history’s stories
JOHN LEE PRATT By Ralph “Tuffy” Hicks I believe it was 1950 when I first recall meeting John Lee Pratt in downtown Fredericksburg. He was friends with the family and always called me "little tuff man". He was having a talk with my father and grandfather and joking about city government, as my father reminded me years later that John Lee had made the remark that "little tuff man" would be a cog in the wheels of town government. I would never have believed that thirty years later I would be elected to the City Council and remain there for eighteen years. I knew him up until the time of his death in December 1975, and often see his grave site when I visit Oak Hill Cemetery.
Those who did not know John Lee if they saw him, would never think that this man would have such wealth and knowledge. He was born in King George county on October 22, 1879 and always considered himself a farm boy that could fix most anything. His family sent him to the University of Virginia, from which he graduated with a Chemical Engineering Degree in 1902. John Lee was hired by the DuPont Company. Pierre Du Pont became impressed with the young man with lots of energy and new ideas. In 1919 Du Pont selected Pratt to work in his General Motors Corporation looking out for his large investments. John Lee served on the General Motors Board of Directors and became Vice President of a Division. He would continue to serve on the board for 45 years until 1968. It is written that he was one of the best businessmen that the General Motors Corporation ever had. In 1931 he purchased "Chatham Manor", that he often called his" retirement home" for the sum of $150,000.00 that would be equivalent of three million today. Pratt and his wife Lillian enjoyed their life at Chatham as he would always say he had come back home. He always was proud to reflect that Washington, Monroe, Madison and Lincoln had visited his home. John Lee and Lillian were quietly involved in the community as philanthropist supporting University of Virginia programs and community programs for young people many of the local children in the community were supported in their education by the Pratts. He was friends with St. Clair Brooks a close neighbor in Falmouth and we would see them walking together up until Brooks death in 1953. Today we have St. Clair Brooks park and Pratt Park thanks to these two men. John Lee loved Fredericksburg and the area. A gentleman and his wife that are remembered for what the gave back not only to the State of Virginia but the entire community. After the Death of Lillian Pratt in 1947, her extensive jewelry collection was given to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She had accumulated the largest collection known in the United States of the Peter Faberge' jewelry including five Imperial Easter Eggs that were sold by the Soviet Union to the Pratt's to raise funds for the Soviet state. Lillian Pratt is buried in Tacoma, Washington the city of her birth. John Lee Pratt died in 1975 at the age of 96 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Today Chatham is the headquarters for the National Park Service. A portion of the Pratt estate proceeds went to the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Washington and Lee University and Johns Hopkins University At the time of his death Pratt was said to be the largest shareholder of General Motors stock still owning approximately seventeen per-cent of the large corporation that he helped build.
DEDICATED TO: CHARLES COLLEY, MARY FRAN THOMAS AND LENNIE RODRIGUES
Tuffy is Front Porch's resident FXBG historian
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May 2018
Front porch fredericksburg
OUR HERITAGE
What’s in a Name?
preserve & protect
mary washington Lodge
By Donna Fleming
By jon gerlach
purchase, restore, and resell the Chimneys and the Wells House. In 1977, the U.S. Post Office offered HFFI the George Gravatt House on Princess Anne Street along with funds to move it. HFFI retained ownership of the house until 1982, when it was sold and moved to 108 Charlotte Street. Like every other historic The Chimneys in 1910 structure owned by Fredericksburg’s historic one-ofa-kind houses are physical links to our HFFI, the house was sold with protective nation’s past and make our town the easements and restrictions. HFFI has saved, restored, and sold special place it is. We are a better community today because people have many properties over the years. Its only cared enough to save these important current holding is the Lewis Store at 1200 Caroline Street.(current HFFI Office) Built pieces of our history. Early concerns about the loss of in 1749 for John Lewis, father of George so many of the old Fredericksburg Washington’s brother-in-law Fielding Lewis, it is one of the first retail buildings led to the creation of the Historic establishments in Virginia. Over the years Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc. (HFFI) in the building suffered from fires and 1955. In particular, the early 1950s neglect until 1992 when it was abandoned. demolition of the Matthew Fontaine Maury House on Charlotte Street caught the Then, in 1996, the owners, recognizing its historic significance, gave the building to attention of residents. Maury was a famous oceanographer in the 1800s who the HFFI. It continues to be an ongoing was known as the “Pathfinder of the Seas.” project to stabilize and restore the building, which serves as the HFFI office. After that loss, the new preservation group tried to rescue the The Lewis Store was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. historic kitchen dependency behind the Preserving historic buildings is National Bank of Fredericksburg. The bank crucial to retaining our nation’s heritage wanted to tear it down to make way for its and history. For nearly 65 years, The drive-through feature. Despite HFFI’s efforts, the bank went ahead with the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc. demolition, but the group bought the has fought to protect and preserve our bricks and rebuilt the kitchen at the historic city by saving significant corner of Princess Anne Street and the endangered properties. U.S. 1 Bypass. The next challenge was a house at 813 Sophia Street, built in 1796 by James Brown, Fredericksburg’s first Silversmith. This house was slated for demolition to make way for a city parking lot, but HFFI rallied to save the building. It now houses the Fredericksburg Center for Creative Arts. Another early success was the Wells House. Located across from the Silversmith House, this house was built about 1801 and later named for Captain Wells who operated it as a boarding house during the Civil War. Battered during the 1862 bombardment of Fredericksburg, the house required extensive restoration. The Chimneys, at 623 Caroline Street, was built in the 1770s and acquired by HFFI in 1966. It was sold in 1982, following extensive repairs. A $150,000 Revolving Fund enabled HFFI to
Have you ever wondered about the charming stone and frame house tucked among the trees and shrubs beside the Mary Washington Monument? It tells a story of influence wielded by a group of determined women at the turn of the last century. It also speaks to a remarkable woman, Mary Ball Washington, and our beloved tradition of Mother's Day. Jim Pates, a local attorney who cares about the future of the property, fondly remembers Mother's Day celebrations held around the Monument, a popular Fredericksburg event that was repeated for many years. He is quick to point out that the site has national importance for two reasons: it commemorates a single mother's achievement in raising her young son (the father of our country) after the death of his father, and it was created "as a movement by women all across America to purchase, develop, and pay the cost of erecting one of the first, if not the first, monuments in this country honoring a woman." In 1833, President Andrew Jackson presided at the ground-breaking ceremony of the first Mary Washington
Monument. Financial difficulties later derailed the project, and the monument lay incomplete during the Civil War and afterwards, when it was revived by a national women's movement. As the saying goes it really did take a village -- to fund the project -- and overcome political headwinds in Washington, DC. Innumerable small donations from women all across the country helped greatly, along with key support from the newly formed Daughters of the American Revolution. The project was part of a larger sphere of women's activism in the late 19th Century which included the suffrage and temperance movements. The new monument was completed and President Grover Cleveland dedicated it in 1893. Three years later, construction of the caretaker's cottage was finished, known today as the Mary Washington Lodge. For nearly 70 years the Lodge was home to the well-known Goolrick Family. In 1966, the entire four-acre site including the Monument, Meditation Rock, and the Lodge was conveyed to the City of Fredericksburg as part of a settlement between two ladies' memorial associations
that claimed competing interests in the site. According to the wording of the 1966 Deed, the City is responsible for making sure the entire site is "used and maintained as a park and as a memorial to Mary Washington." Today, the Fredericksburg Memorials Advisory Commission is charged with fulfilling the Deed's expressed intent, by advising the City concerning "the maintenance and preservation in perpetuity of the monument property as a whole and improvements thereon as a Memorial to Mary Washington." After a lease with Kenmore Association (known today as the George Washington Foundation) ended in 2011, sole responsibility for maintaining the Lodge fell back to the City. Recently, the Memorials Advisory Commission recommended that the Lodge be sold to a new owner who would promise to preserve the building. Accordingly, today the City is considering carving up the four acre preservation area into separate lots by means of subdivision, retaining the Monument, Meditation Rock and some surrounding grounds, but selling the Lodge to a suitable purchaser who would have to agree to preserve and maintain it.
Some people believe carving out the Lodge from the park, and disposing of the Lodge separately, would violate the spirit and intent of the women's organizations who directed the City to maintain and preserve the entire site for public use "in perpetuity". Another option is to keep the full 4-acre site intact, in perpetuity, for a public purpose such as a City park, which was the original intent when the City acquired it from the women's organizations in 1966. This might involve building interpretive trails and integrating the Lodge into the visitor experience. As a third option, the City could convey ownership of everything -- the Lodge, Mary Washington Monument, and Meditation Rock -- to the University of Mary Washington, keeping the whole intact. The Lodge would be a fine housing perk for a visiting scholar. As a matter of fact, UMW stewardship of its namesake site for future generations of Americans just seems "Lodgical" -- pardon the pun. So what's in a name? Well, quite a lot. An attorney and retired archaeologist, Jon Gerlach chairs the Architectural Review Board in Fredericksburg.
This article was written by Donna Fleming, with assistance from HFFI volunteers, who has been interested in historic preservation for more than 35 years.
front porch fredericksburg
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