothecary founded by Hugh Mercer in the mid-18th century. Mercer was a doctor who fled Scotland after the Battle of Culloden. He travelled to Pennsylvania, where he met Colonel George Washington during the French and Indian War and later moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Washington's advice to practice medicine and operate an apothecary. The building that housed the apothecary has been restored by Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) to demonstrate 18th Century medical treatments. It also includes a small exhibit on Mercer's life and contributions to the American Revolutionary War.In mid-2012, Preservation Virginia signed an agreement passing ownership to the "Washington Heritage Museums" group beginning in 2013. The museum is located at 1020 Caroline Street in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

The University of Mary Washington (UMW) is a public liberal arts university in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Founded in 1908 as the Fredericksburg Teachers College, the institution was named Mary Washington College in 1938 after Mary Ball Washington, mother of the first president of the United States, George Washington. The General Assembly of Virginia changed the college's name to the University of Mary Washington in 2004 to reflect the addition of graduate and professional programs to the central undergraduate curriculum, as well as the establishment of more than one campus. Each year, students pursue more than 60 majors and programs of graduate and undergraduate study through the university's three colleges: Arts and Sciences, Business, and Education. One third of UMW's undergraduate students study abroad before graduation, taking advantage of 121 study abroad programs in 56 countries.