By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Editor’s Note: History Thursday is an occasional feature highlighting a historic building in the Fredericksburg area. If there is a building that you’d like to know more about, email us!
This two-room brick building comprises just 454-square feet of living space and was likely built around 1835. For most of its life, until 1985, it was considered a dependency to the larger house at 1218 Caroline Street. At that time, the owner, Martha Shinn Walker, sold the larger house and kept the smaller as a “weekend retreat” for herself and her husband, according to information prepared by Sandra Staley for the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation’s historic marker program in 1997.
William Green, who owned a hat store on Main Street (now Caroline Street), likely constructed the building that still stands at 202 Fauquier. He bought the property that included both 202 Fauquier and 1218 Caroline at auction in 1835.
Later that year, the tax assessment for the property increased by $200. Green took out an insurance policy which covered a wood dwelling listed as continguous to three other buildings, “one of brick cov’d with slate,” which is likely 202 Fauquier.
An advertisement in the Virginia Herald in 1835 lists new merchandise just arrived in Green’s hat shop, including beaver hats from New York, and otter and seal fur hats, both real and imitation.
In addition to the hat shop, Green also sold lottery tickets, but the advertisement notes that though he would be “occasionally engaged in paying out prizes at his Lottery Office,” still he was indebted to his clients and “will not forget to cover their heads with the best Hats and Caps in the United States.”
The hat shop and lottery office were not Green’s only endeavors—he was also elected to the Common Council of the Corporation of Fredericksburg, and was a member of the New Hope Fire Company, the Mary Washington Monument Committee, and the Presidential Visiting Committee, which organized the visit of Andrew Jackson to Fredericksburg for the laying of the cornerstone of the monument.
Green sold the house at 1218 Caroline and associated lots in 1841, and it passed through several more owners and was sold at auction two more times, for $1,700 in 1869 and for $2,060 in 1888.
In 1965, Holly W. Waring bought the property. She and her first husband, Robert, owned Waring Realty Co. for 38 years and were responsible for developing the Ferry Farm subdivision, according to her 1983 obituary in the Free Lance-Star.
Under a pseudonym, Gilchrist Waring, Holly Waring wrote three children’s books—histories of Jamestown and Williamsburg and the boyhood of George Washington. In 1981, she was celebrated for “wise forest management” on land she owned in Essex County, and told the Free Lance-Star at the time that planting trees was “an aesthetic and moral issue” for her.
“It’s just that I couldn’t cut a tree without planting another,” she said. “I don’t see how anybody could.”
Upon her death, Waring left 1218 Caroline and 202 Fauquier to her daughter, Martha Shinn Walker.
Martha graduated from James Monroe High School and received a degree from then-Mary Washington College and a master’s degree in history from the University of Virginia. She was active in the Garden Club of Virginia and Historic Garden Week.
Martha Walker divided the property in 1985 and sold 1218 Caroline Street, retaining the two-room brick dependency at 202 Fauquier until 1996, when she sold it to Frans Vossenberg, a cardiologist, and his wife, Karen, who are still the owners, according to Fredericksburg GIS.
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